George Vancouver · 1798 · sea

Vancouver's account of the 1791 to 1795 survey, edited by his brother and published six weeks after his death. Four and a half years and sixty-five thousand miles, most of the useful work done in open boats - and a chart of the northwest coast so accurate the Navy was still using it in 1900.

1. 1
   Falmouth

   April 1791, and the Discovery and Chatham sail on a survey that will take four and a half years - Vancouver having served under Cook on two voyages and learned the trade from the man who invented it.

2. 2
   Cape Town

   Refitting at the Cape before the long run east - and the first of the disciplinary troubles with Thomas Pitt, a well-connected midshipman Vancouver would flog and send home, and who would horsewhip him for it in a London street.

3. 3
   King George Sound

   South-western Australia, surveyed and named on the way past - one of the incidental pieces of coast this expedition charted simply because it happened to be there.

4. 4
   Dusky Sound

   New Zealand's south-west fiords, where Cook had wintered - and where Vancouver finishes the chart Cook left incomplete, which is a fair description of the whole voyage.

5. 5
   Tahiti

   Provisioning in the Society Islands, and the standard eighteenth-century difficulty of keeping a crew who have seen Tahiti interested in surveying anywhere else.

6. 6
   Kealakekua

   Hawaii, and three winters spent there between survey seasons - the bay where Cook had been killed thirteen years earlier, and where Vancouver negotiated the cession of the island to Britain.

7. 7
   Cape Disappointment

   The Columbia mouth, which Vancouver sailed past without identifying - the one significant thing he missed, and the one his critics have never let go of.

8. 8
   Puget Sound

   The inland sea surveyed in open boats through the summer of 1792, every inlet followed to its head - and named for a lieutenant, as were Whidbey, Baker, Rainier, Hood and half the map of Washington State.

9. 9
   Nootka Sound

   Vancouver Island, and the meeting with Bodega y Quadra to settle the Spanish claim - the two men getting on so well that they could not agree on anything, and named the island jointly instead.

10. 10
    Southeast Alaska

    Three seasons of boat work through the Alexander Archipelago, proving there was no Northwest Passage from this side - a negative result obtained at a cost of ten thousand miles rowed.

11. 11
    Valparaiso

    South for the Horn, and a month in Chile - the survey finished, the crews worn out, and Vancouver already ill with the condition that would kill him at forty.

12. 12
    St Helena

    The Atlantic run home, and a last landfall - the charts aboard being the most accurate of any coast in the world, and remaining in use by the Royal Navy for the next hundred years.

13. 13
    London

    October 1795. Vancouver dies three years later at forty, six weeks before his brother finishes editing the account - and is buried at Petersham under a stone that took a century to be looked after.