 As I am a writer of novels of history and I'm doing a series on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and they're going to be done from three different viewpoints Britain, France and the United States. In my first book The Tain a Dawn, which the Kennedy so kindly gave me a nice intro, the backstory of the whole book is the Nutca crisis. Now, has anybody here heard of the Nutca crisis? Now, you know why you never heard of the Nutca crisis? Because it was a war that never happened. It was a disagreement between major powers that was settled diplomatically largely to do-do fleet diplomacy. Now, I will begin. Now I'm going to backtrack from 1789. We're going to start at the end of the American Revolution or if you will as the British call it the American War. Britain, of course, was one of the losers. In 1783 she's awash in debt to the tune of 242 million pounds sterling. This young gentleman is called William Pitt the Younger. They call him William Pitt the Younger because his father William Pitt was also a Prime Minister of England and a very notable one. Mr. Pitt in December 1783 becomes Prime Minister of England. He is all of 24 years old. But not to be deterred. Mr. Pitt has been brought up in a political family. He's political savvy and he has the sense to surround himself with good advisors. So one of Mr. Pitt's main problems is the debt, the deficit. So what does he do? Raises a debt ceiling, raises taxes. He starts cutting down on leakages to the British Treasury like smuggling. What he does is he lowers tariffs on goods that are highly smuggling, smugglable, if there's such a word, I'll make it up if not, and lo and behold he brings more money into the Treasury that way. Mr. Pitt also has a something called a sinking fund where he sets aside the sum of one million pounds per year from the British budget in order to help pay this debt down faster. And by 1792 he's remarkably successful. British debt stunned to about 170 million pounds now. But Mr. Pitt is also interested in freedom of the seas, trade on the seas, particularly British trade on the seas. So what he's also doing, he's seen at the end of the war, the Navy is in a very bad shape. They've got to retire a lot of ships that are leaky, they're about ready to sink. The ships that he has, he's going to have to bring up to stuff, and he's going to have to build more ships because he found during the American Revolution the French fleet very nonchalantly sailed up the British, the English Channel and British could do nothing about it. Okay, next. King Louis the 16th of France. Now he's ostensibly one of the winners, right? He sided with the Americans. You know, he helped them win. But he's also got a sea of red ink to deal with. And like Mr. Pitt, he refuses to raise the debt ceiling. He refuses to raise taxes, even though in the period of the 1780s France is quadrupling her merchant trade, particularly in the Caribbean. But Louis, he's not a very strong king. When it comes to crises, he's like a deer in the headlights. He does nothing. And this doing nothing about the French debt is going to be one of the main factors, really. It helps bring about the French Revolution. Here we have Carlos the 4th of Spain. He's not a very strong ruler either. His father though, Carlos III, who was king during the American Revolution, was. And he was very keen on getting Spain back up to her number one power, her status as a number one power in Europe. And he did. He was able to retake Florida and the Norca from the British. Spain, by the way, had come in on the side of France via the family compact between the House of Bourbon of Spain and the House of Bourbon of France. So they're allies. They're related. They like each other. He helped Louis. And when a crisis comes, he's going to expect help from him. Catherine the Great. She's a woman, but let me tell you, she's not weak. Don't mess with that lady. She is out. She's been on the throne a long time. She's politically savvy. She's ruthless. You do well never to marry her, men. So she's she's out to expand Russian territory and trade. And she is out for the glory of Russia and the glory of Catherine, by the way, too. Okay, now Captain Cook during the American Revolution was on his third and final and fatal voyage of exploration. During this time, he makes a trip up to the Pacific Northwest. One of his reasons, of course, is to look for the famous Northwest Passage, see what's there, and he drops anchor at, all right, I'll just do it here, Nutka Sound. While he's trading with the Indians, one of whom is Makina, his father, the one that later we will see, he finds that they have some Spanish silver spoons and he's chuckling to himself, but at the same time he's chuckling to himself, he knows, ah, the Spanish have been here trading. The Spanish, by rights of the conquistadors, and the paper wall of 1492 and the Treaty of Tortesilla in 1493, have split up the whole of the area between Spain and Portugal, supposedly. And anyway, as far as they're Spain and Portugal are concerned. So Mr. Cook does what the captain, the Spanish captain, who had those spoons robbed didn't do. He sets foot on land at Nutka and he plants the British flag, I claim this land in the name of King George III of England. This is going to give the British a very substantial foothold and claim to that land. Now, in 1784, Mr. Cook is dead by now and we start trading. There's a lot of interest in trade. Sea otter pelts, they're very, very valuable. Even to the native people, only chiefs can wear these. The Europeans like them too. So in 84, Cook's journals are finally published from his final forage and he makes mention in there of the great trading capabilities between the American northeast coast of the Pacific and the China coast because Cook had also found that the Russians were trading up in that area with the fur pelts to China, albeit overland, because they were limited by a previous treaty with China. And that, you know, there's this great room here for England to trade too. There's money to be made, okay, and there's people to make money, legally or otherwise. Now on the legal side, we have Richard Cadman Etchies. He's a London merchant. He sees the potential for the fur trade. He sees the potential for the British whaling trade to expand in the Pacific and he sees the place, actually a potential dumping ground for British convicts, for criminals. It costs money to keep people in jail. They had Georgia when they had us, the United States, the colonies, and they dumped them there. They don't have that anymore. They want to get rid of them. So maybe he thinks that, you know, either there or someplace out there, we could get rid of the convicts. Now, Cadman Etchies goes about trading the right way. That's not him, by the way. I don't have a picture of him yet. He goes to the South Sea Company, who's one of the major traders and monopolist or duopolist who held the rights to trade for England in the Pacific and he gets a license from them. He goes to the East India Company, the other large monopolist trading company out there, and he gets permission. So he goes out and starts trading. Other people don't. Okay? Remember, this is the end of the American Revolution. A lot of naval personnel officers are let go because they're no longer needed. They're put on half pay. This man, John Meares, was one of them. He served honorably as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the American War, American Revolution. Now, Mr. Meares gets an idea, aha, I'll go out to India and see what can be done. So he does and he goes and he starts a company. He gets some backing, starts a company. He calls it the Bengal fur trading company and he sells from Calcutta in 1786 out to Newtka. Well, excuse me, not out to Newtka. First he sells up the coast and to a place called Cooks in Lit and he finds, lo and behold, the Russians are already there. They already have a trading center. Permanent one established year-round, 40 to 50 people, 40 to 50 men stationed there. So they can't go there. They've moved on down to Prince William Sound and he finds out that there's nobody there. But at the same time, he doesn't know the area. He stays too long. He gets stuck there over winter. 23 of his crew and officers die. By spring, he and the nine survivors of his crew are in very bad shape. They're rescued by another British trading ship under Captain Dixon. He very kindly gives them the medicine and the food they need and helps them. But Captain Dixon's superior doesn't like Mary's. He finds out that he has no pavers from anybody. He's got no permission, no how, no way to trade there. So he forces Mary's to pay a bond of 500 pounds and to leave that region and don't come back trading. Mr. Mary's repays the kindness for saving his life by suing Mr. Portlock. That's life. What can I say? But he doesn't end there. He does not end there. This man is an entrepreneur. He's on the make. He sees from what he's been there that there's a lot of money to be had. So he's going to go back. So he reinvents his company as the associated merchants and he comes back with some more ships. He also, in the course of time, 1788, bring Chinese carpenters and Smiths to Nuka and he builds a permanent establishment there. That's his first. He goes back. Now Mr. Mary's in 1789 means John Cadman Etchies, the brother of Richmond Cadman Etchies and they come to an arrangement. They're going to form a partnership and they call themselves the associated merchants trading to the northeast. And remember still Mr. Mary's, he's unlicensed. Etchies company, they're good to go. They've got all their papers in order. And in the meantime, there's a third person that comes into this. A Captain James Colette who has official papers from the Admiralty authorizing him to explore the area and also to trade there, which he does. Now, in the meantime, while this is going on, that comes France into the picture. Le Conte de la Pou is sent from France to the Pacific to explore the area and to see what, you know, how France can get more of the action there. During the course of the time, he sails up along the coast. He finds that the, he finds the Russians are now established at Cook Inlet. They have come from Petrov a Lusk on the Kamchatka to UN Alaska on the Aleutians and now they're moving up. Remember what I said about Catherine? She is determined to advance the goals and aims of Russia. She's on the move. So, he also finds from the Russians who are always happy to point fingers at someone else. I have the English or they have the English, they're trading, they're trading down there. So, he comes, sails back down to San Blas, the Spanish naval base of San Blas in Mexico, Pacific coast. And he tells the commander there, Captain Esteban José Martinez about this. Hey, do you know what's going on up there? Have you heard the story, you know, that Spain, Spain, their rights are being infringed upon? We're not going to talk about what the French are doing out there. No, no, no. But, you know, the Russians, the British, they're there. So, Captain Esteban, he is a great patriot. He loves Spain. He considers this an insult to the Spanish flag. He contacts the Viceroy of Mexico, Flores. He contacts the Viceroy of Superior, the Minister of the Indies. And he gets permission to take an expedition up there to see what's going on. And he does. And he finds out Steven Morrison will let the count told him. So, they're established. They've got, the Russians have six trading posts there now. Six. And in the meantime, he finds out, finds out from the Russians, remember the Russians, oh, well, you know, we're not the only ones, you know, don't blame us. Look at what the British are doing. He finds out that the British have a permanent establishment at Nookanau. It's not just training, it's a permanent establishment. This is considered an act by Spain of infringing on their claim to trading rights, to the exclusive trading rights in that area, the Pacific Coast of both Americas and the Pacific itself. They don't like this. So, Martinez comes back. He's made a commodore now. And he goes back with a frigate, the princessa, and a brig, back up to Nootka. And he's all set to capture some British ships. Now, the Spanish government has given him a writ that orders him to seize any ship that isn't Spanish in that area. Martinez finds some Americans trading there. Robert Gray in 1788 sailed from Boston to see what there was to see in that area too. And another ship under him has, sorry for two pictures, but, you know, two is better than one whatever. John Kendrick is there as well. And another ship under him. The two ships, the Columbia and the Lady Washington. So, when Martinez comes there, he finds Captain Kendrick. Captain Kendrick is a little bit political savvy, so he enters into a cross-site alliance with Martinez. He says, okay, look, you know, maybe I shouldn't be trading here, but you know about the British, and I'll help you when they come. So, and he does. The Spanish wait, Martinez waits, and he bags the British one by one. The first of the, of Mary's associated merchants to the Northwest ship comes the Iphigenia, and she's captained by William Douglas, and Martinez seizes her. But then Douglas pleads, oh, I'm only here. I'm not here to trade. Really, I'm not. Oh, my ship, my crew is so sick. My ship seems they need cocked after this long, hard voyage from Canton. Please help me. And then Martinez looks at the papers again, okay, they're off. Okay, get out of here. So then, so then come more ships. First, the Northwest America, she's just a small trading vessel, coastal trading vessel that Mary's had built and actually had shipped the parts and had built. The Chinese helped built her out there, and he seizes her, takes her, and renames her as a Spanish ship. Then along comes another ship, two ships actually, the Princess Royal and the Argonaut captain by James Colnett. And after a great deal of heated argument, particularly between Martinez and James Colnett, both of who are horse captains, both of who are high-handed, both of who are super patriots with the result that Martinez seizes those ships and prisons the captain and crew and he moves them back down to Spanish territories and some blasts. But unfortunately, he was a little bit too harsh because once he got them down into Spanish territory, eight of the sailors died because they'd been confined, it was too hot, they had not enough sufficient food and mosquitoes were terrible. After this, they relent a little bit, the British get better treatment. But in the meantime, word goes back to Spain. Obviously, the viceroy is going to let King Carlos and his very able Foreign Minister, Flor de Blanca, who he inherited from his father, know about what's going on out here. So by the time Transatlantic, you know, the trade and everything, getting the ships there, in January, finally of 1789, the incident of the Spanish, the English ships were seized there in July of 1789. Now, by January 1790, Count Flor de Blanca informs the British under Mr. Pitt and his cabinet that, you know, you have insulted the Spanish flag. You are trading, you have built a establishment on our territory. We will not have this. Initially, William Pitt lets his Foreign Minister, the Duke of Leeds, handle it. The Duke is very high-handed too, you know, off with her heads, type thing. So Pitt takes in, he steps in, and from then on, he handles the negotiation with Spain. He looks into it, he's very careful about looking into things because he wants to know, well, exactly what is, we're getting reports, there's a ship been seized, Englishmen have been brutally abused, and all we've been doing is trading piece of legal, what can you put, say. So in the meantime, Mr. Meary's comes back, he sails back to England, and he serves to inflame the situation more. Mr. Meary's is a very exaggerated teller of tales. He's the kind of man you never want to buy a used car for. So he goes back there, but Pitt gives him an edge, and yet it also makes him have to tread sort of the tightrope. What Pitt does is that he's going to demand from Spain, we want the right to trade out there. At the same time, England was also negotiating a treaty with Spain that she would get, give her access to her manufactured goods in Spanish ports in South America. So Pitt's not really interested in war. Carlos, you know, he's got something to get, they're not really interested in war, but they have to support, you know, they have to protect their interest. So what Mr. Pitt decides, and what Carlos decides, we're going to send the fleets to sea. Carlos, by the way, his father had been building up the Spanish fleet as well. They have about a capability of 64 ships of the line, Spain does. But England has been building up too, and Carlos is not full enough, he knows Spain alone cannot stand against England. So both countries now they're going to show a force. A fleet of 29 ships of the war is sent out under Admiral Lord Howe to cruise off Ushant. The Spanish fleet, 31 ships of the line is sent out to cruise. Howe has been given the instructions you're not to engage them, please, you know, you don't want war. In the meantime, Howe knows the Spanish fleet is out there somewhere. Remember, there's no radar, no aerial reconnaissance, no GPS, maybe it's just as well, there's no GPS, they've never found themselves anyway. But they're out there. So he sends instructions back to Pitt, you know, what do I do if I find them? Pitt immediately, he greens the cabinet meeting, he said, if you find them engaged, that's all we can do. And the same time, Pitt is also sent another squadron out to back up the existing squadrons, British squadrons on the Leewood Islands and Jamaica. So there's another third British squadron out there. So Spain's got theirs out. In the meantime, Carlos and Florida Bianca are desperately appealing behind the scenes to Louis of France. Remember, they're bound by treaty, they're bound by blood. Louis's a decent guy, even if he's a weakling. Yes, our arming 14 ships of the line secretly will send them to your aid. But Louis has a problem. In 1789, something broke out called the French Revolution. Louis's no longer living in luxury at Versailles in October of 1789. A women, a group of women, a large mob from Paris marched on Versailles and with the help of the National Guard, the French National Guard following and men who came out the next day, they forced the royal family to Paris where they will stay, except for an attempt to flight. So now the National Assembly, which is now the convocation of the French people, and they are taking more on to governing France and giving less to Louis, who before did not challenge Louis's right to conduct foreign relations and our war, and I'll say, hey, wait a minute, you did this behind our backs. We don't like this. We don't like this. We have to think about this. So this leaves, you know, Count Florida Bianca up in the air and then some negotiation and finally the National Assembly say, okay, we will. But in the meantime, Count Florida Bianca, who is definitely not pro-revolution, he is a monarchist of the First Order, has been again secretly dealing with Louis and also publicly informing the French National Assembly that you must treat your king more respectfully and give back to him some of his rights. This doesn't go over well. The French said, no, it's off the board. We're not helping you. So by October of 1790, the Spain knows she's not going to get any help from France. She's done what she could with England, so they come to a gentleman's agreement. 28th of October, 1790, Mr. Fitz Herbert, the representative of His Majesty King George III, meets with Count Florida Bianca in the palace, the Escorial in Madrid, and they signed the First Notka Convention, which is sort of to give each other, you know, take a breather and we'll send out our representatives, naval representatives, naval diplomats to that region, and they'll see, you know, what did Mr. Mary's buy, what didn't he buy from the Indians, how much, you know, and we'll negotiate. So Captain George VanCouver, famous British explorer. Actually, before this was going, this incident occurred, he was scheduled to go out in the discovery on a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Northwest, and that got postponed because of the Spanish armament, Spanish crisis, as they called it back then. So he sent out, again, in the discovery to negotiate with his Spanish counterpart, Captain Bodea Iquodva. Both of these men meet at Lutka. Basically what they do is they agree to disagree too. He said England is saying, Mary's bought several miles of land on this at Lutka. Captain Bodea said, no, no, you bought this much, he bought, and the Indians are saying, you didn't buy anything. So they go back, they send the matter back to Spain. But in the meantime, unlike Colmet and Montinas, these two men get along very well. They entertain each other, board each other's ship, give them supper. Spanish gave the better dinners, by the way, and, you know, all goes well. VanCouver is going to stay out there for another four years. He's going to examine the territory up and down along the coast, even down through California. He's going to finally settle for all time that there is no Northwest passage that way, but he's also going to make a legend of himself. Bodea, other than this, we don't hear much of him. Okay, now there's going to be two more Lutka conventions before it's all over. One in February 12th, 1783, and the final one is in January 11th, 1794. Now, by January of 1794, both Spain and England are allied against France. They're fighting in what is called now the French Revolutionary Wars, which is before Napoleon. So trading out there is not a big deal anymore. So the Spanish send Brigadier General Miguel de Caldo de Alava out, and he sails in the same ship as Lieutenant Thomas Pierce, Royal Marines, who is now the commissioner after VanCouver there. So that's how he gets his credentials, and they sail in the ship. They landed in Utka. The Spanish formally lower the Spanish flag there. The British raise theirs and lower it, because they're just going to both back off. You know, we have the right to trade, but we're just, you know, neither of us are going to stay here. But Lieutenant Pierce gives the flag to the Indian Chief, Makena, and he says, oh, by the way, you raise this any time a British ship comes into port. So now what we have is peaceful resolution. The fleets have gone to sea, but nothing has happened. Thank God we've had some cool heads. We placed the hot heads who started this. And peace has happened. Spain is a sort of a sour note for her. This is a, she had lost the right to complete control of the Falkland Islands 20 years before this. Now she writes, her total grip on the Pacific is faltering. Not only that, her control over the Spanish colonies in South America is going to falter because those ideals of freedom, the America champion, and the French to a lesser degree, they're going to spread. You know, the Spanish colonies are going to say, you know, we don't need to be sending the treasure fleet to Spain every year. Let's keep what we own here. Let's have our own country, be our own countries. And then Spain gets involved, you know, goes from side to side. The following year, 1796, she's now fighting on the side of France against England. But she's going to decline, see her power greatly decline, so much so that Napoleon will come and relocate the Spanish royal family to Paris. England, she's on the rise. She's won the right to trade in the South Pacific, in the Pacific, excuse me, not just the South. She's interested in expanding trade. What's going to happen? Hurt settlements in Canada. Canada is going to go from sea to sea. The United States has established its right to trade there. And the Spanish are fearing that the United States would eventually expand their rights from sea to sea, which they do. And to take, ultimately, it's going to take two more treaties, peaceful acts, to establish who owns what in Pacific Northwest and Canada. They will be the Adams Owners Treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States. And then, again, there will be the Oregon Treaty between the United States and England. And that is how it was settled. And I will leave you with a paraphrase of the words of Barry Go and his distant dominion. The wisdom of having a strong navy, useful alliances, adequate finances, sufficient material and ample manpower, coupled with a droid statesmanship, has again been revealed to the nation, i.e. England. These are necessary factors in securing and maintaining peace. Thank you. Other than the killing of Captain Cook with the Hawaiian islands, any part of the issue of this? The British ships would often winter, not all of them, but some would winter at the Hawaiian islands. Yes, it's a very good point. Thank you. Yeah. Because remember what happened to Mereys? He stayed too long and he got iced in. He can't get out. Who knows? Yes, sir. When did the Russians establish themselves in Alaska? Actually, they started under Peter the Great. That's soon. They started, as I said, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Petrovlovsk, and then they started moving up into the Aleutians in Alaska. That's where Cook found them. Catherine, she was moving. In 1785, she sent an armed Russian expedition under a captain who had served under Cook to the area to see where Russia could further move in. They did a lot of their work secretly. In the end, they surprised both the British and the Spanish at the wide extent of their trade because the treaty between Russia and China forbade Russia from dealing by sea. Russia had to do their trade over land to get to China. The Chinese didn't like it. What year was that? That treaty took place in 1648, I believe. They had been hampered, but they knew how to work around it. Yes, sir. How did Russia, they had to come all the way down to San Francisco from your mouth? The Russians, I don't think the Russians were quite, they were just doing it slowly, bit by bit, slowly and as I said quietly. They didn't want to attract attention to themselves. I don't know whether Russia, I don't know. Maybe had the British not been there, they might have. The Americans not been there, but as I said, we've got other people seeing the potential for trade, for the fur trade and welling in the area and they were moving in. What was the essence of the trade? It was mostly fur otter pelts at this time that they were getting, but they were also trading in bear, wolf, deer, raccoon and fox. As I said, the sea otter pelts were the ones that were the most highly valued. Okay, ask me. You might mention it up, the Russians and how feeding back then they were interested in some of the cities, areas that we care about in today's newspaper. Yes, Catherine was actively pushing into the Crimea, Georgia, the Ukraine, names we've heard of recently, they were doing the same thing back then. 1787, she's at war, second time with the Ottoman Empire. She wants, she's pushing back again and she gets Austria to come in on their side very reluctantly. Any other questions? All right, thank you very much. Thank you.