HMS Discovery

She was a surprisingly small ship, only 29 metres long and 337 tons, but size could be dangerous in survey work on a complicated coastline. Rated as a sloop, the Discovery, was ship-rigged on Vancouver’s voyage. Her complement was 100, plus sundry supernumeraries; with the crew crammed into her small hull for four years, it is not surprising that problems of discipline and morale sometimes arose.

Outfitting at Deptford was well advanced when it was interrupted in April 1790 by the Nootka Sound crisis. Spain had seized British ships at Nootka in 1789, and when full details were known in London war with Spain became probable. The crisis lasted until late October; in the interval the Discovery served as a receiving ship for newly enlisted seamen.

The Nootka crisis sharpened the focus of her mission, which now centered on the Northwest Coast of America, the area that had been in contention with Spain. Vancouver was to endeavor to arrive at a diplomatic settlement with a Spanish emissary at Nootka, after which he was to survey the coast from 30° to 60° north latitude from southern California to Cook Inlet, in Alaska. Incidentally he was to keep a sharp outlook for any inlet that might lead to the fabled Northwest Passage. The Discovery and her smaller companion, the armed tender Chatham, sailed from Falmouth on April 1, 1791, and reached the California coast, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii, a year later. They entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca on April 30, 1792.

Three summers were devoted to the coastal survey; the intervening winters were spent in the kinder climate of Hawaii. The survey one of the most remarkable of its kind ended in August 1794 at a harbor on Baranof Island to which Vancouver gave the appropriate name of Port Conclusion. The long homeward passage was made by way of Valparaiso, Cape Horn and St. Helena. After a call at the Shannon, in Ireland, the Discovery returned to the Thames in October 1795. The distance she had traveled since she left England in 1791 has been estimated at 105,000 kilometres.

Until early in 1798 she lay idle at Deptford. She was then moved to the yard that had built her for conversion into a bomb ship, which meant that the light armament she had carried for surveying was replaced with heavier guns. Her only moment of military glory came in April 1801, when she was part of the force under Nelson that attacked Copenhagen. Thereafter she was laid up much of the time, and she was finally paid off at Sheerness in December 1805. In 1808 the dockyard there reduced her to the lowly service of a convict hulk. In this capacity she served for 10 years at Sheerness and a further 15 years at Woolwich. Thence she was moved once more to Deptford, where she was broken up. Demolition was completed in February 1834.

The only contemporary depiction of the Discovery as Vancouver knew her appears to be the line engraving in Vancouver’s Voyage of Discovery, after a sketch by Zachary Mudge, one of her midshipmen. This shows her ashore on a reef in Queen Charlotte Strait, in August 1792. An etching by E. W. Cooke shows her as a convict hulk.

(There is an excellent scale model of Discovery in the Hotel Vancouver.)