Colonial Despatches

James Johnstone, after whom Vancouver named Johnstone Strait, undertook the first survey of the strait which would later bear his name.1

Johnstone’s fist naval post was on the Kepel, but he later served on a merchantman, the Prince of Whales, upon which he sailed to the Pacific Coast from 1786 to 1789. Johstone’s previous knowledge of the area likely factored into Vancouver’s decision to appoint him master of the Chatham on Vancouver’s expedition that arrived on the Pacific Coast in 1792.2

Johnstone would eventually become commander of the Chatham in 1802, and post captain in 1806.3 Johnstone also took part in the 1810 capture of Mauritius, before he served as the Royal Navy commissioner at Bombay from 1811 to 1817. Johnstone died in Paris in 1823.4

• 1. John T. Walbran, British Columbia Coast Names (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1971), 271.
• 2. Ibid., 271-272.
• 3. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Placenames (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 294.
• 4. Ibid., 293.