During the first half of the 1800s, the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) expanded their fur-trading empire establishing forts, farms, and warehouses in the Pacific Northwest. At this time the HBC shipping routes extended throughout the British empire, and…

In 1859 the British survey ship HMS Plumper was scouting the San Juan Islands during the joint occupation of the Islands by the British and the United States. Oarsmen from the HMS Plumper took a skiff into what they would later call "Friday…