Page "Jonathan Thorn" Paragraph 2

Commissioned a lieutenant on 16 February 1807, Thorn became the first commandant of the New York Navy Yard at age 27.

In 1810, he was granted a two-year furlough to command John Jacob Astor's sailing bark Tonquin in a voyage slated to take the ship to the Pacific Northwest to establish a fur trading post.

Thorn arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River on March 22, 1811 and two days later and at the cost of eight lives, they crossed the bar.

Thorn and his crew spent 65 days near the mouth of the river building Fort Astoria before part of the crew sailed back to the ocean.

On June 5 they left the river and headed north to trade for furs.

Thorn anchored off Clayoquot Sound, now in British Columbia around 15 June 1811, after a voyage which had taken the ship around Cape Horn to the Hawaiian Islands, to the mouth of the Columbia River and up the west side of Vancouver Island, Thorn soon attempted to trade with the local Nootka people.

Angered by what they considered insulting behaviour, like rubbing a chief's face into a bale of furs, the Indians seized the Tonquin and, in a brief, bloody action, killed Thorn and his crew.

The next day while the ship was being plundered by the Nootka, the vessel was blown up.