18 F. G. YOUNG
Catholic Majesty was there to take exclusive possession on the traditional basis of priority of discovery and he was fittingly equipped. English seamen representing different commercial enterprises plying their vocation as fur traders were arriving. Their undisputed freedom of ingress and egress enjoyed during the several years preceding was in their planning maturing into the right of permanent occupation. In the pre- ceding pages I have tried to indicate how the converging lines of tendency of Spanish and English expansion on this coast promised inevitable friction. It is now in place to show how the train was laid for the explosion at Nootka in the summer of 1789.
In 1788 a company of English merchants at Bengal, India, fitted out two ships, one of which was the Iphigenia. They were put under the command of John Meares and William Douglas. "In order to evade excessive port charges in China, and also to obviate the necessity of obtaining licenses from the East India and South Sea Companies," says Bancroft, "one Cavalho, a Portuguese, was made nominally a partner in the concern, and through this influence with the governor of Macao the vessels were furnished Portuguese flags, papers, and captains. All of these were to be used as occasion might demand, either in Chinese ports or in case of embarrassing meetings with British vessels, where the real commanders would appear in the Portuguese version of the ships' papers as super cargoes." Furthermore, it was provided that in case of real trouble with any Russian, English or Spanish vessels they should, as victors, take possession of the vessel and crew, bring both "to China that they might be condemned as legal prizes, and their crews punished as pirates." It was these Portuguese instructions that puzzled the Spanish commander when he had seized the Iphigenia as an English vessel. She was no longer flying the Portuguese colors, as a license to trade had been obtained from the India Company. Bancroft suggests that Kendrick with whom Martinez had
