Talk:Kingfisher (sloop)

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Reference texts

This is the short bit from the Tacoma Public Library reference:

The trading sloop Kingfisher of Victoria was seized by the Indians near Clayoquot Sound, and Captain Stephenson and three of the crew were murdered by the savages. When the news of the massacre reached Victoria H. B. M. ship Sutlej was dispatched to the scene of the outrage and on arrival shelled the village and captured the murderers. E. W. Wright, The Oregon Steam Navigation Company's Best Days, Many New Steamers in Puget Sound Waters, Lewis & Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. New York: Antiquarian Press, Ltd., 1961., p.130.

And this is the oddly politically-incorrect - rfor a government site - Canadian Military Heritage text:

Various similar incidents occurred over the following years. In 1863, for example, a ship's boy was killed on board the HMS Forward during an exchange of gunfire. But there was a major incident in August 1864, when Amerindian pirates boarded a small merchant vessel, the Kingfisher, killing its crew and then pillaging and setting fire to the ship. In view of the seriousness of what they had done, the governor asked the Royal Navy to intervene. But when the HMS Devastation, a small six-cannon steamship, arrived in the vicinity, it found hundreds of armed Natives and decided to wait for reinforcements in Clayoquot Sound, approximately 50 kilometres south of Nootka. On the evening of October 2 the screw frigate HMS Sutlej arrived, captained by Admiral Joseph Denman, commander of the Pacific Squadron and a veteran hunter of slave boats and pirates off the African coasts. The next day the two warships arrived at the village of Marktosis looking for Chapchah, the purported leader of the pirates. But the area had been abandoned and the pirates had taken refuge nearby.

The HMS Devastation then went to the village of Moyat, where the Amerindians immediately opened fire, forcing the ship to move out of range. The HMS Sutlej arrived in support, and Denman informed the opponents that he would not shell them if the guilty parties were turned over to him. They cavalierly refused, adding that if Moyat was burned not a single seaman who dared to set foot on land would be spared. The Sutlej opened fire in response, and row-boats that kept well away from the ship launched incendiary rockets while others bearing armed seamen approached the shore. They were welcomed by Amerindian fire, but this was rendered powerless by a few well-aimed British salvos. The seamen disembarked, with fixed bayonets, and found the lifeboats of the unfortunate Kingfisher. They burned the place down. In the days that followed, eight other villages were destroyed, with the Amerindians offering only token resistance. Although he was unable to capture Chapchah, Admiral Denman considered the operation a complete success. Not a single British seaman had been killed or injured, whereas the Natives had lost approximately 15 men and had been given a severe warning.

Other incidents would occur, but this swift justice at the muzzle of a cannon discouraged the Amerindians from continuing with their piracy and slavery and they abandoned these practices once and for all in the 1880s.

I guess I'm just too lazy to write this up in any more detail, but I've been looking through Scholefield & Howay to try and find the bits on teh Sutlje there, and also in J.B. Kerr, but just haven't had the time. ie.. to find more BCV-written sources than the Ottawa and Tacoma ones used so far.Skookum1 (talk) 20:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

History cats

As with re-placing Category:History of British Columbia on Koyah, i.e. First Nations history is not exclusionary of non-First Nations history, the same is true of Vancouver Island vs British Columbia...though, granted, this article doesn't (yet) say anything about the Kingfisher's presence/activities on the North Coast, which I seem to recall in connection with one of the Tomlinson cites or research done while looking them up (see Alice Arm). Care has to be taken while refining cats, and sometimes a parallel Vancouver Island/British Columbia cat is needed; as in here, where certain events are decidedly Vancouver Island history, and decidedly Nuu-chah-nulth history while at teh same time "white man history"; but the ship played a role in the North Coast, also; I'll see what I can dig up re the Kingfisher and points north....it's rather like steamboats that belong on {{Steamboats of the Columbia River}} and {{Mosquito Fleet}} vs eventual {{Steamboats of the Lower Fraser and Strait of Georgia}} and {{Vessels of the Inside Passage}}, and any respective categories associated with those; there's lots of overlap...anyway I'll see what else there is on the Kingfisher....Skookum1 (talk) 23:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]