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John Meares, sea captain, entrepreneur, fur trader (born 1756; died 1809). He entered the Royal Navy in 1771 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1778. After leaving the navy in 1783, Meares formed a company that traded furs on the Northwest Coast.
Voyages
John Meares’ first trading voyage, to Prince William's Sound, Alaska, was tragic, as many sailors died from scurvy.
In 1788, Meares sailed with two ships to Nootka Sound, where he built a trading post to trade otter pelts with China. During this 1788 voyage to Nootka Sound in Nuu-chah-nulth territory, John Meares brought along around 50 Chinese artisans to build the trading post and the North West America, the first non-Indigenous ship built and launched in the Pacific Northwest. These artisans are the first documented Chinese people in Canada (see Chinese Canadians).
In 1789, Meares formed a company with other British entrepreneurs and sent three ships to build a permanent trading post at Nootka Sound and to trade widely on the Northwest coast. They found Nootka Sound occupied by a Spanish naval force which had seized the British ships and crews, an event referred to as the Nootka Sound Controversy. Spain was unable to uphold claims to that area without French support. The Nootka Convention (1790) resolved the British-Spanish dispute. However, it did not recognize any Nuu-chah-nulth claims to the territory they had inhabited for thousands of years.
John Meares was an effective propagandist who promoted British political and economic interests on the Northwest Coast.
