![]() Gray in the Washington then sailed on a trading cruise, ranging the coast from Juan de Fuca Strait to Bucareli Bay (Alaska), and proving the insularity of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Kendrick arrived on 22 September and decided it was too late to trade for furs both ships lay idle in the sound until March 1789. Gray arrived on 17 Sept. 1788, in time to meet John Meares, who was about to sail for the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, and he witnessed the launching of Meares’s schooner North West America. The ships sailed from Boston on 30 Sept. 1787, but Kendrick was a dilatory commander and they were a full year on the way to Nootka Sound (B.C.). It consisted of the ship Columbia Rediviva, under Kendrick, and the small sloop Lady Washington, commanded by Gray. Eager for Chinese goods, a group of Boston merchants headed by Joseph Barrell sent to the northwest an expedition led by John Kendrick*. Shortly before this, businessmen in New England had learned that the fur of the sea otter, plentiful on the northwest coast, had fetched high prices in China when sold there by members of James Cook*’s last expedition. Robert Gray’s widow was to state in a memorial submitted to the United States Congress in 1846 that her husband had served in the naval forces during the Revolutionary War, but no documentary – proof has been found. 10 May 1755 in Tiverton, R.I., son of William and Elizabeth Gray d. GRAY, ROBERT, merchant captain, fur trader, and explorer b.
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