Captain George Vancouver in Alaska and the North Pacific

Two of the Northwest Coast's largest cities and its most prominent island are named after the British explorer, George Vancouver, who is largely unknown despite his unprecedented five-year voyage during 1791-95, probably the longest voyage in European history. Sailing in the wake of his mentor, Captain James Cook, Vancouver investigated much of the North Pacific, confirming once and for all that the rumored Northwest Passage did not exist. His extraordinary expedition was the first to map Puget Sound and named nearly four hundred geographic features from Alaska's Cook Inlet to coastal Oregon. He named Point Campbell, Point MacKenzie and Point Woronzof in Anchorage, as well as Knight and LaTouche Islands, Passage Canal and Wells Passage in Prince William Sound. In Southeast Alaska he specified Lynn Canal, Admiralty and Douglas Islands, Berners Bay and Revillagigedo Island. In the Pacific Northwest he named Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, Port Townsend, Bellingham Bay, Whidbey and Vashon Islands. In British Columbia, he titled Georgia Strait, Burrard Inlet, Point Grey, Seymour Narrows, Johnstone Strait and Portland Canal, as well as countless features surrounding the prominent island that now bears his name. Vancouver narrated the early history of Spanish California and feudal Hawai'i, offering extensive first-hand reports on the missions and presidios in California and Kamehameha's conquest of the Hawaiian Islands, an indispensable record of the earliest European voyages and the later conquest of the west coast of North America.