Military Mapmakers
This British naval officer probably named more coastal geographical features in British Columbia than anyone. Who was he? For the answer read on.—Wikipedia
Up until recent years, Penelakut Island, east of Chemainus and midway between Saltair and Ladysmith, was known as Kuper Island. It was originally named, as were 100s of other B.C. geographical place names, after a British naval officer.
In this case that officer was Admiral Sir August Leopold Kuper, Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (GCB) of the Royal Navy. Illustrious, indeed, but no more.
Today, it’s easy to criticize the British naval cartographers from Captain Vancouver on down for having supplanted geographical names that had long been used by the Indigenous peoples of the coast. Most of these topographical features took their cues from a specific feature’s physicality.
Not so their British usurpers which range from royalty to peers to politicians to actresses to family members and friends, even race horses. Anything, it seems, to fill the charts of British Columbia’s lengthy and indented coastline.
We’re talking 1000s of features and 1000s of names. (Try it sometime.)
And they didn’t do this while sitting behind a desk. They actually sailed and charted our indented coastlines while enduring chronic physical discomfort and mental duress at the expense of their health—and almost always at personal risk—every foot of the coastline they drew on paper. Professional mariners and recreational boaters today entrust their lives to Admiralty charts that are known to be as accurate in this age of satellite navigation as when they were drawn in that age of wooden ships and iron men!
So, when reading about Penelakut/Kuper Island, it struck me to look at some of the names on our maps that most of us likely take at face value without giving any thought as to their origins. In other words, the stories behind the who and the why.
Some, however, should leap to mind, Vancouver and Vancouver Island being at the forefront. They are, in fact, everywhere.
Just look at a Victoria road map: besides Quadra Street (named for the noble Spanish naval officer) there are Herald, Broughton, Courtney, Chatham, Fisgard, Amphion, Belcher, Collinson, Cook, Cormorant, Discovery, Jutland and so on. (I’m mixing ships and seamen here.)
Provincially, we have Burrard and Jervis Inlets, Port Hardy, Robson Bight, Pender Harbour, Osborne Bay, Seymour Narrows, Bligh Island, Mount Richards...to cite but a few geographical features named for naval officers.
Obviously, with so many names to deal with, I can’t possibly hope to do more than provide the broadest of overviews; even to shortlist them is a challenge. As recommended reading for those who like their history in greater depth, try Capt. John T. Walbran’s classic British Columbia Coast Names: Their Origin and History 1592-1906.
So, today, let’s look at just a few noteworthy geographical features and their namesakes in some detail. There’s a story, often a fascinating story, behind each one of them...
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Let’s begin with one that’s all but unknown, geographically and otherwise, Dickens Point in the Portland Canal area of northwestern B.C.
Poor Sidney was no chip off the old block.
From the man who brought us those memorable eccentrics Copperfield, Twist, Pickwick and company, there came to Victoria a century and some ago, the stocky figure in flesh and in fact, of S/Lieut. Sidney Smith Haldemand Dickens, RN.
For those unfamiliar with the literary classics, this junior officer of Her Majesty’s Navy was the son of the most successful novelist of his day, Charles Dickens. Or, as this rather hapless young man became known, ever so briefly to earlyday Victorians, “Vindicator.”
The tragic Sidney Haldemand Dickens, RN. —Wikipedia
He arrived on the Pacific Station in HMS Pylades in the summer of 1868, and was soon transferred to Rear Admiral Hastings’s flagship, Zealous. Certainly it wasn’t his youth or brief naval experience that caught the Commander-in-Chief’s eye, but the fact he was the celebrated writer’s youngest son.
Dickens’ tour of duty in these waters was unremarkable.
Ashore, he made favourable mention in the Victoria Colonist for his role in an amateur play, ‘The Steeple Chase.’ When, in due course he attained full lieutenancy, he was assigned to HMS Narcissus, Admiral Seymour’s flagship.
We’re indebted once again to journalist D.W. Higgins for the real story behind Dickens’s time on the Pacific Station. It began on a beautiful spring morning in April ‘68 as Higgins was walking to the post office. As he strolled along, he saw a young naval officer attempting to drag a drunken sailor, sprawled unconscious in the middle of the road, from the path of oncoming traffic. Higgins helped him in this unceremonious act of mercy, and when they exchanged cards, the journalist read: ‘Sidney Dickens, HMS Scout’. (Obviously an old card).
Further introductions elicited Dickens’ illustrious progeny and they became fast friends. Higgins was then preparing to leave for the eastern U.S. on business and, quite coincidentally, he intended to hear Dickens Sr. lecture during the novelist’s highly publicized American tour. Sidney gave him a letter of introduction, that Higgins might meet his idol personally. But Higgins didn’t reach the Atlantic Seaboard until after Dickens had had to cancel his tour because of illness and he returned, disappointed, to Victoria after an absence of six months.
By this time his friend Sidney had been promoted to full lieutenant amid rumours hinting that his fortune of birth hadn’t hindered his rise in rank.
They met often after this, being among the regular guests of Admiral and Mrs. Hastings at Hazelhurst House. This exalted company proved to be Dickens’ undoing when, irked by an unflattering editorial in a New Westminster newspaper, Admiral Hastings instructed him to reply in the local press under the pseudonym, “Vindicator.”
Alas, it immediately became apparent that Lieut. Dickens hadn’t inherited his father’s prowess with a pen and the intended series of rebuttals died in infancy when the artful mainland journalist shredded his arguments. To the admiral’s astonishment and disgust, the hoped-for editorial broadside was a dud.
Poor Sidney’s fall from grace became complete the day he squired three young ladies on horseback to nearby Millstream, and lost the way. The ladies stoutly attested to his gallantry under fire, while demurring from further invitations to enjoy the great outdoors.
Upon transfer, the “rather insignificant” figure of Lieut. Dickens was seen no more in Victoria. Three years later, en route home after having been invalided in India, he died at Aden, aged 25, and, half a world away, D.W. Higgins mourned the friend who’d been taken “with the flowers of youth and opportunity blossoming about him in the May of his existence”.
Someone else had remembered him, too: Cmdr. Daniel Pender, while surveying Portland Canal in B.C.’s northwestern corner, christened Dickens Point. He must have attended ‘The Steeple Chase’ as, nearby, is Stopford Point, named after a fellow officer and amateur actor who had accompanied Dickens during his Victoria stage performance.
Officer, Gentleman, Sportsman
Although he’s been all but forgotten, Capt. the Hon. John Gordon cost Canadians dearly—all of Washington and Oregon, if some historians are to be believed.
Proving, as history has so often, that a little ignorance goes a long way.
Brother of George, Earl of Aberdeen and British Foreign Secretary (later prime minister, 1852-55), Gordon arrived on the Pacific Coast in command of the 50-gun HMS America in 1845. This was the time of American President James K. Polk’s proclaimed “Fifty-four Forty or Fight”—the expression of American territorial ambitions that had won him election the previous year.
U.S. President James K. Polk is best remembered for his aggressive expansionist policy of Manifest Destiny and the motto from his 1844 presidential campaign, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" which supposedly won him the election. —Wikipedia.org
Simply put, the U.S. claimed all lands situated between California (which it would seize from Mexico) and Russian America (Alaska).
The Americans weren’t altogether greedy: 54 degrees latitude would leave us all of B.C. north of Prince George.
n between, of course, lay Oregon Territory which encompassed much of the modern-day state and Washington, not to mention most of British Columbia. All this was, and long had been, Hudson’s Bay Co. domain. But the HBCo. was interested in furs; Americans wanted land and they flooded into the fertile Columbia River Basin.
The British Empire—”the sun never sets...”—was at its height, the United States a struggling upstart. But the disputed territory was a private commercial fiefdom by royal charter; as yet its only proven value was its fur trade, there being no suspicion of incredible mineral wealth, and what would become a world-famous lumber industry was a quarter of a century in the future. Should Great Britain go to war over this unknown wilderness? If not—where to draw the line?
Enter the Hon. John Gordon, RN.
His first duty was to show the flag, using his warship to demonstrate that his government meant to oppose further encroachments on British turf. So far so good. Gordon, who had also been ordered to report on the Columbia and Williamette River settlements, passed the buck to Lieut. William Peel.
No less than the son of the prime minister, and an able officer, he wrote two reports. The second, addressed to Richard Pakenham, then deep in negotiations with U.S. officials, stated that Vancouver Island must be kept even if, as Washington was suggesting, they set the 49th parallel as the demarcation line. Perhaps more importantly, Peel acknowledged that the westward tide of American settlement couldn’t be stopped.
The bottom line, of course, is that Great Britain blinked; the boundary, other than for the San Juan Islands, was more or less set as we know it today. Peel’s assessment that American expansion was irreversible is thought to have influenced his government’s apparent surrender.
So, what of Capt. Gordon’s role in all this? Well, he, too, had had something to say to his brother, the Foreign Secretary, of this part of the world: He hated it!
Not “one acre of the barren hills of Scotland” would he trade for “all he saw around him.” He was referring to Fort Victoria, future provincial capital and City of Gardens!
There was more. According to his host, HBCo. trader Roderick Finlayson, Gordon didn’t like our hunting or fishing either. He’d eagerly accepted Finlayson’s invitation to hunt deer, but their initial advantage of being on horseback proved to be their undoing when their quarry took shelter in a thicket. Gordon, sportsman that he was, to quote his host, was “much annoyed.”
He tried fishing. When Finlayson saw him preparing trout flies, he explained that Pacific Coast salmon wouldn’t respond to these, and baited his hooks for him. Gordon returned with several fine fish and a disdainful, “What a country, where the salmon will not take the fly!”
Obviously there was no pleasing Capt. John Gordon, RN.
Some historians have speculated that his negative views played a small part in influencing London’s decision to cede not only Oregon Territory but, years after, to make only a half-hearted effort to keep the San Juan Islands.
It was lucky for Gordon that the “Oregon” crisis was resolved peacefully; for removing his ship from its station against orders, he faced court martial and, “severely reprimanded,” he chose early retirement.
Had there been a state of war he’d have been shot. Pity!
Victoria’s (Saanich’s) tony Gordon Head area bears the shame of his name and legacy today.
Lieut.-Cmdr. The Hon. Horace Douglas Lascelles, RN
No fewer than 14 Vancouver Island geographical features owe their origin to the seventh son of the third Earl of Harewood. With a handle like that, it’s not surprising that mapmakers have broken it down into its components.
Nanaimo’s Harewood District, Plains and Lake honour his family title and estate, Kelsey Bay area’s Mount Harewood, his father. Also found there, in recognition of his surname, is Mount Lascelles. Queen Charlotte Sound is home to Lascelles Point. Douglas Bay (also off Kelsey Bay) recognizes his middle name.
Then there’s Thynne Peninsula, Forward Harbour (named for his ship) and in memory of his mother, Louisa, Countess of Harewood. We won’t go into those features named after his brother and four sisters.
Lieut. Harewood arrived at Esquimalt as first officer of HMS Topaze in 1860, being promoted to the command of the gunboat Forward the following year. His three and a-half years in this capacity are among the more exciting in provincial history, it being the Forward’s primary duty to act, not as a man-of-war, but as a policeman, ‘revenooer’ and coast guard cutter for the length of the B.C. coast.
She frequently risked uncharted waters and storms to aid distressed mariners. Once, she was so long on lifesaving patrol that she and her company were given up for lost.
In short, Lieut. Lascelles earned his fellow mariners’ and, later, mapmakers’ respect.
The usual studio-staged portrait shows him in civvies, derby hat in the crook of his arm, Prince Albert jacket and vest—the picture of sartorial splendour, confidence and money. His dark wavy hair parted in the middle, atop a bushy fringe-beard, and eyes looking straight into the camera show a man comfortable with himself and with his position in life. As indeed he should’ve been as an officer and gentleman of means.
His association with Nanaimo began in 1863 when his friend, Dr. Alfred Benson, acquired 3000 acres in the Chase River Valley for coal mining development. Benson didn’t have the necessary funding but Lascelles did, his family having made its fortune in the West Indies sugar trade. With an initial development of $30,000 (a considerable sum) the Harewood Coal Co. was born.
Under the forceful direction of its new manager, an ambitious young Robert Dunsmuir, a small crew exposed a six-foot-wide seam, samples from which were tested in Victoria and said to be of good quality. Alas, to export coal to world markets required a tidewater terminal, in this case Departure Bay, and a railway across the competing Vancouver Coal Co.’s lands.
Legal, legislative and financial blows doomed the young company. Dunsmuir, soon to strike out on his own and build a coal mining empire, quit.
Lascelles’s most exciting experience on this coast occurred in 1863 when members of the ‘Lamalchi’ (Hwlitzum) tribe who were suspected of murdering several whites retreated to their fortified village on Kuper Island. With police and marines aboard, HMS Forward anchored offshore and demanded that those responsible be given up. The Lamalchis responded with a volley of musket fire. For 90 minutes Lascelles poured 100s of rounds of solid shot, shell, grapeshot and musket fire into their camp until a seaman was killed and he withdrew. When the Lamalchis abandoned their village, Lascelles ordered that it be burned the next day.
The Victoria Evening Express ridiculed HMS Forward’s (Lascelles’s) role in the expedition. The ship’s company took offence, lured Charles William Allen, one of the newspaper’s publishers aboard the gunboat then began to steam out of Victoria Harbour.
Panicking, the shanghaied journalist leaped over the side; he’d almost drowned by the time seamen could lower a boat and retrieve him. He was put ashore, the worse for wear, two miles from town.
The vengeful scribe sued Lascelles for false imprisonment. He settled the affair out of court with what’s believed to have been a sizable cheque.
With his increasing involvement in the Harewood Coal Co., Lascelles returned to the Old Country and retired from the navy. Back on the Island, he settled in Victoria and invested in real estate. He was only 34 when he died, apparently of dropsy, on June 15, 1869. He’s buried in Esquimalt’s naval cemetery beneath an imposing marker of red granite.
The colourful Lascelles takes his eternal rest in the Esquimalt Veterans’ Cemetery. —Commonwealth War Graves Commission photo.
Admiral Sir George Henry Richards, KCB, FRS
(That’s his portrait at the beginning of this post, by the way.)
It’s ironic, really. He probably named as many B.C. geographical features as any other single man in history. Everywhere you look on coastal maps, Richards has been there before you in his official capacity as marine surveyor and hydrographer.
He christened so many landmarks after friends and fellow RN officers that a modern historian has accused him of currying the favour of his superiors. An unkind and unfair assessment: Richards merely followed precedent and the line of least resistance. His duty called for him to designate every unmarked marine landlocked feature he encountered.
What was needed was dedication not imagination.
All this, of course, was a century-plus ago: Richards’s assignment was immense, existing charts almost bare.
For his efforts as a naval officer and hydrographer he earned a knighthood and promotion to admiral. Provincial posterity has not been as kind to him. Mount Richards, just east of the Island Highway at Westholme, midway between Duncan and Chemainus, is a lowly lump amid equally nondescript neighbours—hardly a landmark worthy of a Richards. Perhaps when Capt. J.F. Parry recognized him as a professional courtesy in 1905 he felt he had little to choose from.
Assigned to HMS Sulphur in 1835, 15-year-old Richards’s Pacific surveys duties were interrupted by two year of warfare in China. In 1845-46, while surveying the southeast coast of South America, his ship, Philomel, participated in English and French operations against “the tyrant of Buenes Aires,” Juan Manuel Rosas.
For “gallantry in storming the forts in the river Parana,” he was promoted to commander while still in his 20s.
For five years he surveyed the New Zealand coastlne. This balmy stretch of duty ended with his posting to HMS Assistance, Capt. Sir Edward Belcher commanding. Their assignment: find the lost Sir john Franklin expedition. From ‘Down Under’ to frigid Arctic Ocean at the stroke of an Admiralty pen!
But George Richards was up to the challenge as he proved.
It’s difficult for us to grasp the magnitude of the Franklin disaster, the disappearance in 1845 of the naval ships Erebus and Terror, and 100 officers and crew, who sailed from England to find the Northwest Passage. They were never seen alive again; it was as though they had sailed off the edge of the earth or vanished into outer space, so completely did the Arctic guard its secret.
An artist’s depiction of the last stages of the tragic Franklin expedition. —Pinterest.com
There was no word of trouble, no ships’ wreckage, no bodies. Nothing!
For 12 years expedition after expedition, official and private, searched the Canadian Arctic, “grop[ing] hither and yon...by ship, by boat, or dragging their supplies on sledges around the hummocks of frozen straits...” They did all this without prior Arctic experience, without charts, without proper clothing, the right equipment or food.
Among them was the future B.C. mapmaker for whom icebound Cape George Richards is named. Like Westholme’s Mount Richards, it’s a modes tribute to the man who “made one of the most extraordinary sledging journeys on record”. A grateful government promoted him to captain upon his return to civilization in 1854.
Richards almost returned to the Arctic as commander-in-chief of a privately-funded research expedition—the one that’s credited with finally solving the Franklin puzzle—but he was unavailable, having been posted as chief astronomer and surveyor to the Northwest Boundary Commission.
For six years as he helped to define the boundary between B.C. and Washington, in command of Her Majesty’s ships Plumper and Hecate, he explored, surveyed and named coastal geographical features above and below the shoreline.
In 1861 Lady Jane Franklin, widow of the lost explorer, visited B.C. with her niece, Sophia Cracroft. One of their primary reasons for calling at out-of-the-way Victoria was to see Capt. George Richards who’d been Mrs. Franklin’s first choice to lead the latest search and to whom both women felt a personal sense of debt for his efforts as an officer of the Belcher expedition.
In 1863 Richards returned to England where he was appointed Chief Hydrographer. Upon his death in 1900, aged 80, he’d been made a full admiral, Fellow of the Royal Society and knighted.
For having resisted all temptation to name a single B.C. geographical feature after himself, he’s been paid the highest compliment by historians: “an English gentleman.”
Port Hardy area’s Richards Channel also honours this remarkable pioneer.
Which brings us back to Admiral Sir August Leopold Kuper, GCB and former namesake of today’s Penelakut Island.
Neighbouring Thetis Island honours the ship he commanded while conducting surveys along the B.C. coast, 1851-53. This was but a moment of his lengthy and distinguished career as a seagoing warrior that was served mostly in Chinese and Japanese waters.
He’s still on the map, however, at Port and Cape Kuper, Haida Gwai.
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There you have it for today: just four of the British naval officers who (with the possible exception of Capt. Gordon) earned their right to have their names grace our maps and charts.
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