William Pope McArthur
Encyclopedia
William Pope McArthur was an American naval
officer and hydrologist who was involved in the first surveys of the Pacific Coast
for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
to John and Mary Linn McArthur. McArthur's uncle, Dr. Lewis F. Linn was U.S. Senator
for Missouri
. At Linn's request McArthur was appointed Midshipman
in the U.S. Navy on 11 February 1832. In 1837 he attended the Naval School at Norfolk, Virginia
.
During the Second Seminole War
(1837–1838) he was promoted to the temporary rank of Lieutenant
and placed in command of a small craft. Among the passengers was future American Civil War
General Joseph E. Johnston
who accompanied the vessel as a civilian topographical engineer.
McArthur was wounded in both legs at Jupiter, Florida
. While one musket ball was pulled from one leg, the ball remained in the other leg.
He was sent to the Naval Hospital in Norfolk where he was to court and marry the Mary Stone Young, the daughter of the Superintendent of the Hospital. Among their children is Lewis Linn McArthur
, an Oregon Supreme Court
Justice.
In 1840 he began a survey of the Gulf Of Mexico
aboard the brig Consort.
On 27 October 1848 A.D. Bache
, Superintendent U.S. Coast Survey, instructed him to go to San Francisco, California
to begin "the survey of the Western Coast of the United States."
After sailing from New York McArthur was delayed in Panama by the influx of settlers in the California Gold Rush
. In Panama, McArthur was asked to captain a former coal storage ship to San Francisco. The von Humboldt left Panama on 21 May 1849 and took 102 days to arrive at San Francisco, the first 46 of which were spent getting to the Mexican port of Acapulco. Among the four hundred passengers on von Humboldt were Collis P. Huntington
, the future president of the Southern Pacific Railroad
and San Francisco Society portrait painter Stephen W. Shaw
.
In September 1849, Lieutenant Commander
McArthur was placed in command of the US survey schooner Ewing. The survey faced huge problems including a mutiny when crew members rowing into the city from the Ewing threw an officer overboard in an attempt to desert to flee to the gold fields.
Faced with rainy weather in the early survey of Mare Island
he wintered in Hawaii
meeting the Hawai'ian monarch King Kamehameha III
and returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1850 with the coastal survey beginning of northern California on 1850-04-03 and continued up to the mouth of the Columbia River
.
He returned to San Francisco in September.
. McArthur was to recommend placing one at Cape Disappointment
on the Columbia and one at Cape Flattery
at the entrance to Puget Sound
. In his report McArthur wrote:
, he wrote:
on behalf of himself, McArthur and another shipmate Lieutenant Bartlett. McArthur's uncle, Senator Linn, along with Senator Thomas Hart Benton
, had been an advocate of American expansion
in the West.
and died. First buried in Tobago, his body was later disinterred and he was reburied on Mare Island.
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
officer and hydrologist who was involved in the first surveys of the Pacific Coast
Pacific Coast
A country's Pacific coast is the part of its coast bordering the Pacific Ocean.-The Americas:Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western border.* Geography of Canada* Geography of Chile* Geography of Colombia...
for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Early life
McArthur was born in Ste. Genevieve, MissouriSte. Genevieve, Missouri
Ste. Genevieve is a city in and the county seat of Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri, United States. The population was 11,654 at the 2000 census...
to John and Mary Linn McArthur. McArthur's uncle, Dr. Lewis F. Linn was U.S. Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
for Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
. At Linn's request McArthur was appointed Midshipman
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer cadet, or a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Kenya...
in the U.S. Navy on 11 February 1832. In 1837 he attended the Naval School at Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
.
During the Second Seminole War
Second Seminole War
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars...
(1837–1838) he was promoted to the temporary rank of Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
and placed in command of a small craft. Among the passengers was future American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
General Joseph E. Johnston
Joseph E. Johnston
Joseph Eggleston Johnston was a career U.S. Army officer, serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars, and was also one of the most senior general officers in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
who accompanied the vessel as a civilian topographical engineer.
McArthur was wounded in both legs at Jupiter, Florida
Jupiter, Florida
Jupiter is a town located in Palm Beach County, Florida. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 39,328. The estimate population for 2009 is 50,606. As of 2006, the population had grown to 50,028, according to the University of Florida, Bureau of Economic and Business Research....
. While one musket ball was pulled from one leg, the ball remained in the other leg.
He was sent to the Naval Hospital in Norfolk where he was to court and marry the Mary Stone Young, the daughter of the Superintendent of the Hospital. Among their children is Lewis Linn McArthur
Lewis Linn McArthur
Lewis Linn McArthur was an American newspaper publisher and judge in the state of Oregon. He was an Oregon Supreme Court associate justice and the father of Lewis A. McArthur, the first editor of the Oregon Geographic Names publications. He served on the court from 1870 to 1878...
, an Oregon Supreme Court
Oregon Supreme Court
The Oregon Supreme Court is the highest state court in the U.S. state of Oregon. The only court that may reverse or modify a decision of the Oregon Supreme Court is the Supreme Court of the United States. The OSC holds court at the Oregon Supreme Court Building in Salem, Oregon, near the capitol...
Justice.
In 1840 he began a survey of the Gulf Of Mexico
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...
aboard the brig Consort.
Survey of the Pacific Coast
Alexander Dallas Bache
Alexander Dallas Bache was an American physicist, scientist and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey mapping of the United States coastline.-Biography:...
, Superintendent U.S. Coast Survey, instructed him to go to San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
to begin "the survey of the Western Coast of the United States."
After sailing from New York McArthur was delayed in Panama by the influx of settlers in the California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
. In Panama, McArthur was asked to captain a former coal storage ship to San Francisco. The von Humboldt left Panama on 21 May 1849 and took 102 days to arrive at San Francisco, the first 46 of which were spent getting to the Mexican port of Acapulco. Among the four hundred passengers on von Humboldt were Collis P. Huntington
Collis P. Huntington
Collis Potter Huntington was one of the Big Four of western railroading who built the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad...
, the future president of the Southern Pacific Railroad
Southern Pacific Railroad
The Southern Pacific Transportation Company , earlier Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Company, and usually simply called the Southern Pacific or Espee, was an American railroad....
and San Francisco Society portrait painter Stephen W. Shaw
Stephen William Shaw
Stephen William Shaw was a California '49er and portrait painter who helped discover and name Humboldt Bay and introduced viticulture to Sonoma County by 1864.-Early life:...
.
In September 1849, Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander...
McArthur was placed in command of the US survey schooner Ewing. The survey faced huge problems including a mutiny when crew members rowing into the city from the Ewing threw an officer overboard in an attempt to desert to flee to the gold fields.
Faced with rainy weather in the early survey of Mare Island
Mare Island
Mare Island is a peninsula in the United States alongside the city of Vallejo, California, about northeast of San Francisco. The Napa River forms its eastern side as it enters the Carquinez Strait juncture with the east side of San Pablo Bay. Mare Island is considered a peninsula because no full...
he wintered in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
meeting the Hawai'ian monarch King Kamehameha III
Kamehameha III
Kamehameha III was the King of Hawaii from 1825 to 1854. His full Hawaiian name was Keaweaweula Kiwalao Kauikeaouli Kaleiopapa and then lengthened to Keaweaweula Kiwalao Kauikeaouli Kaleiopapa Kalani Waiakua Kalanikau Iokikilo Kiwalao i ke kapu Kamehameha when he ascended the throne.Under his...
and returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1850 with the coastal survey beginning of northern California on 1850-04-03 and continued up to the mouth of the Columbia River
Columbia River
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state...
.
He returned to San Francisco in September.
Cape Disappointment and Cape Flattery Lighthouses
In 1848 Congress had appropriated funds for two lighthouses in the act creating the Oregon TerritoryOregon Territory
The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. Originally claimed by several countries , the region was...
. McArthur was to recommend placing one at Cape Disappointment
Cape Disappointment Lighthouse
The Cape Disappointment Light is a lighthouse on Cape Disappointment near the mouth of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington.- History :...
on the Columbia and one at Cape Flattery
Cape Flattery Lighthouse
Cape Flattery Lighthouse was built in 1854 based on the design by Ammi B. Young. Its first light was displayed from a first-order lens in 1857 and was Washington Territory's third lighthouse. The house with a 65 foot tower from the center still stands. A fog signal building with a 12-inch steam...
at the entrance to Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
. In his report McArthur wrote:
The greatly increasing commerce of Oregon demands that these improvements be made immediately… Within the last eighteen months more vessels have crossed the Columbia river barColumbia BarThe Columbia Bar is a system of bars and shoals at the mouth of the Columbia River spanning the US states of Oregon and Washington. The bar is about wide and long....
than had crossed it, perhaps, in all time past.
Oregon Territory
McArthur and some of his ship mates were quite taken with Oregon and the Willamette ValleyWillamette Valley
The Willamette Valley is the most populated region in the state of Oregon of the United States. Located in the state's northwest, the region is surrounded by tall mountain ranges to the east, west and south and the valley's floor is broad, flat and fertile because of Ice Age conditions...
, he wrote:
The climate is agreeable and healthy. The water is not inferior to any in the world. The face of the country is too uneven to permit as general cultivation, still it will and must soon become a great agricultural and stock growing country. The scenery is beautiful and in some places and some points of view the grandest that the eye ever beheld.Lieutenant Blunt who accompanied him on the expedition even made a land claim
Homestead Act
A homestead act is one of three United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title to an area called a "homestead" – typically 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River....
on behalf of himself, McArthur and another shipmate Lieutenant Bartlett. McArthur's uncle, Senator Linn, along with Senator Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton (senator)
Thomas Hart Benton , nicknamed "Old Bullion", was a U.S. Senator from Missouri and a staunch advocate of westward expansion of the United States. He served in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, becoming the first member of that body to serve five terms...
, had been an advocate of American expansion
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
in the West.
Death
McArthur was not to survive the voyage; he became ill with dysenteryDysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
and died. First buried in Tobago, his body was later disinterred and he was reburied on Mare Island.
Ships and Placenames
McArthur's name is applied to several ships and placenames.- McArthur, a schoonerSchoonerA schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
launched in 1876 - USC&GS McArthurUSC&GS McArthur (1874)The first USC&GS McArthur, originally USCS McArthur, was a steamer that served as a survey ship in the United States Coast Survey from 1876 to 1878 and in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1878 to 1915....
, a survey ship in service in the United States Coast Survey from 1876 to 1878 and in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1878 to 1915 - SS William P. Mcarthur, a Liberty shipLiberty shipLiberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
launched in 1942 - USC&GS McArthur (MSS 22), later NOAAS McArthur (S 330)NOAAS McArthur (S 330)NOAAS McArthur , originally the second USC&GS McArthur , was a survey ship in service with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1966 to 1970 and with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1970 to 2003.-Construction and commissioning:McArthur was laid down on 15 July...
, a survey ship in service the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1966 to 1970 and in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationNational Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...
from 1970 to 2003, since 2006 a BlackwaterBlackwater WorldwideXe Services LLC, better known by its former names, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide, is a private military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark.. Xe is currently the largest of the U.S. State Department's three private security contractors...
vessel - NOAAS McArthur II (R 330)NOAAS McArthur II (R 330)NOAAS McArthur II is an oceanographic research ship in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration service since 2003.-Construction, acquisition, and commissioning:...
, an oceanographicOceanographyOceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
research ship in service in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2003 - McArthur Peak (Alaska) - a 2239 feet (682.4 m) mountain on Kuiu IslandKuiu IslandKuiu Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska. It lies between Kupreanof Island, to its east, and Baranof Island, to its west. The island is long, and 10–23 km wide. It is nearly cut in two by Affleck Canal. It has of land area, making it the 15th largest...
in Alaska - McArthur Reef, a reef in the Sumner StraitSumner StraitSumner Strait is a strait in the Alexander Archipelago in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is about long and wide, extending from the mouth of the Stikine River to Iphigenia Bay on the Gulf of Alaska, separating Mitkof Island, Kupreanof Island, and Kuiu Island on the north...
off Clarence StraitClarence StraitClarence Strait, originally Duke of Clarence Strait, is a strait in southeastern Alaska, in the United States in the Alexander Archipelago. The strait separates Prince of Wales Island, on the west side, from Revillagigedo Island and Annette Island, on the east side...
in Alaska