Colonial Despatches

Port San Juan is located on the west side of Vancouver Island, southeast of Nitinat Lake, and north of the Juan de Fuca Strait. In 1789, Spanish explorer José María Narváez visited the port on the feast day of John the Baptist, giving Port San Juan its name.1 Early fur traders knew it as Poverty Bay, but Captain George Vancouver adopted Port San Juan over the English name on his chart.2

In this despatch, Douglas lists desirable anchorages for ships in distress; he notes that Port San Juan is a spacious bay with a very convenient depth of water well sheltered from all but SW winds, which would send a swell into it, and adds that ships with good ground tackle would ride out in safety almost any gale, and vessels of moderate size might even find shelter from these winds.

• 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Placenames (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 473-474.
• 2. Ibid.