IT WAS DAYLIGHT on the water when I awakened to a nightmare that was all too real.
A blurred vision on a pounding deck with the briny smell of the salt chuck would have told a blind man I was out to sea. I almost didn’t need to hear the roar of motors or the demonic laugh of the captain to know it was going to be a long day.
As my pounding head rose above the shifting deck, I beheld the low hills and sand bars that answered the basic question of just where the heck I was, Bullfinch Harbor.
It was named by the American Capt. Robert Gray, who sailed in to anchor his ship Columbia on May 7, 1792. Charles Bullfinch was one of the owners of Gray’s ship, the Columbia, that had been sent on a global trade mission to “traffic with the natives of the Northwest Coast.”
It’s not hard to imagine the dangers faced by sailing ships while approaching uncharted coastlines protected by reefs and fog and armored with treacherous rocks, while attempting to trade with the native inhabitants who were known to capture ships and slaughter the crews. With good reason. Capt. Gray once ordered his crew to burn a Haida village said to be a half mile across that contained an estimated 200 houses.
It was all part of the treachery and slaughter of the fur trade, where the luxurious pelt of the sea otter, worth a fortune in China, was traded for a few bits of metal to the Stone Age cultures of the Pacific Northwest.
Known for his reckless bravery and mercurial temper, Capt. Gray was a successful trader who defied the monopoly of the British East Indian Trading Company by taking his furs to China to trade for tea, porcelain and fabrics he would sail back England to trade for industrial goods sold in Boston.
True to his nature, Gray opened fire with a nine-pound cannon on a canoe-load of natives the day after entering the harbor that would eventually bear his name, “killing every soul in her.”
Having worn out their welcome, Grey continued south to discover a great river he named after his ship, the Columbia, which eventually legitimized America’s claim to Oregon.
I had journeyed to Grays Harbor to research a story on shanghaiing, a proud Peninsula pioneer tradition from Port Townsend to Aberdeen.
With the crews jumping ship to live with the Indians every time they got near land, what was a sea captain to do but hire the latest crop of farm boys, loggers or stray fishermen who came to town most any weekend for a spree? Where a doctored drink and a quick trip through a trap door was your invitation to a new career at sea.
It could take years to get home, if you ever did.
I thought the practice of shanghaiing had died out years ago. Not so.
I got into town late. A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malemute Saloon. Someone slipped a mickey in my malted milk and I went to a sleepy place with champagne wishes and Viagra dreams. Only to awaken the next morning on a slow boat to the tuna grounds far out on the graveyard of the Pacific.
We had launched at Westport, a quaint fishing village once known as “The Salmon Fishing Capitol of the World.”
Where every summer albacore tuna approach our coast offering what is, on any given day, the fishing trip of a lifetime.
I faced the dawn with a wild joy on my heart strings.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
