Territorial Timeline

Shipwrecked Japanese sailors land at Cape Flattery

In January 1833 three Japanese sailors washed ashore near Cape Flattery, on the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The sailors were all that remained of a fourteen-man crew who set sail from Japan on a routine trading mission fourteen months before. Their ship became rendered un-navigable by a typhoon encountered earlier. For fourteen months they drifted, sustained by their cargo of rice. Upon reaching shore, the local Makah Indians nursed them back to health and used the sailors as slaves once they regained their strength. Later a Hudson's Bay Company ship stopped by to trade with the Indians, and the captain heard about the Japanese. When he reported back to Dr. McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver, a ship was dispatched to bring the Japanese sailors to Fort Vancouver. Eventually the sailors were taken back to the Orient by the British but the Japanese would not let any foreign ship land, no matter what the reason. The three sailors lived out their lives in China.