ABSTRACT
In August 1784, Cook veteran approached Banks with schemes for an expedition to the north-west coast of America. The north-west coast of America was a great distance from Europe and India, and difficult to reach. Since Bering's voyages in the first half of the eighteenth century, Russian traders had been gathering the luxuriant furs of the sea otter off the Pacific coasts of Siberia, and the string of islands stretching through the Kurils and Aleutians to Alaska. From his conversations with Thunberg Banks believed that the Japanese market might be opened to British traders. Great stretches of the north Pacific remained unexplored, and even the sounds in the vicinity of Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound had not been fully investigated by the great navigator. To provide overall supervision of the Etches' concerns in the north Pacific, it was decided that John, brother of Richard Cadman Etches, should go with the Prince of Wales as supercargo.
