Why he came to the North Pacific

Cook’s third voyage (1776–1780) had a scientific gloss—returning Omai to the Society Islands—but the strategic brief was to probe for a Northwest Passage from the Pacific side. After two years in the Pacific, Cook turned to the North American coast in early 1778 and worked his way north looking for a navigable opening through the continent.

Nootka Sound, March–April 1778

On March 29, 1778, Cook’s ships Resolution and Discovery reached Nootka Sound on the outer coast of today’s Vancouver Island. They anchored in what his charts call Ship Cove—now Resolution Cove on Bligh Island—and stayed about a month, taking observations and refitting. Nuu‑chah‑nulth people from Yuquot (Friendly Cove) supplied fish, water, and timber; iron and copper were prized trade goods. The crew also acquired sea‑otter pelts—items that would later fetch striking prices in Canton and ignite the maritime fur trade.

Names and misunderstandings

In his charts Cook briefly labeled the inlet King George’s Sound before adopting the name Nootka, a term shaped by miscommunication. Later writers traced “Nootka” to Cook’s hearing of phrases at Yuquot, possibly a description of a place you can go around, or confusion between the village and the people. Today Nuu‑chah‑nulth is the accepted name for the language and cultural group on this coast.

Why Cook missed the Strait—and the island

Sailing north along the outer coast in March 1778, Cook named Cape Flattery but passed the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca without recognizing a major opening to inland seas. Fierce weather and the angle of approach hid the strait’s extent. Cook never entered the Strait of Georgia nor circumnavigated the landmass we call Vancouver Island, so his charts showed a rugged coast but not an island. Two decades later, in 1792, George Vancouver—working independently and in concert with Spanish captains Galiano and Valdés—traced the channels and proved the insularity of Vancouver Island.

From pelts to a Pacific business

Cook’s crew learned in Canton that sea‑otter pelts from the North Pacific commanded extraordinary prices. Their windfall launched a rush: British, then American and other traders returned in the 1780s to barter for furs on the Coast and sell them in China, knitting the BC coast into a new trans‑Pacific economy based on sea‑otter skins, tea, and silver.

What came after

Cook’s brief stay at Nootka helped place the region on European maps and in mercantile imagination. Within a decade, the Spanish established a post at Yuquot and clashed with British traders in the Nootka Sound crisis of 1789–1794. Vancouver’s detailed surveys in 1792–1794 finished the cartographic picture Cook had begun and finally showed Vancouver Island as an island, the Salish Sea as a complex inland waterway, and the passage north toward Alaska.