and the danger of the Columbia’s entrance, courtesy of the Coast Guard and the commander of the “Cape D” station, Lieutenant Commander Mike Montieth. Our team, assembled by the National Park Service (NPS), has come here to the graveyard of the Pacific to dive on a recently discovered wreck that may just be the earliest one yet found on this coast, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) supply ship Isabella, lost on the Columbia bar in 1830. Montieth, who has already visited the wreck, has arranged this no-holds barred introduction to the Columbia so that we might better understand the dynamic and violent environment in which we are about to dive. As we ride the roller-coaster seas off Cape Disappointment, the team gains a new perspective on the predicament of Captain William Ryan and Isabella’s crew more than 150 years ago.
ISABELLA: COLUMBIA RIVER, MAY 3, 1830 The Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship Isabella had survived a long and hard six- month voyage from London’s docks to the “North West Coast,” marked by rough seas, a stormy passage around Cape Horn that had damaged the ship and a mutinous carpenter whom Captain William Ryan had clapped in irons for several weeks. Scanning his chart, Ryan squinted at the coast. For over a day, they had maneuvered off Columbia’s bar, searching for the channel and a safe entrance. Now, in the predawn darkness, Ryan saw a point of land that he was certain had to be Cape Disappointment. Turning to first mate William Eales, he gave the order to head into the channel.
Now, the end of the voyage was in sight. Ryan’s orders were to slowly work Isabella up the Columbia River for no miles to Fort Vancouver, the Pacific coast headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company. There, he would discharge his cargo of trade goods and take on bundles of valuable fur, gathered by trappers and traders, for the return trip to England.
But as Isabella sailed across the bar, Ryan immediately realized that he had made a mistake. The sea surged and rolled over the shallows, picking up the ship and hurtling it towards a patch of broken water. They were not in the channel, but on the bar itself. Then Isabella hit hard at the stern. “She’s not answering the helm,” shouted the mate. Looking over the stern, Ryan saw broken pieces of the rudder swirling in the sea. Without her steering, the ship swung wildly. Waves crashed over the side and filled the deck with masses of water. As each wave rolled over the ship, Isabella pounded hard on the sand. Ryan had to act quickly, or the ship would be lost. Using the sails to catch the wind and steer off the bar was his only chance. But first, the crew had to lighten the ship. Pinned by her heavy cargo, Isabella was slowly sinking into the sand as the waves washed around the hull.
The men set to work, heaving overboard piles of lumber stacked on the deck. With axes, they smashed open the heavy water casks to empty them. Then, laboring in the surging surf, they dumped 30 tons of cargo and stores into the sea, but still Isabella would not budge. As the sun climbed into the sky, Ryan saw that they were stuck fast and pounding hard, and that water was flooding into the hold. He later explained to his superiors that as “there appeared little prospect of saving her and being surrounded by heavy breakers fearing she would drive on shore into them when it would be impossible to save ourselves,” he gave the order to abandon ship. Grabbing what they could, the crew piled into the ship’s two boats and dropped into the sea. “Pull! Pull for your lives!” the mate roared as the boats climbed one breaker, then another, and Isabella disappeared behind them in the towering waves.
The men strained at the oars until the boats at last pulled free of the breakers and flying surf. Wiping the stinging salt water from his eyes, Ryan scanned the horizon. Darkness had fallen, and along the shore, he saw fires blazing up. Some of the men saw them, too, and muttered among themselves. Ryan’s voice, loud and clear, reassured them: “We are strangers in this uncivilized country, and we shall not land, lest we be murdered by the natives.” Just the year before, the Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship William and Ann had wrecked on the Columbia bar, and none of the crew had survived. The headless body of her captain, identified by his blue uniform jacket, had borne mute witness to what the HBC was sure was the savagery of the neighboring Clatsop people. A search of the native village had turned up items from the wreck, and the HBC men had bombarded the Clatsop with cannon fire to punish them for pilfering the wreck.
Watching the fires on the beach, Ryan shivered at the thought of landing and falling into the hands of the Clatsop, having “heard such evil reports of the savage character” of the natives. So Isabella’s crew headed up the river to Fort Vancouver. It took them a full day to reach the fort.
At Fort Vancouver, Ryan and his men reported to Dr. John McLoughlin, the chief factor, or head of the fort, and the officer in charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s activities on the Pacific coast. Tall, with a full head of flowing white hair, McLoughlin represented what was then the most powerful commercial interest on the continent. Chartered in 1670 by King Charles n as the “Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay,” the Hudson’s Bay Company had royal authority to exploit the resources of a vast area that stretched from the shores of Hudson Bay to encompass much of what eventually would become Canada and some of the United States.
The HBC’S first ship on the coast was the 161-ton, Bermuda-built brig William and Ann, which started operating in 1824. But the coastal trading effort, as well as the annual supply of Fort Vancouver, had been dealt a serious blow when William and Ann wrecked at the mouth of the Columbia River on March 10, 1829, with the loss of the entire crew and most of the cargo. To replace her, the HBC bought Isabella, a four-year-old 194-ton brig, for the tidy sum of ?2,900 in October 1829. Isabella was loaded with a diverse and expensive cargo that reflected the needs of Fort Vancouver’s growing agricultural and industrial community: tools, medicines, preserved foods, lead and pig iron, paint and stationery supplies. She was also loaded with the commodities of the fur trade: guns, ammunition, blankets, beads, copper cooking pots, candles, mirrors, tinware, buttons, combs, tobacco and tea.
Following right after the wreck of William and Ann, the loss of Isabella was a serious blow. But McLoughlin’s consternation turned to rage the day after Ryan and his shipwrecked crew arrived at Fort Vancouver. Messengers from Fort George, a small Hudson’s Bay Company outpost at the Columbia’s mouth, reported they had seen Isabella enter the wrong channel and become stranded on the bar. They had raced to the brig’s assistance and lit a fire to signal Ryan, but the captain had mistaken it for marauding and murderous natives and had fled up the river with his crew. In the morning, the Fort George men had boarded Isabella and found that the ship and her cargo were aground but reasonably safe, then sent word to McLoughlin.
Furious, McLoughlin sent the hapless Ryan and his crew back down the river to their ship to save what they could. In a letter to his superiors, he reported: “When Capt. Ryan arrived here he could not distinctly ascertain where he had left his vessel… it was only when I received Mr. Mansons [report] I actually learnt where she was and if Capt. Ryan had remained on board with his crew it is certain the vessel would have been saved as on the turn of the tide they had only to slip her cable and she would have drifted into smooth water.”
When Ryan and his crew arrived back at the wreck, they found Isabella on her side on a small island just inside the river’s mouth. She was full of water and, as the incoming tide washed away the sand that swirled around the hull, was slowly being swallowed up. The first task was to save the valuable cargo still inside the brig.
The next few days were spent stripping the wreck. The masts and rigging were chopped free and stacked on the island, and the crew began to unload the cargo from the dark, wet confines of the hold. Work stopped each day at high tide, when the heavy surf that broke over the capsized hulk made it dangerous to even approach the wreck. The hold flooded each day, making each day a repetition of pumping. After two weeks of back-breaking work, Isabella was at last emptied and the task of trying to save the dismasted hull began.
But the sand and the sea would not relinquish the wreck. A survey on May 24 found the brig settled into a deep hole, the hold full of water, beams cracked, decks and bulwarks washed away, and the hull beginning to crack in half. It was hopeless, and the surveyors wrote to McLoughlin that any attempts to save Isabella “would be an unnecessary sacrifice of labour… as we consider her a total wreck.” With that, the ship was abandoned to the water and the sands of the Columbia bar.
ON THE WRECK OF ISABELLA Although the sands of the bar had swallowed Isabella, occasionally they washed away to expose some broken timbers. Charts from 1880 to 1921 mark a wreck at the site where, in September 1986, Daryl Hughes, a commercial fisherman, snagged his nets. Other fishermen had snagged nets there, but
