Colonial Despatches

Captain Robert Gray, an American trader, commanded the Lady Washington on John Kendrick’s 1787 trade expedition to the Pacific Northwest. On this voyage, Gray sailed up the coast from Juan de Fuca Strait to Bucarelli Bay, Alaska, and proved that the Queen Charlotte Islands were insular.1

Though the voyage was not a financial success, Gray’s sloop, the Lady Washington, became the first flagged American ship to circumnavigate the globe, on August 9, 1789, when Gray arrived back in Boston, after delivering his cargo of furs in China.2

• 1. W. Kaye Lamb, Gray, Robert, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
• 2. Ibid.