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Frances Barkley (dates) was

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/wdp/lifestyle/Following-woman-courage/article-1557376-detail/article.html

His name is sometimes erroneously spelled Barclay due to the misspelling "Barclay Sound" on early Admiralty charts, which arose from a mistake from Land District records. The misspelling originated in 1859 with the government agent William Eddy Banfield who issued certificates identifying the "Barclay Land District." The name of Barkley Sound was corrected to Barkley Sound in 1904.

He was married in 1786, he soon after left the East India Company, taking what was apparently his first command, the 400-ton ship Loundon, ready for a trading voyage to the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. The ship, which was renamed Imperial Eagle and falsely registered as an Austrian in an attempt to avoid the cost of acquiring a trading license from the East India Company, was owned by various supercargoes, including several East India Company directions in England, who together called themselves the Austrian East India Company. Barkley was among the backers, subscribing £3,000 to the venture. John Meares, who was also attempting to avoid license fees by falsely sailing under the Portuguese flag, was also one of the backers.

Barkley and his wife, Frances Barkley, left for the Pacific via Cape Horn on November 24, 1786. They stopped in the Hawaiian Islands where a maidservant named Winée was taken aboard. Winée became the first Native Hawaiian, or "Kanaka", to reach British Columbia. From Hawaii Barkley sailed the Imperial Eagle to Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, arriving on in June 1787. At 400 tons, the Imperial Eagle was the largest ship to ever enter the main harbor of Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound. Barkley stayed at Nootka Sound for about a month, acquired 700 prime skins, and many more of inferior quality. From Nootka he sailed south, trading, exploring, and naming various parts of the coast between Nootka Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, including Barkley Sound, Loudoun Channel, Cape Beale, and Imperial Eagle Channel. In honour of the indigenous chief Wickaninnish Barkley gave the name Wickinninish Sound to what is now called Clayoquot Sound. He rediscovered the strait allegedly described by Juan de Fuca and named the strait as such on his chart. Barkley's Imperial Eagle was the first non-indigenous vessel to enter Neah Bay, in July 1787. John Meares, in the Feliz Aventureira, stopped at Neah Bay in June 1788, and Charles Duncan in the Princess Royal did so in August 1788. Robert Gray, in the Lady Washington, entered Neah Bay in April 1789, and in July 1789 José María Narváez did so in the Santa Gertrudis la Magna. Within the next few years a number of others visited Neah Bay and it became an important fur trading stop during the maritime fur trading era.

After six members of his crew were killed by indigenous people, on 24 July 1787, near the mouth of the Hoh River, Barkley decided to set sail for Guangzhou (Canton), China, to sell his sea otter pelts. He arrived in Macau in December 1787. His trading venture resulted in a profit of £10,000. Barkley gave the name Destruction River to what is now called the Hoh River, after his crew members were killed by the indigenous people. The name has since been transferred to nearby Destruction Island.

He then left China and sailed with a cargo to Mauritius. While in Mauritius Barkley learned that the East India Company was taking legal action against the owners of the Imperial Eagle for trading without a license. The owners, including John Meares, decided to avoid the legal problems by selling the Imperial Eagle and breaking their contract with Barkley. Charles and Frances Barkley stayed in Mauritius for over a year, where they had their first child. They then sailed to Kolkata (Calcutta), India, where the Imperial Eagle was confiscated. Barkley sued for damages and received £5,000 for the loss of his ten-year contract. At the same time John Meares gained possession of Barkley's nautical gear and his journal. Frances Barkley later wrote that Meares, "with the greatest effrontery, published and claimed the merit of my husband's discoveries therein contained, besides inventing lies of the most revolting nature tending to vilify the person he thus pilfered."

After this series of events Charles and Frances Barkley found themselves stranded in Mauritius, without a ship and burdened with a newborn. Over the course of two years they managed to make their way to the Netherlands, then England.

Barkley continued his merchant captain career. He commanded the Princess Frederica, sailing in the Indian Ocean into 1791. Then he returned to the Pacific Northwest coast, in command of the 80-ton brig Halcyon. He traded for sea otter pelts in Sitka Sound, then sailed to the Hawaiian Islands, China, and Mauritius.

Little is known of his latter years. They were probably not proesperous. Upon his death at the age of 73 he left two sons and two daughters, and was survived by his wife Frances.

From :

Discovered and named in 1787 by Captain Charles William Barkley (1759 - 1832), of the British trading ship Imperial Eagle, after himself. The Imperial Eagle had previously been the East Indiaman "Loudoun", renamed "Imperial Eagle" and sailing under the Austrian colours to evade the procuring of a licence from the East India Company to trade in these waters. The ship sailed from the Thames in August 1786... arriving at Nootka in June 1787....[see Walbran for extensive additional descriptions] Barkley sound was for many years erroneously spelt in the chart "Barclay" but the correct spelling was restored by the Geographic Board of Canada

"In 1786, when only 26 years of age, [Captain Charles William Barkley] left the service of the East India Company to take command of the Loudon, alias the Imperial Eagle, which was being outfitted in the Thames River for a trading voyage to the Pacific Northwest coast. While in Ostend, Barkley met and married Frances Hornby Trevor, the 17 year old daughter of the Protestant minister. The marriage took place 27 October 1786. When the Imperial Eagle sailed four weeks later, Mrs. Barkley courageously accompanied her husband on the voyage, and thus was the first white woman to see the Northwest coast of America. Her unpublished reminiscences, written in the latter days of her life, and now in the Provincial Archives in Victoria, are the main source of information about this and later voyages.... In her reminiscences Mrs Barkley wrote, ' this part of the coast proved a rich harvest of furs. Likewise another very large sound to which Captain Barkley gave his own name, calling it Barkley's Sound. Also several coves, bays and islands in the sound we named. There was Frances Island, named after myself; Hornby Peak, also after myself; Cape Beale, after our purser; Williams Point and a variety of other names'...."

From :

Named in 1787 by Captain Barkley, after John Beale, purser of the trading ship Imperial Eagle. Beale, 2nd mate Miller and the whole of a boat's crew were killed by the Indians in a small river near Destruction Island the same year. Destruction Island was so-named by Captain Barkley from this fact. With reference to the naming of Cape Beale, Captain Meares, trading on this coast in 1788, states in the account of his voyage "...this headland obtained from us the name of Cape Beale" (p.171). Farther on in the volume (Appendix 11) a Mr. John Beale is mentioned, described as a merchant of Canton and the ostensible agent of the expedition, the inference being that Meares named the headland after this gentleman. The coincidence is striking, but the.... authority that the cape was named the previous year is from the diary of Mrs. Barkley, who was with Captain Barkley in the Imperial Eagle. According to (her) diary there was no love lost... between the Barkleys and Captain John Meares.

From :

Named in 1931 by H.D. Parizeau, Canadian Hydrographic Service, "...after Frances Hornby Trevor, young bride of Captain Charles William Barkley, who was with her husband on board the Imperial Eagle when he discovered Barkley Sound in 1787. Mrs. Barkley was the first white woman to visit the north west coast of America. She was 17 years of age." (11 May 1931 notation by H.D. Parizeau, Hydrographic Service) Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

"In 1786, when only 26 years of age, [Captain Charles William Barkley] left the service of the East India Company to take command of the Loudon, alias the Imperial Eagle, which was being outfitted in the Thames River for a trading voyage to the Pacific Northwest coast. While in Ostend, Barkley met and married Frances Hornby Trevor, the 17 year old daughter of the Protestant minister. The marriage took place 27 October 1786. When the Imperial Eagle sailed four weeks later, Mrs. Barkley courageously accompanied her husband on the voyage, and thus was the first white woman to see the Northwest coast of America. Her unpublished reminiscences, written in the latter days of her life, and now in the Provincial Archives in Victoria, are the main source of information about this and later voyages.... In her reminiscences Mrs Barkley wrote, ' this part of the coast proved a rich harvest of furs. Likewise another very large sound to which Captain Barkley gave his own name, calling it Barkley's Sound. Also several coves, bays and islands in the sound we named. There was Frances Island, named after myself; Hornby Peak, also after myself; Cape Beale, after our purser; Williams Point and a variety of other names'...." Source: Barkley Sound; a history of the Pacific Rim National Park area, by R.Bruce Scott, Fleming Printing, Victoria, 1972, pp17-23.

"Frances Hornby Trevor Barkley [accompanied her husband] in two circumnavigations of the globe, starting her first voyage at the age of 17 1/2, directly after her marriage at Ostend, 27 October 1786. Mrs. Barkley kept an interesting journal of the voyage, and from this book the incidents narrated here are taken.... ...Mrs. Barkley died in 1843." Source: Walbran, John T; British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: their origin and history; Ottawa, 1909 (republished for the Vancouver Public Library by J.J. Douglas Ltd, Vancouver, 1971)

From: :

"Named in 1787 by Captain Charles William Barkley of the fur trading ship "Imperial Eagle," after the Greek pilot Juan de Fuca, who sailed up this strait in 1592. Captain Barkley, who was off the entrance to this inlet in July 1787, recognized it as the long lost strait [described by] Juan de Fuca. Missed by Captain Cook in 1778 owing to bad weather setting him off the coast in this particular locality. The old seaman Juan de Fuca, whose real name was Apostolos Valierianos, a native of Cephalonia, who seems to have been in his own day neglected and misunderstood as he was afterwards doubted and ignored, and whose pretentions in regard to the exploration of these waters were long scoffed at by geographers, was undoubtedly the discoverer of the strait which bears his name..... " Source: Walbran, John T; British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: their origin and history; Ottawa, 1909 (republished for the Vancouver Public Library by J.J. Douglas Ltd, Vancouver, 1971)

The United States Board on Geographic Names has adopted the form "Strait of Juan de Fuca." [as of October 1979, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names maintains that Captain John Meares of the "Felice" named the strait in 1788.] Source: Canadian Geographical Names Database, Ottawa

From: BARKLEY, Frances, ABCBookWorld:

The young Captain Barkley opted to sail under the Austrian colours of the Austrian East Indian Company in an attempt to circumvent the high fees demanded by the two English monopolies. These were the East India Company, Charles Barkley’s former employer, and the South Sea Company. The former controlled trade in Asia; the latter controlled the Pacific trade on the West Coast of North America from Cape Horn to the Arctic.

The name of Barkley’s ship, the Loudon, was changed to the Imperial Eagle prior to the couple’s embarkation on November 24, 1786. Despite a bout of rheumatic fever for Captain Barkley, their voyage went well, and they soon reached the Americas at Brazil.

At the Sandwich Islands Frances Barkley took aboard a maidservant, Winée, who became the first Hawaiian or “Kanaka” to reach British Columbia. Few details are known about her life. She sailed with the Barkleys to Nootka Sound, then onto China, but in Macao she wanted to return to Hawaii. She was given return passage to Nootka Sound on a voyage by Captain John Meares in the spring of 1788. He described her as being “in a deep decline.” Winée died en route on February 5, 1788 and her body was committed to the deep.

The Barkleys and Winée arrived in the Imperial Eagle at Nootka Sound in June of 1787. At 400 tons, the Imperial Eagle was the largest ship to enter Friendly Cove but the Indians were likely just as impressed by Frances Barkley’s extraordinary red-gold hair. Legend has it, within Barkley family lore, that her tresses saved the day when the Barkleys were captured by hostile South Sea natives. The story goes that curious women among their captors supposedly loosed her hair “which fell like a shower of gold,” whereupon the astonished onlookers presumed she must be divine and Frances successfully ordered their release. This incident does not appear in any of Frances Barkley’s diary materials. Her cumulative Reminiscences were mostly penned when she was sixty-six.

During their month-long stay at Nootka, Frances Barkley was much impressed by chief Maquinna and his management of the fur trade. The Imperial Eagle acquired 700 prime skins, and many more of inferior quality, worth a great fortune for sale in the Orient. They did so with the assistance of John MacKay, the Irishman who had been left behind at Nootka the summer before due to illness. The Barkleys sailed south and named Barkley Sound, Hornby Peak, Frances Island, Trevor Channel, Loudoun Channel, Cape Beale and Imperial Eagle Channel. In honour of the local chief, Captain Barkley also named Wickinninish Sound, now called Clayoquot Sound. Six of their party were killed by Indians at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca on July 24, 1787. Depressed by this encounter, the Barkleys set sail for Canton and reached Macao in December.

During formal trading procedures in Macao—which proved successful—the Barkleys bought an ornate bamboo chair that has survived their journeys. This chair is now the property of the Centennial Museum in Vancouver.

Having made a profit of £10,000 for his backers, Captain Barkley proceeded to the island of Mauritius, off Madagascar, where he learned the East India Company was initiating legal action against the owners of the Imperial Eagle. The owners, who included John Meares, decided to sell the Imperial Eagle to avoid legal consequences, thereby breaking their contract with Captain Barkley. The Barkleys stayed for more than a year in the French enclave of Mauritius where Frances Barkley gave birth to their first child, a son. Captain Barkley sailed to India where the Imperial Eagle was confiscated. Having invested much of his own money in properly outfitting the ship, Captain Barkley sued for damages and received an arbitration settlement for the loss of his ten-year contract but this was insufficient consolation.

The devious Meares gained possession of Barkley’s nautical gear as well as his valuable seafaring journal. “Capt. Meares, however, with the greatest effrontery,” Frances Barkley later wrote, “published and claimed the merit of my husband’s discoveries therein contained, besides inventing lies of the most revolting nature tending to vilify the person he thus pilfered.” The likes of Robert Haswell and George Dixon also condemned Meares when his book about his adventures failed to properly credit Captain Barkley’s charts. It was, according to Dixon, “scarcely anything more than a confused heap of contradictions and misrepresentations.” For his part, chief Maquinna, a shrewd judge of character, called Meares “Aita-aita Meares” which means “the lying Meares.” Defrauded by Meares and stranded in Mauritius, having lost the Imperial Eagle, and also burdened with a newborn, the Barkleys tried to return to England on an American ship that was wrecked near Holland where they were left to fend for themselves. They finally reached Portsmouth two years after their embarkation from Ostend.

From: BARKLEY, CHARLES WILLIAM, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online:

In 1786 he left the company to take what was apparently his first command, the ship Loudoun, outfitted for a trading voyage along the northwest coast of America. At 400 tons, the Loudoun, owned by various supercargoes in China and several East India Company directors in England who together called themselves the Austrian East India Company, was the largest and finest vessel that had yet visited the coast. Barkley subscribed £3,000 of his own to the venture.

The Loudoun left the Thames on 6 Sept. 1786 and sailed first to Ostend (Belgium) where she picked up supplies. There her name was changed to the Imperial Eagle and she hoisted Austrian colours since British vessels were required to respect the monopoly rights of the East India Company. While at Ostend, Barkley met and on 27 Oct. 1786 married Frances Hornby Trevor, the 17-year-old daughter of the minister of the Protestant chapel at Ostend. On 24 November the Imperial Eagle sailed for the Pacific via Brazil and Cape Horn.

The vessel reached Nootka Sound (B.C.) the following June. Barkley and his wife met John Mackay*, who had been left there the previous summer by James Charles Stuart Strange* to learn Indian customs. Mackay taught Barkley much about the Indian traders and also about the geography of Vancouver Island and the waters to the south of it, thus giving him an advantage over rivals such as James Colnett*. Barkley traded extensively with the Indians at Nootka and Clayoquot sounds and at another very large sound to which he gave his own name. Late in July the Imperial Eagle sailed into an extensive waterway that Barkley immediately recognized as the long-sought-for strait said to have been discovered by Juan de Fuca*. On his chart he named it after Fuca. He was surprised to find this strait because Captain James Cook* had stated emphatically that it did not exist.

After the loss of some crewmen at an island he named Destruction Island (Wash.), Barkley left for Macao (near Canton, People’s Republic of China), which he reached in December 1787, and there he sold his 800 furs on an overstocked market for 30,000 Spanish dollars. He sailed with a cargo for Mauritius and then to Calcutta where he hoped to outfit his vessel for the second of three projected voyages to the northwest coast. That project never materialized for the East India Company had discovered the threat to its monopoly. According to Mrs Barkley, her husband’s partners, eager to dissociate themselves from the venture, ignored his contract, sold the Imperial Eagle, and handed his charts and instruments to John Meares*, who later claimed some of the captain’s discoveries as his own. Barkley recovered £5,000 in a case settled out of court in Calcutta.

From: Capt. Barkley in IMPERIAL EAGLE in Barkley Sound, The Maritime Paintings of Gordon Miller:

On November 24th. 1786, at one in the afternoon, the IMPERIAL EAGLE made sail from Ostend and headed south into the Atlantic. In command was twenty-seven year old Charles W. Barkley, a captain who had been persuaded to resign his position with the British East India Company to command a private trading venture to the Northwest Coast. The IMPERIAL EAGLE, ex LOUDOUN, was a decommissioned East India Company 20 gun, 400 ton ship, very large for her intended use. Barkley purchased her in London, but in order to circumvent the trade restrictions and stiff license fees imposed on private English trading companies, the ship was sailed to Ostend, where she was registered under Austrian colors.

Sailing with captain Barkley on that afternoon was his wife of only four weeks. Frances Hornby Trevor was the daughter of a local protestant chaplain, and she was only sixteen when she met and married Charles. Frances made two voyages with her husband over a period of eight years, and in the process established many historical “Firsts”. She was the first European woman to call at the Hawaiian Islands, where she employed Winee, a young Hawaiian girl, to sail as her maid. Winee and Frances thus became the first non native women to visit the Northwest Coast when they arrived at Nootka in June of 1787, and Winee the first Hawaiian woman to reach America. Winee left the IMPERIAL EAGLE in Macao, being too ill to go farther. Meares took her aboard the FELICE ADVENTURER to return her to Hawaii but she died before they reached the islands.

The IMPERIAL EAGLE sailed from Hawaii on May 25th. Captain Barkley’s was the first ship to arrive at Nootka in 1787 and trade for furs went well. IMPERIAL EAGLE then sailed south, trading in Clayaquot Sound before entering a large sound which he named after himself, and a channel after the ship. His wife was also honored by having Hornby Peak, Trevor Channel and Frances Island named after her. A few days later, sailing south in clear weather, they opened up the entrance to a wide strait at 48º north latitude. Barkley correctly assumed it was the long lost Straits of Juan de Fuca, and although he didn’t explore it, he applied the name it goes by today.

From: http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/olym/hrs/chap1.htm

in 1787, Captain Charles William Barkley (sometimes spelled Berkeley or Barclay) commanded the fur trading vessel, the Imperial Eagle, when he made positive identification of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Francis Hornby Barkley, Captain Barkley's wife, is believed to have been the first woman to visit this part of the Northwest coast (Howay 1911, 6) and recorded the event in her diary: "In the afternoon, to our great astonishment, we arrived off a large opening extending to the eastward, the entrance of which appeared to be about four leagues wide, and remained about that width as far as the eye could see, with a clear easterly horizon, which my husband immediately recognized as the long lost strait of Juan de Fuca, and to which he gave the name of the original discoverer, my husband placing it on his chart" (Howay 1911, 8).

The event is significant since Charles Barkley is generally credited with the positive discovery of the opening of the Strait of Juan de Fuca (Anderson 1960, 80). Barkley proceeded south, rounding the cape earlier named Cape Flattery by James Cook, and eventually anchored near the mouth of the Hoh River. Crew members from the Imperial Eagle were sent ashore and, like the Spanish explorers in 1795, met a similar fate. The Hoh River was named Destruction River by Barkley in commemoration of this occurrence (Wood 1968, 66).

From: http://pages.quicksilver.net.nz/jcr/~vfur1.html

Charles Barkley and the Imperial Eagle, 1786-1787.

The monopoly exercised over British ships by the East India and South Sea Companies was resented, even by some of their employees. One or two sought ways of bypassing the system and John Reid and Daniel Beale had the idea to purchase ships and sail them under foreign colours. Operating from Canton, Beale became the Prussian agent in that port. They persuaded Charles Barkley, an East India Company naval captain, to resign his position and travel to London. Once there, Barkley, using his own money, purchased the 400 ton East-Indiaman, the Loudoun.

He sailed the Loudoun, on 6 September 1786, across to Ostend, then under control by Austria. A new and dubious company, the Austrian East India Company fitted out the ship, whose name was changed to the Imperial Eagle and it now flew Austrian colours. Barkley quickly met and married the daughter of the local protestant chaplain. Her name was Frances Hornby Trevor and she was only 16 years old but she joined Barkley on the ship and became the first European woman to visit the Northwest Coast. The Imperial Eagle sailed from Ostend on 24 November and headed down the Atlantic, calling in only at Bahia in Brazil. Rounding Cape Horn, Barkley sailed to Hawaii, which he reached in May 1787.

During the short stay in Hawaii, Frances Barkley employed Winee, a Hawaiian, as her maid and she sailed with the Imperial Eagle on 25 May. The ship anchored in Nootka Sound in June, the first European ship to arrive that year. The Barkleys soon met John Mackay, who had been left in the sound by James Strange 11 months earlier, and agreed to take him with them when they sailed. In July, two more British ships entered Nootka Sound. They were two more ships sent out by Etches' King George's Sound Company,the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, commanded by James Colnett and Charles Duncan respectively. All the sea otter pelts had been obtained by Barkley so he sailed from Nootka to nearby Clayoquot Sound (Barkley called it Wickananish's Sound after the local chief).

Barkley then moved on to another large inlet, which he called Barkley Sound after himself. Two features in the sound were named after his wife, Frances Island and Hornby Peak, while the ship's purser. Johnr Beale, was remembered by Cape Beale. Pelts were obtained in both sounds. A few days later, the Imperial Eagle crossed the entrance to a very large inlet. Barkley identified it as the mythical strait postulated by Michael Lok in his writing over 100 years earlier and named it after its supposed discoverer, the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Barkley made no attempt to sail into the Strait and, instead, sailed a short distance further down the coast. He sent a longboat ashore onto a small island but Beale and the other five men were all killed in a confrontation with Quileutes. The island was probably Destruction Island near the mouth of the Hoh River.

Barkley decided to leave the Coast and headed for Macao, where he arrived in November 1787. Discharging his cargo of 880 pelts and picking up a different one, he sailed to Mauritius under Portuguese colours and then on to Calcutta. The ruse of sailing under Austrian colours had been discovered and Barkley's partners had managed to avoid blame and liability, leaving Barkley to take all responsibility. He suffered large finacial losses and had to sell off his possessions, some of which John Meares obtained. Barkley appealed and eventually was partially reimbursed. The Barkleys would return eventually to the Northwest Coast in the Halcyon. Winee, though, would sail with Meares in January 1788 and die without reaching Hawaii.