The Dixon-Meares Controversy Containing Remarks on the Voyages of John Meares by George Dixon ...
New York / Amsterdam: N. Israel / Da Capo, (1969). Facsimile Edition. Hardcover. 8vo (6 1/2" x 9 1/2"). Pp. xiv, 156, [2] (blank). Frontis. With seven full-page maps and facsimiles of title pages of Meares' "Answer" to Dixon and Dixon's "Further Remarks." Blue cloth with stamped gilt lettering. Fine. Item #699 Dixon, who had first sailed to the Northwest Coast on Cook's third voyage, took umbrage at the "facts" presented in Meares' "Voyage" (1790). Dixon asserted, rightfully, that the account was embellished, if not partly fabricated. Thus sprang forth an exciting late-18th C. London dust-up, concerning the events that occurred at Nootka Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island -- a remote, undeveloped and, for the most part, unknown, place on the other side of the world. One can imagine the scuttlebutt in the clubs and coffee houses of Boswell's London: "Now, where were Dixon and Meares when this took place?
Title continues: " ... , an Answer to Mr. George Dixon, by John Meares, and Further Remarks on the Voyages of John Meares, by George Dixon." Three extremely rare pamphlets published as part of the intense spat between Captains Dixon and Meares comprise this volume, with an informed and insightful introduction by Howay. Dixon and Meares commanded respective vessels in the nascent fur trade, both arriving at the Northwest Coast in the summer of 1786. Meares was, in effect, poaching, inasmuch as he was a British citizen serving British merchants living in India -- yet he was sailing under a Portuguese flag -- a transparent effort to sidestep the monopolistic right of the East India Company to trade in the Pacific. Howay called this salvo "an inky conflict in the tradition of Addison v. Pope.
Price: $25.00