"Working with Commander Porcher's manuscript journal, now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection of Yale University, as well as other documents of the time, editor Smith has conjured an era through the unique voice of one of its standard bearers.

Porcher's journal reveals a man who strived to do his duty by the lights of the British Empire, then at full bloom but - caught between vulnerable Russian America to the north, and the rambunctious and expanding United States to the south, and the French virtually everywhere - in slightly precarious position on North America's Pacific coast. That duty took Porcher to Esquimalt, Royal Navy headquarters for the Pacific, by way of a seven-month transit from England around South America, to the kingdom of Hawaii and finally colonial British Columbia. Fortunately for readers today, the dutiful navy officer was also an enthusiastic tourist; we have not only his words to recount what he saw, but also a remarkable array of sensitve and skillfully done watercolors.

His paintings captured people and places, totems and tombs, scenes and ships - including his own command, the three-masted sail/steam vessel Sparrowhawk. Her posting in Esquimalt was full of the minor adventures for captain and crew typical of the time and place: she carried mail to San Francisco, bore the governor north to visit what was yet for a short time to remain Russian America, rescued crews of wrecked vessels, and went on the alert to thwart a Fenian threat.

Her commander's numerous duties included official excursions into British Columbia's interior, policing and dispensing the Queen's Justice to the Indians, and attending the numerous social occasions at which a presentable representative of the Royal Navy made a most welcome addition. Porcher faithfully recorded it all, down to the precise amount of coal the vessel consumed.".

"Few such informative accounts and illustrations have survived the intervening century and a half; fewer still are as accessible and charming as this intimate portrayal of life in the Pacific Northwest of the time.

Dwight Smith, a professor emeritus of history at Miami (Ohio) University, has provided the thoughtful editing and annotating necessary to permit present-day readers to appreciate Porcher's efforts, bringing this book beyond the purely scholarly and into the realm of general interest."--BOOK JACKET.