1. Captain George Vancouver was a Royal Navy officer and explorer best known for leading the Vancouver Expedition, which explored and charted North America's northwestern Pacific Coast regions, including the coasts of what became the Canadian province of British Columbia and the US states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.
George Vancouver was the sixth and youngest child of John Jasper Vancouver, a Dutch-born deputy collector of customs, and Bridget Berners.
The surname George Vancouver comes from Coevorden, Drenthe province, Netherlands.
In 1771, at age 13, George Vancouver entered the Royal Navy as a "young gentleman", a future candidate for midshipman.
George Vancouver subsequently saw action at the Battle of the Saintes, wherein he distinguished himself.
George Vancouver formally claimed at Possession Point, King George Sound Western Australia, which became the town of Albany, Western Australia, for the British.
George Vancouver's orders included a survey of every inlet and outlet on the west coast of the mainland, all the way north to Alaska.
George Vancouver named many features for his officers, friends, associates, and his ship Discovery, including:.
George Vancouver surveyed Howe Sound and Jervis Inlet over the next nine days.
George Vancouver was "mortified" to learn they already had a crude chart of the Strait of Georgia based on the 1791 exploratory voyage of Jose Maria Narvaez the year before, under command of Francisco de Eliza.
The Spanish commander, Juan Francisco Bodega y Quadra, was very cordial and he and George Vancouver exchanged the maps they had made, but no agreement was reached; they decided to await further instructions.
George Vancouver realised the importance of verifying Gray's information and conducting a more thorough survey.
George Vancouver sailed south along the coast of Spanish Alta California, entered San Francisco Bay, later visiting Monterey; in both places, he was warmly received by the Spanish.
George Vancouver spent the winter in continuing exploration of the Sandwich Islands, the contemporary name of the islands of Hawaii.
George Vancouver sailed around the latter island, as well as circumnavigating Revillagigedo Island and charting parts of the coasts of Mitkof, Zarembo, Etolin, Wrangell, Kuiu and Kupreanof Islands.
George Vancouver noted that the region's "only defenses against foreign attack are a few poor cannons".
George Vancouver again spent the winter in the Sandwich Islands.
The accomplished and politically well-connected naturalist Archibald Menzies complained that his servant had been pressed into service during a shipboard emergency; sailing master Joseph Whidbey had a competing claim for pay as expedition astronomer; and Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, whom George Vancouver had disciplined for numerous infractions and eventually sent home in disgrace, proceeded to harass him publicly and privately.
George Vancouver gravely replied that he was unable "in a private capacity to answer for his public conduct in his official duty," and offered instead to submit to formal examination by flag officers.
Pitt chose instead to stalk George Vancouver, ultimately assaulting him on a London street corner.
Charges and counter-charges flew in the press, with the wealthy Camelford faction having the greater firepower until George Vancouver, ailing from his long naval service, died.
George Vancouver's grave is in the churchyard of St Peter's Church, Petersham, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England.
George Vancouver determined that the Northwest Passage did not exist at the latitudes that had long been suggested.
George Vancouver drew up a map of the north-west coast that was accurate to the 9th degree, to the point it was still being used into the modern day as a navigational aid.
However, George Vancouver failed to discover two of the largest and most important rivers on the Pacific coast, the Fraser River and the Columbia River.
George Vancouver missed the Skeena River near Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia.
How George Vancouver could have missed these rivers while accurately charting hundreds of comparatively insignificant inlets, islands, and streams is hard to fathom.
The Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest, with the 1791 Francisco de Eliza expedition preceding George Vancouver by a year, had missed the Fraser River although they knew from its muddy plume that there was a major river located nearby.
George Vancouver generally established a rapport with both Indigenous peoples and European trappers.
George Vancouver wrote of meeting the Chumash people, and of his exploration of a small island on the Californian coast on which an important burial site was marked by a sepulchre of "peculiar character" lined with boards and fragments of military instruments lying near a square box covered with mats.
George Vancouver displayed contempt in his journals towards unscrupulous western traders who provided guns to natives, writing:.
The stamp has an embossed image of George Vancouver seen from behind as he gazes forward towards a mountainous coastline.
George Vancouver named the south point of what is Couverden Island, Alaska, Point Couverden during his exploration of the North American Pacific coast, in honour of his family's hometown of Coevorden.
The Admiralty instructed George Vancouver to publish a narrative of his voyage which he started to write in early 1796 in Petersham.