Colonial Despatches

The bark Columbia was an HBC ship of 315 tonnes, 6 guns, and 24 crew.1 It has the distinction of being one of the first few ships to enter Victoria Harbour direct from England, the first was the Vancouver in 1845.2

An 1856 despatch notes that the Columbia arrived in Victoria, from San Francisco, with reinforcements of Troops with munitions of War, in answer, presumably, to ongoing conflicts with Indigenous groups.

The Columbia was built by Messrs Green Wigram & Green and launched in 1835.3 In 1835 it served as escort to another famous West Coast ship, the Beaver, on its journey to the coast.4 the HBC sold this well-travelled ship in 1850.5

• 1. Alexander Begg, History of British Columbia (Toronto: William Briggs, 1894), 139.
• 2. Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft: History of British Columbia 1792-1887, vol. 32 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1887), 120.
• 3. Judith Hudson Beattie and Helen M. Buss, eds., Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003), 409.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.