Note note 94, post — Chapter XIV

[94] This adventure of the “Albatross” (1810) was the first attempt to establish a trading post upon Columbia River. The Winships, a Boston firm, fitted out the vessel of which Nathan Winship was in charge, and William Smith first mate. The first choice for the establishment proved to be subject to overflow, whereupon they removed to Oak Point. The crafty Chinook, however, showed such a disposition to resent this invasion of their own trading territory, that the Americans, after a brief occupancy, were forced to retreat.

Captain William Smith, born in Virginia (1768), migrated to Boston and in 1790 began a life upon the ocean, in which he made eight voyages around the world, on one of which he was absent eight years. Once he was shipwrecked, and twice taken prisoner—by the Indians on the Northwest Coast, and by the Spaniards in California. He was still living in 1820. See Niles’s Register, Aug. 12, 1820.—Ed.