**Winner of the John Lyman Book Award for best Canadian naval and
maritime history
Finalist for the Nereus Writers' Trust Non-fiction Award
Finalist for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, BC Book Prize
Longlisted for the 2007 Victoria Butler Book Prize
Honourable Mention for the Canadian Nautical Research Society's Keith
Matthews Award**
Fortune's a River is the most authoritative and readable account to
date of just how British Columbia became British and how Oregon,
Washington and Alaska became American. By the closing years of the 18th
century, the stage was set for a major international confrontation over
the Northwest Coast. Imperial Russia was firmly established in Alaska,
Spain was extending its trade routes north from Mexico, Captain James
Cook had claimed Northwest America for England and Captain Robert Gray
had claimed the Columbia River region for the United States. Open
warfare between Spain and England was narrowly averted during the Nootka
Sound Controversy of 1789-1794, and again between Britain and the US in
the War of 1812, when a British warship seized American property in
Oregon.
In Fortune's a River, noted historian Barry Gough re-examines this
Imperial struggle for possession of the future British Columbia and
fully evokes its peculiar drama. It turned out the great powers were
reluctant conquerors in this area. Russia and Spain withdrew of their
own accord. Britain was in a position to dominate, but couldn't be
bothered. The US vaguely wished to fulfill its manifest destiny by
securing the Northwest Coast, but it was not a priority. In the end the
battle was carried on by private enterprise and individuals of vision.
Alexander Mackenzie established an overland route to the coast and with
his partners Simon Fraser and David Thompson, set up a network of fur
trading forts south to Oregon. US president Thomas Jefferson countered
by sending out the Lewis and Clark expedition to strengthen American
claims and an American entrepreneur, John Jacob Astor, established a
lonely US outpost at Astoria. Gough examines each of the players in this
territorial drama, bringing them fully to life and vividly recounting
their hardships and struggles. Fortune's a River is a major historical
work that reads like a wild west adventure.
