Colonial Despatches

Puget Sound, now part of the Salish Sea, is a body of water on the west coast of North America. Puget Sound flows between the Olympic Peninsula and mainland Washington State. The cities of Seattle and Tacoma look out onto this estuary-riddled stretch of water, which was named in 1792 by Captain Vancouver after his 2nd Lieutenant on the Discovery, Peter Puget.1

In the mid-1800s, Puget Sound was part of the HBC's administrative and trade link between Fort Vancouver, on the banks of the Columbia River in the south, and Fort Victoria, on Vancouver Island in the north; it was part of the territory ceded to the United States by Britain following the Oregon Treaty of 1846.2

• 1. John T. Walbran, British Columbia Coast Names (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1971), 404.
• 2. Arthur S. Morton, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1939), 730-732.