224 ATTACK ON THE ELEONORA AT MOWEE. [1790. 



The second trading adventure to the North Pacific made by citi- 

 zens of the United States was that of Captain Metcalf, who sailed 

 from New York in 1788, in the brig Eleonora, for Canton, and 

 there purchased a small schooner, which he named the Fair Amer- 

 ican, and placed under the command of his son, a youth of eighteen. 

 With these vessels he arrived, in November, 1789, at Nootka Sound, 

 where the schooner was seized by the Spanish commandant Marti- 

 nez ; but she was soon liberated, unfortunately, as it proved, for 

 her captain and crew. On their way from the American coast, the 

 vessels were separated. The Eleonora, on the 30th of January, 1790, 

 reached a small bay in Mowee, one of the Sandwich Islands, where 

 she anchored ; and, on the same night, her boat, and a seaman who 

 was sleeping in it, were taken away by the natives. On the fol- 

 lowing day, the islanders began to assemble in the bay in canoes, 

 and on the shores, in great numbers, armed, and showing evidently 

 the intention to take the vessel ; and one of them was seized in the 

 act of endeavoring to strip off a piece of her copper, under the idea, 

 as he confessed, that she would in consequence sink. The natives 

 becoming more daring, Metcalf fired on them with grape, and 

 burnt their village ; and, having thus apparently quieted them, he 

 went farther up the bay, in order to obtain water. Three or four 

 days afterwards, a native came on board, who offered to bring back 

 the boat and the sailor for a certain reward ; his offer was accepted, 

 and, on the following day, he reappeared with the rudder of the 

 boat and some of the bones of the man, who had been sacrificed to 

 the gods of the island, and coolly demanded the promised recom- 

 pense. This demand was granted, with a view to conciliation ; but 

 the opposite effect was produced : for the islanders, supposing that 

 they had intimidated the Americans, again surrounded the ship in 

 their canoes in vast numbers. Metcalf thereupon, either from exas- 

 peration, or from his seeing no other mode of safety, fired all his 

 guns, charged with grape and nails, among them, and killed, as 

 was said, more than one hundred and fifty ; after which he sailed 

 for Owyhee, and anchored in Karakakooa Bay.* 



* The account of these transactions is taken principally from a letter written by a 

 person on board of the Eleonora, which was published in the newspapers of the 

 United States soon after the occurrences ; and from the manuscript journal of Captain 

 Ingraham, which confirms all the statements of the letter writer. Vancouver (vol. ii. 

 p. 136) represents the affair as disadvantageously to the Americans as possible, accord- 

 ing to his constant practice. Jarvis, in his History of the Sandwich Islands, gives 

 the account as handed down by the natives, holding Metcalf up to view as a monster 

 of cruelty, and the capture of the Fair American as " an awful retribution." 



