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EA-Biography

(A [ ?] )

(W. Kaye Lamb)

GEORGE DIXON

        George Dixon (d. 1800?). British naval officer, navigator, and fur

trader, served as armorer of the Discovery , with the rating of first-class

petty officer, on Cook's last voyage. In 1785 the King George's Sound

Company, in which Messrs. Etches held the chief interest, was organized

in London for the purpose of sending trading vessels to the northwest coast

of North America to gather the valuable furs, especially that of the sea

otter, that Cook's men had found there. Two ships were purchased and

Nathaniel Portlock, who had also sailed with Cook, was appointed commander

of the expedition and master of the larger of the two vessels, the 320-ton

King George . Dixon became master of the Queen Charlotte , of 200 tons.

Both ships left England on September 17, 1785, and proceeded to the Pacific

by way of Cape Horn. The Hawaiian Islands were sighted on May 24, 1786, and

having refreshed their men there, Portlock, and Dixon sailed on June 13 for

Cook Inlet, which they reached on July 18. After some weeks of trading they

headed for Nootka Sound. By September 24 they were off the sound, but con–

trary winds prevented them from entering. They soon sailed for the Hawaiian

Islands, where they wintered.

        In March of 1787 they left again for the northwest coast and anchored

off Montagu Inlet on April 24. In May, in Prince William Sound, Dixon chanced

upon the British snow Nootka , Captain John Meares, which had wintered there

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EA-Biog. Eamb: George Dixon

and lost half her crew by scurvy. Meares was given two able seamen and a

few supplies to enable him to put to sea, but the assistance was given on

condition that he leave the coast as soon as practicable and return to China

without engaging in further trading activities. Portlock had right on his

side in imposing these terms; his owners had secured trading licenses from

the South Sea Company and the East India Company, which at the time held

the British trading monopoly in the Pacific and China, respectively. Meares

had secured neither, and was therefore technically a trespasser.

        Portlock and Dixon now parted company, as this promised to prove the

better trading strategy, and their ships spent the next four months in

intensive trading on the coast. Although the primary object of the expedi–

tion was commercial, Cook had awakened in Dixon a lively interest in explora–

tion, and he made every effort to fill in the gaps in Cook's chart of the

northwest coast. His surveys covered the area from Cook Inlet to Cape Scott,

and were conducted with as much care and accuracy as his preoccupation with

the fur trade permitted. Dixon Strait (now Dixon Entrance) named after

Dixon by Sir Joseph Banks in 1788, and the Queen Charlotte Islands, named

by Dixon himself after his own ship in July 1787, are the best-known place

names which sprang from the expedition, and the entrance and islands were

likewise the most important geographical features that Dixon added to the

map of the region.

        During the summer Dixon gradually worked his way southward, and on

August 8 he was once again off Nootka Sound. Learning that Portlock was not

in the harbor, he sailed for the Hawaiian Islands and thence to Macao, where

he arrived on November 8, 1787. There he was joined by the King George on

November 25.

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EA-Biog. Lamb: George Dixon

        In accordance with the terms of his license, Portlock now sold to

the representative of the East India Company in Canton all the furs from

his cargo that the latter chose to purchase. These consisted of "2552

sea-otter skins, together 434 cub, and 34 fox" the price was 50,000 Spanish

dollars. Other odds and ends of furs and general cargo, sold to various

Chinese merchants, increased the total return from the expedition to 54,857

Spanish dollars.

        In February, 1788, the Queen Charlotte sailed for home. She arrived

off Dover on September 17, after an absence from England of precisely three

years.

        Dixon immediately set about publishing an account of his travels. This

appeared in 1789 in a quarto volume entitled A Voyage Round the World; but

more particularly to the North-West Coast of America: performed in 1785, 1786,

and 1788. A second edition was printed later in the year, and a French trans–

lation in two volumes was published in Paris. The volume was dedicated to

Sir Joseph Banks. On the title page Dixon's name appears as author, but

elsewhere it is made clear that, although he reviewed the entire volume, he

himself wrote only the introduction and the appendices. The text proper

consists of a series of letters by William Beresford, who served as assistant

trader in the Queen Charlotte .

        The extravagant claims made by Mears in his Voyages , published in the

fall of 1790, prompted Dison to publish a pamphlet entitled Remarks on the

Voyages of John Meares Esq. in a letter to that Gentleman. This set off

the well-known Dixon-Meares controversy (q.v.). In 1791 Meares printed

An Answer to Mr. George Dixon , to which the latter replied in his Further

Remarks. Thereafter Dixon drops from view. He may or may not have been

the George Dixon who for a time taught navigation at Gosport, and in 1791

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EA-Biog. Lamb: George Dixon

published The Navigator's Assistant . He is believed to have died about

1800.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dixon's own Voyage, as cited above; for a narrative that in part

parallels Dixon's see the volume with an identical title published by

Nathaniel Portlock in 1789. Fur further details of the literature of

the Dixon-Meares controversy see the article on that subject.

       

W. Kay Lamb