PACIFIC NORTHWEST HISTORIANS GUILD
May Program at NARA
Tuesday, May 9, 2006 at 7:00 pm

In 1855, when the U.S. Sloop-of-War DECATUR first sailed into Puget Sound, the U.S. Pacific Coast was newly secured with the three great west coast harbors: San Diego, San Francisco and Puget Sound. The ship was a member of the Pacific Squadron, charged with protecting American interests in the huge cruising ground of the Pacific West, Russian Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. In the DECATUR's last cruise, 1854-1859, the ship engaged in encounters of peace and war, along the long beaches of Peru, Panama, Hawaii, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico, as well as at San Francisco and Seattle. The Battle of Seattle, January 26, 1856, makes sense in the context of this larger mission, through the lens of this greater perspective.

Lorraine McConaghy, supported by a Naval Heritage Foundation fellowship, spent three months last summer researching the DECATUR at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Since then, the work has continued to involve material in other collections: the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Virginia and Maryland Historical Societies, and the University of Washington Libraries. She first became interested in the DECATUR because one of its officers, Thomas Phelps, left us the first two drawings made of the settlement of Seattle; in the course of the research, a rich trove of drawings of Seattle, Port Townsend and Elliott Bay came to light. Dated 1855, and never inked, these drawings, by Surgeon John Taylor, are the earliest made of the settlement.

Join us!