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Pacific Station
HMS Ganges at anchor near Victoria Harbour
Active	South America Station (1826–1837) Pacific Station (1837–1905)
Disbanded	Sunset 1 March 1905
Country	United Kingdom and Canada
Branch	Royal Navy
Type	Fleet
Part of	Admiralty
Garrison/HQ	Valparaíso, Chile & Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard
Notable ships	President
Engagements	Siege of Petropavlovsk
Commanders
Notable commanders	George Seymour, Fairfax Moresby, Thomas Maitland

The Pacific Station was created in 1837 as one of the geographical military formations into which the Royal Navy divided its worldwide responsibilities. The South America Station was split into the Pacific Station and the South East Coast of America Station.

History

The British Pacific Squadron was established in 1813 to support British interests along the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean at Valparaíso, Chile. In 1837, when the South America station was split, this responsibility was passed to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific. In 1843, George Paulet, captain of Carysfort, took her out from Valparaíso to Honolulu to demand the islands of the Kingdom of Hawaii for Britain. King Kamehameha III capitulated and signed the islands over to Paulet. In the summer of that year, Rear-Admiral Richard Darton Thomas set out from Valparaíso in Dublin to rein Paulet in. On 31 July 1843, Thomas assured the King that the occupation was over and that there was no British claim over the islands.

In 1842, Pandora was sent north to survey the coast of Vancouver Island and what would become the Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard. During the survey trip, the crew of Pandora found that Esquimalt Harbour had a size and depth suited for use as a Royal Navy harbour. As tensions between Britain and America rose during the Oregon boundary dispute a base at the southern end of Vancouver Island would help strengthen the British claim to all of the island. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 ceded control over all of the island to Britain. In 1848, Constance was sent to Esquimalt and was the first vessel to be stationed there. In the summer of 1854, several ships, including President, Pique, Trincomalee, Amphitrite, and Virago, set out from Valparaíso and sailed across the Pacific Ocean, stopping at the Marquesas Islands and eventually Honolulu, where they met a French fleet of warships. In late August, the combined fleets sailed to Russia to engage in the Siege of Petropavlovsk, during which Rear Admiral David Price, the Commander-in-Chief, died. Captain Frederick William Erskine Nicolson of Pique was brevetted and took command of the British naval forces from 31 August 1854 until the arrival of the next Commander-in-Chief. In 1855, three "Crimean huts" were built at Esquimalt to serve as a hospital intended to receive wounded from the Crimean War. The huts were the first shore establishment at Esquimalt.

The presence of forests full of straight grained conifers such as the Coast Douglas fir meant that Vancouver Island could provide shipbuilding material suitable for spar making in the age of sail. The later discovery of coal on the island and at Vancouver's Coal Harbour, meant that the area could also serve as a useful resource in the age of steam as well. Rear-Admiral Robert Lambert Baynes, aware of the political importance of maintaining British sovereignty amidst the San Juan Boundary Dispute and the British Columbia gold rushes recommended to the Admiralty a move of the station headquarters from Valparaíso to Esquimalt in November 1859.

By 1865, Esquimalt was recognized as the base headquarters of the Pacific Station. The move from Valparaíso to Esquimalt helped the Pacific Station avoid involvement in the Chincha Islands War (1864–1866) between Spain, Chile, and Peru. Rear-Admiral de Horsey ordered Shah commanded by Frederick Bedford, against the Nicolás de Piérola-led Huáscar in the Battle of Pacocha on 29 May 1877. In that battle, Shah fired one Whitehead torpedo at Huáscar, but it missed its mark and Huáscar got away.

A graving dock large enough to accommodate the largest ships in the Pacific fleet was commissioned at Esquimalt in 1887. After a period of relaxing tensions meant that British interests in British Columbia were secured, the Station was maintained to counter Russian ambitions in the Pacific. The Station was also crucial in defending British Columbia from the United States in the Alaska Boundary Dispute, during the contemporaneous 1898 Spanish–American War, when the US threatened to forcibly invade and annex British Columbia if its demands over Alaska were not met.

By the end of the 19th century, improved communications, the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the need to concentrate warships in British waters to counter the developing German High Seas Fleet, meant that the station was closed down at sunset on 1 March 1905. Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard was transferred to the Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries. The Pacific Station's responsibilities were divided between the China, Australia and the North America and West Indies Stations (the latter of which would also become responsible for the western South Atlantic, becoming the America and West Indies station after the First World War, with its Bermuda-based cruisers regularly cruising through the Panama Canal and up the western coast of North America to visit Esquimalt and other locations on the Pacific Coast of Canada).

After passage of the Naval Service Act in 1910, there was a Canadian Naval Service that controlled the base at Esquimalt and that service became the Royal Canadian Navy in 1911. In the 1960s, the amalgamation of defence services in Canada led to its re-constitution as Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt that includes HMC Dockyard.

Commanders-in-Chief, Pacific

Most commanders-in-chief of the station held the rank of rear admiral, with the exceptions of Hamond and Hastings who were each promoted to vice admiral before being reassigned to other duties, and Goodrich who was a commodore.

Legacy

The largest remnant of the Pacific Station is the CFB Esquimalt naval base in western Canada. Many geographical features of Vancouver Island and British Columbia are named after captains, commanders, and ships assigned to the Pacific Station. The Arco Británico triumphal arch in Valparaíso was constructed to commemorate the British presence in the city, including several Naval commanders. Thomas Square in Honolulu is named after Admiral Richard Darton Thomas. Although Union Flags were flown over Hawaii as early as 1816, the current state flag of Hawaii design dates from the close of the Paulet Affair and features a British Union Flag in its canton to commemorate the help that Thomas rendered the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Charles Darwin's visits to Valparaíso, Cerro La Campana, and the Galápagos Islands led to publication of The Voyage of the Beagle which, along with later works such as On the Origin of Species, helped to establish the field of evolutionary biology.

See also

• British Pacific Fleet – a World War II era fleet assembled to fight Japan
• China Station – a Royal Navy command that patrolled the Western Pacific Ocean in the 19th and 20th centuries
• Pacific Squadron – a division of the United States Navy between 1821 and 1907
• North America and West Indies Station

References

1. ^ Davis, Peter. "Principal Royal Navy Commanders-in-Chief 1830-1899". Retrieved 18 February 2010.
2. ^ "History of CFB Esquimalt and Naden". Archived from the original on 14 January 2010. Retrieved 17 February 2010.
3. "Correspondence relating to the Provisional Cession of the Sandwich Islands to great Britain.—February 1843". British and foreign state papers, Volume 150, Part 1. Great Britain Foreign Office. 1858. pp. 1023–1029. Archived from the original on 6 July 2017.
4. Nicholson, Lisa. "Admiral Sir Henry William Bruce". Archived from the original on 9 June 2011. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
5. "Duntze Head". BC Geographical Names.
6. Gough, Barry M. (2000). "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online: BAYNES, Sir ROBERT LAMBERT". University of Toronto. Retrieved 7 March 2010.
7. del Campo, Juan. "AGAINST THE BRITISH SQUAD: THE BATTLE OF PACOCHA: BRITONS AND PERUVIANS FIGHT AT SEA". Archived from the original on 24 May 2011. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
8. Oram, Steve (18 February 2010). "The Battle of Pacocha, 1877". Archived from the original on 2 December 2008. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
9. "Maintaining Naval Supremacy 1815-1914". Royal Navy. Retrieved 1 February 2010.
10. "The Alaska Adjudication". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 1904. pp. 176–181.
11. "REHABILITATING ESQUIMALT". The Daily Colonist. Canada. 16 July 1919. p. 4. Under the new dispensation of British naval power all over the world, now that the preoccupation in the North Sea is at an end, it was thought that no provision had been made for the North Pacific Ocean, but latest official information shows the Admiralty has no intention of abandoning these waters. The North America and West Indies Squadron is to have a wide area to patrol, comprising the North Atlantic, the West Indies and the North Pacific-from the Galapagos Islands to the Bering Straits. While any of the vessels of this squadron are in the Pacific their headquarters will be at Esquimalt. The squadron is to be composed of four of the most powerful light cruisers afloat, and will be in command of Vice-Admiral Sir Trevelyn Napier, who will have his headquarters at Bermuda. There will also be smaller craft attached to the squadron for police duties.
12. "CRUISER ON THE COAST: Chatham Passes Through Canal from Bermuda and Is going to San Diego". The Daily Colonist. Canada. 4 December 1920. p. 22. The light cruiser Chatham, of the British North America Squadron, based on Bermuda, has passed through the Panama Canal, and on November 30 left Salina Crus en route from San Diego. It is not yet known here how far up the coast the cruiser will proceed. This is the first occasion on which a ship from the Bermuda station has come through the Canal. The Chatham is a light cruiser of the same size as the Newcastle, which was here during the war, but she is two classes later than that craft, having been built in 1910.
13. Milner, Marc (2010). Canada's Navy: The First Century (2nd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 241, 243, 249–250, 261. ISBN 978-0-8020-9604-3.
14. Gough, Barry (2016). Britannia's Navy on the West Coast of America 1812–1914. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Seaforth. pp. 319–321. ISBN 978-1-4738-8136-5.
15. "Canadian Navy: MARPAC - Maritime Forces Pacific - Profiles: RAdm of the White C B H Ross". Archived from the original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved 18 February 2010.
16. Gough, Barry M. (1969). "The Records of the Royal Navy's Pacific Station". The Journal of Pacific History. Vol. 4. pp. 146–153. JSTOR 25167985.
17. Tatum, Fred. "South American Station 1950-51". Archived from the original on 24 October 2010. Retrieved 28 February 2010.
18. "What's the Story Behind Hawaii's Flag?". Hawaii Magazine. 21 October 2008. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
19. Darwin, Charles (1845). Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. (Second ed.). London: John Murray.

Further reading

• Gough, Barry M (1974) . The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America 1820–1914: A Study of Maritime Ascendancy. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0-7748-0000-6.

v t e Historic fleets and naval commands of the Royal Navy
North and Irish Seas and English Channel	First Fleet Second Fleet Third Fleet Atlantic Fleet Battle Cruiser Fleet Channel Fleet Channel Squadron Coast of Ireland Coast of Scotland Devonport Dover Commander-in-Chief Fleet Grand Fleet British Naval Forces Germany Humber Home Fleet Irish Squadron Leith Nore North Sea Squadron Orkneys and Shetlands Plymouth Portsmouth Rosyth Reserve Fleet Western Approaches Western Naval Home Command Eastern English Channel Downs Channel Squadron (Navy Royal) Narrow Seas North North and West Western Squadron North Sea Fleet South West and Irish Sea West Yarmouth
Atlantic Ocean	Atlantic Fleet Barbadoes and Leeward Islands Good Hope Jamaica Division (1838-1905) Jamaica Station (to 1830) Leeward Islands Lisbon Newfoundland North America North America and West Indies North Atlantic Portugal South America Station South Atlantic and South America South Atlantic South East Coast of America West Africa Squadron Flag Officer, West Africa Senior Naval Officer, West Indies
Baltic, Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean Seas	Adriatic Aegean Baltic Fleet Black Sea and Caspian Caspian Coast of Spain Eastern Mediterranean Egypt and Red Sea British Naval Forces Germany Gibraltar Levant Levant and East Mediterranean Malta Mediterranean Fleet Portugal
Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean	Commodore, Arabian Seas and Persian Gulf Commander-in-Chief, Australia Commander-in-Chief, China East Indies East Indies and China East Indies Fleet Eastern Fleet Far East Fleet Egypt and Red Sea Senior British Naval Officer, Suez Canal Area Middle East New Zealand New Zealand Naval Forces Pacific Fleet Pacific Station Red Sea and Canal Area/Red Sea South America Station Persian Gulf

• Commands of the Royal Navy
• History of Vancouver Island
• Military history of Chile
• 1826 establishments in the British Empire
• Military units and formations established in 1826