Unit/ Formation: Royal Marines
Location: British Columbia now Washington State
Period/ Conflict: 1800's
Year: 1860
Date/s: 21st March 1860
In June 1846, the Treaty of Oregon was signed in Washington, D.C., setting the boundary on the 49th parallel, from the Rocky Mountains "to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island” then south through the channel to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and west to the Pacific Ocean.
Difficulty arose over language. The "channel" described in the treaty was actually two channels: the Haro Strait, nearest Vancouver Island, and the Rosario Strait, nearer the mainland. The San Juan Islands lay between, and both sides claimed the entire island group.
As early as 1845, the Hudson's Bay Company, based at Fort Victoria, claimed San Juan Island, only seven miles across the Haro Strait. By 1851 the company established salmon-curing stations along the island's western shoreline. By 1853, Wasington Territory claimed the islands as U.S. possessions. In response, the HBC in December 1853 established Belle Vue Sheep Farm on San Juan Island's southern shore. While this move was politically motivated, the island's natural attributes made the farm highly profitable. The flock in a mere six years expanded from 1,369 to more than 4,500 scattered in sheep stations throughout the island.
Reports of the island's good soil and bountiful resources by Northwest Boundary Survey naturalists quickly circulated among American settlers on the mainland. By spring 1859, 18 Americans had settled on claims staked on prime HBC sheep grazing lands. They expected the U.S. Government to recognize their validity, but the British considered the claims illegal and the claimants little more than "squatters" or trespassers. Tempers grew shorter by the day. The crisis came on June 15, 1859, when Lyman Cutlar, an American, shot and killed a company pig rooting in his garden. When British authorities threatened to arrest Cutlar and evict all Americans from the island as trespassers, a delegation sought military protection from Brig. Gen. William S. Harney, the anti-British commander of the Department of Oregon. Harney responded by ordering Company D, 9th U.S. Infantry under Capt. George E. Pickett (of later Civil War fame) to San Juan. Pickett's 64-man unit landed on July 27 and encamped near the HBC wharf on Griffin Bay, just north of Belle Vue Sheep Farm.
Vancouver Island Governor, James Douglas, was at first dismayed, then angered by Pickett’s landing. He ordered Captain Geoffrey Phipps Hornby, RN, commanding the 31-gun steam frigate HMS Tribune, to dislodge Pickett, but to avoid an armed clash if possible. Hornby was soon joined by two more warships, HMS Satellite and HMS Plumper Pickett refused to withdraw and wrote Harney for help. Throughout the remaining days of July and well into August, Hornby accumulated more marines; the majority veterans of amphibious landings under fire in China. However, Hornby wisely refused to take any action against the Americans until the arrival of Rear Admiral Lambert Baynes, commander of British naval forces in the Pacific. Baynes, appalled at the situation, advised Douglas that he would not "involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig."
Meanwhile, Pickett was reinforced on August 10, by 171 men under Lt. Col. Silas Casey, who assumed command and, with Pickett in tow, went to Victoria to parley with Baynes. The old admiral (a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815) refused to leave his 84-gun ship of the line, HMS Ganges, to call upon Casey aboard a lighthouse tender. A disappointed Casey took note of the Ganges’ size and on his return to San Juan pleaded for more men. By August 31, 461 Americans were encamped in the woods just north of Belle Vue Sheep Farm, protected by 14 field cannons. Eight more 32-pounder naval guns were removed from the USS Massachusetts to be emplaced in a redoubt excavated under the direction of Lieutenant Henry M. Robert (future author of Robert’s Rules of Order). While the Americans dug in, the British conducted drills with their 52 total guns, alternately hurling solid shot into the bluffs and raised rocks along Griffin Bay. It was all great fun for tourists arriving on excursion boats from Victoria, not to mention the officers from both sides who attended church serves together aboard the Satellite and shared whisky and cigars in Charles Griffin’s tidy home. But when word of the crisis reached Washington, officials from both nations, unaware of the bizarre atmosphere on San Juan, were shocked that Cutlar’s pig murder had grown into a potentially explosive international incident. Alarmed by the prospect, President James Buchanan sent General Winfield Scott, U.S. Army commander and also a War of 1812 veteran, to investigate and try to contain the affair. Scott had calmed two other border crises between the two nations in the late 1830s.
Following a six-week passage from New York via the Isthmus of Panama, Scott arrived in the San Juan’s in October. Communicating with Douglas via messenger, the two leaders arranged for each nation to withdraw reinforcements, leaving the island with a single company of U.S. soldiers and a British warship anchored in Griffin Bay. Scott proposed a joint military occupation until a final settlement could be reached, which both nations approved in November. Harney was officially rebuked and eventually reassigned for allowing the situation to needlessly escalate. Casey's soldiers were withdrawn, save for one company under the command of Capt. Lewis Cass Hunt. Pickett returned to replace Hunt the following April. Meanwhile, on March 21, 1860, British Royal Marines landed on the island's northwest coast and established on Garrison Bay what is now known as "English Camp."
When Great Britain and the United States in 1859 agreed to a joint occupation of San Juan Island until the water boundary between the two nations could be settled, it was decided that camps would be located on opposite ends of the island.
Shortly after the British and American governments affirmed Lieutenant General Winfield Scott’s proposal to jointly occupy San Juan Island, the Royal Navy started looking for a home for its British Royal Marine Light Infantry contingent.
Capt. James Prevost, commander of H.M.S. Satellite, selected the site on Garrison Bay — 15 miles northwest of American Camp — from among seven finalists. He’d remembered the bay shore from explorations two years earlier as a part of the water boundary commission survey of the island. At that time, one of his officers, Lieutenant Richard Roche, had commented on seeing abandoned Indian plank houses nestled among a vast shell midden.
Roche described the ground as "well-sheltered, has a good supply of water and grass, and is capable of affording maneuvering ground for any number of men that are likely to be required in that locality..." He added that a trail, 11 miles long, led from this area to the Hudson’s Bay farm at Bellevue.
The marines landed on March 23, 1860. They brought along the necessary materials to erect the first building, a commissary (or storehouse) about 40 by 20 feet (which still stands). The camp commander, Captain George Bazalgette, RM, then placed a requisition for "84 tin pannikins, 36 tin plates, 3 'dishes', 10 camp kettles, 18 lanterns, 1 measures set, and a small quantity of stationery."
The barracks were snug quarters, measuring 90 feet by 24 feet and containing 56 beds which gave each man 4 feet of living space.
Marine rations consisted of a pound of biscuits, a quarter cup of hard liquor, a pound of fresh meat, half a pound of vegetables, one and three quarters ounces of sugar, an ounce of chocolate, and a quarter ounce of tea. Marines were also given a weekly ration of oatmeal, mustard, pepper, and vinegar as well as beer, wine, and cream. Compared to the American soldiers on the other side of San Juan Island, these soldiers enjoyed a high standard of living.
The command consisted of two subalterns (junior officers), an assistant surgeon and 83 noncommissioned officers and men. After clearing the shore of its thick growth of trees, they erected the commissary and planted a small garden where the formal garden lies today.
Barracks, cooking houses and other vital structures quickly followed, especially after Rear Admiral R. Lambert Baynes visited in June and pronounced the need for extra pay for the men to prepare the camp for winter.
By 1866 the camp was at its peak for the enlisted men. One visitor commented: "We may remark here that the neatness, cleanliness and good order observable throughout the entire camp were the subject of general observation."
With the arrival of a new commander, Captain William Delacombe, in 1867, the camp received a major facelift. New officers' quarters were built to house the captain and his family as well as the camp's second in command. Delacombe also directed that a formal garden be constructed at the base of the hill leading to the officers' quarters.
The marines departed in November 1872, following the final boundary decision of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany.
Of the 83 enlisted men landed at San Juan Island in March 1860 but almost every Royal Marine retired or moved to new positions by the time they left San Juan Island on November 21, 1872; the only man who stayed at English Camp the entire time was Private James Haynes.
They left behind a facility so solidly built that the Crook family (who purchased the site from the U.S. government) occupied several of the structures for more than 30 years.
Read More/ Web Link: National Historical Park Washington
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