Mike Vouri - History - Results from #14

Mike Vouri: On Hadrian’s Wall: A Hike Across England

There was a moment when hiking in northern England that I ascended a bare hillside fringed by conifers and flashed instantly to Mt. Finlayson on San Juan Island. Except for the sheep scattering ahead and piles…

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Mike Vouri: Scofflaws and Moonshine: San Juan’s Stormy Joint Occupation

O'Reilly's gone to Hell Since down the pole he fell. He drank up all the bug juice The whiskey man would sell. Oh, they rammed him in the mill They've got him in their still. His…

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Mike Vouri: Luck of the Irish: The De Courcy Cousins and San Juan Island

Major John Fitzroy De Courcy watched from the deck of H.M.S. Satellite as the big steam corvette rounded Cattle Point Peninsula and dropped anchor off the Hudson’s Bay Company dock on San Juan Island. John De…

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Mike Vouri: Looking for Richard...Roche

Richard Roche was swaddled in furs with a bullet in his leg, bleeding out as a sledge pulled by dogs and guided by an able seaman carried him back to his ship and his future. It…

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Mike Vouri: Tootle-loo: Bugler Hughes and the Last Post for George Bazalgette on San Juan Island

Captain George Bazalgette must have jumped out of his chair when he heard the bugle call to Christmas dinner at American Camp. Every bugler had his signature, and the style was unmistakable. That was his bugler,…

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Mike Vouri: The Guns of August...1859

“The United States troops are landing eight 32-pounder guns from the steamship Massachusetts as if for the purpose of fortifying themselves!” — Captain Geoffrey Phipps Hornby, H.M.S. Tribune, Aug. 14, 1859 So wrote Hornby from his…

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Mike Vouri: English or British? The Puzzlement on Garrison Bay

When I arrived here for duty with San Juan Island National Historical Park in February 1995 my first question for my supervisor was: “Is it English Camp or British Camp?” The question remains as valid today…

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Mike Vouri: The Battle for Battleship Island

Morse,Morse, Bo-borse, Banana-fana, Fo-force, Fee-Fi-mo-Morse. Morse! (Adapted from “The Name Game,” with apologies to Shirley Ellis) On a boat trip more than 40 years ago a friend pointed out a flat straw-colored rock sprouting a few…

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Mike Vouri: Mapping the San Juans: It’s all in a name

You never know what the Strait of Juan de Fuca will bring, even in late July. So discovered a survey party of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (Ex. Ex.), caught midway across the strait en route from…

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Mike Vouri: Gunkholing in 1792: How the Vancouver Expedition “Discovered” the San Juans

It was around 5 p.m., May 18, 1792, on the southern tip of what the Spanish had charted Isla y Archipelago San Juan. An ebb tide was roiling the rock-fringed waters of Cattle Pass and the…

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Mike Vouri: Isla y Archipelago de San Juan: A Spanish Expedition

Farewell and adieu unto you Spanish ladies Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain For we've received orders for to sail for old England But we hope very soon we shall see you again Seventeen…

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Mike Vouri: A Shot Not in the Dark: Tribune’s cannonball

It’s not every day that you arrive at the office and find a rusty, mud-caked cannonball on your desk. (Left): Historian Mike Vouri with a similar solid shot from the collection. The one found in 2002…

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Mike Vouri: The Military Road

The heat was already stifling at 11 a.m. in late July 2006 when I encountered four Canadian reenactor colleagues taking a breather in the shade at the corner of Little and Douglas roads. Canadian re-enactors portraying…

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Mike Vouri: The Little Saw Mill That Could

It is not difficult to find historical links between San Juan Island and Bellingham Bay, from the Lummi Nation, whose ancestors wintered here over thousands of years, to the Spanish, British and finally American explorers who…

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