columbiaColumbia, 1835
The bark columbiaColumbia 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_shipVancouver in 1845.2
An 1856 despatch notes that the columbiaColumbia arrived in Victoria, from San Francisco, with reinforcements of Troops with munitions of War,
in answer, presumably, to ongoing conflicts with Indigenous groups.
The columbiaColumbia 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.
Mentions of this vessel in the documents
-
Shepherd, Captain, HBC Governor John to Lytton, Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer 24
June 1858, CO 6:26, no. 6090, 436.
-
Douglas, Sir James to Molesworth, Sir William 13 December 1855, CO 305:6, no. 1481,
187.