military officers, Lieutenants Warrc and Vavasour, were sent to the Columbia overland from Canada to examine into the means necessary to defend the country if the United States should attempt to secure it by force. ^
A British warship in Oregon waters; Lieutenant Peel's survey; Lieutenant Peel's report. The America frigate anchored in Fuca's Strait August 31, 1846. Her captain was Sir John Gordon, a brother of Lord Aberdeen, and one of her younger officers was Lieutenant William Peel, fourth son of Sir Robert Peel. Captain Gordon sent Lieutenant Peel to Vancouver, and across the Columbia "to examine and procure information of the present state of the new American settlement on the Willamette." Sailing promptly to the Hawaiian Islands, Gordon there detached Peel to carry his information to London. Peel sailed to Mexico, crossed the Atlantic, and was back at London by the 9th or loth of February, 1846. Since he had complete knowledge of the local situation in Oregon — the dominance of the Americans in political matters, the extent of their settlements southward, the fact that they had penetrated to Puget Sound in the north, the feeling of helplessness on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, which impelled them to come under the provisional government for their own safety—it is easy to see what lights he could throw on the desira ^ See Documents relative to Warre and Vavasour's Military Reconnaissance in Oregon, 1846. Edited by Joseph Schafer, Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, X, pp. 1-99.
