Captain William Robert Broughton, Royal Navy, was one of a group of British naval officers sent on a series of survey expeditions to the Pacific and Northeast Asia during the latter part of the eighteenth century. The group included such well-known figures as Captains James Cook and George Vancouver. Broughton, who sailed with Vancouver, though less remembered, was in many ways equally distinguished, with a good record of patient survey work, as well as a moderately successful naval career. His name, once prominent on maps, has now disappeared as the fashion for ‘cartographic imperialism’ has faded. Yet he made a major contribution to surveying knowledge at the time, and his work contributed to much nineteenth-century cartography of East Asia.

Born in 1762, by 1774 he was a midshipman in the Royal Navy. He served in the American War of Independence, when he was taken prisoner during an action in Boston harbour, and later in the East Indies, where he was promoted to lieutenant. In 1790, he became commander of the brig HMS Chatham to accompany Vancouver in HMS Discovery on the latter's voyage to the northwest of America, which they reached in April 1792 via Cape Town, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii. The two ships engaged in a systematic survey of the area around Puget Sound, with Broughton responsible for work exploring the Columbia River. In 1793, Vancouver sent him back to Britain with despatches designed to encourage the government to authorise further survey work.

HMS PROVIDENCE

On return to Britain, Broughton became commander of HMS Providence in October 1793, with instructions to rejoin Vancouver to continue the work of exploration and surveying. The Providence was a small ship, a sloop of some 420 tons with 16 guns. According to Broughton's own account, she had been intended for the West Indian trade, but had been purchased by the government “for the express purpose of bringing the bread-fruit trees from the South Seas”. It was thought that the breadfruit, discovered in Tahiti some years earlier by Cook, might prove a cheap way of feeding West Indian slaves. To this end, she had sailed for Tahiti in 1791, under the command of William Bligh. Bligh had four years previously been commander of HMS Bounty when a number of his crew had mutinied and set him and the remainder of the crew adrift in an open boat.