- William Pope McArthur
Infobox Military Person
name= William Pope McArthur
caption=
born=1814-04-02
died=1850-12-23
placeofbirth=Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
placeofdeath= At sea
nickname=
allegiance=
branch=United States Navy
serviceyears= 1832 - 1850
rank=Lieutenant Commander
unit=U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey
commands= USS "Consort"
US survey schooner "Ewing"
battles=Second Seminole War
awards=
relations=
laterwork=William Pope McArthur (
1814-04-02 –1850-12-23 ) was an American naval officer andhydrologist who was involved in the first surveys of thePacific Coast for theU.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey .Early life
McArthur was born in
Ste. Genevieve, Missouri to John and Mary Linn McArthur. McArthur's uncle, Dr. Lewis F. Linn was U.S. Senator forMissouri . At Linn's request McArthur was appointedMidshipman in theU.S. Navy on1832-02-11 . In 1837 he attended the Naval School atNorfolk, Virginia .During the
Second Seminole War (1837 - 1838) he was promoted to the temporary rank ofLieutenant and placed in command of a small craft. Among the passengers was futureAmerican Civil War GeneralJoseph E. Johnston who accompanied the vessel as a civilian topographical engineer.McArthur, Lewis [http://www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/mcarthur_pacificcoast.html "Pacific Coast Survey of 1849 and 1850"] Private history 1915 NOAA.gov retrieved2007-12-26 ]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 , anOregon Supreme Court Justice.In 1840 he began a survey of the
Gulf Of Mexico aboard the brig " Consort".urvey of the Pacific Coast
On
1848-10-27 A.D. Bache, Superintendent U.S. Coast Survey, instructed him to go toSan Francisco, California to begin "the 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 . InTobago McArthur was asked to captain the chartered coal ship "Humboldt" to San Francisco aroundCape Horn . Among the passengers on the ship wasCollis P. Huntington , the future president of theSouthern Pacific Railroad .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. [Gudde, Dr. Erwin G. [http://www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/ewingmutiny.html "Mutiny on the Ewing"] The JOURNAL, Coast and Geodetic Survey,1951-12-01 , Number 4 retrieved2008-01-02 ]Faced with rainy weather in the early survey of
Mare Island he wintered inHawaii 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 on1850-04-03 and continued up to the mouth of theColumbia River .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 theOregon Territory . McArthur was to recommend placing one at Cape Disappointment on the Columbia and one at Cape Flattery at the entrance toPuget Sound . 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 bar than had crossed it, perhaps, in all time past. [Hannable. William [http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5622 Historylink.org]
2003-12-06 retrieved2008-01-02 ]Oregon Territory
McArthur and some of his ship mates were quite taken with Oregon and the
Willamette Valley , 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 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. [ Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo "The Pacific Northwest - An Interpretive History" University of Nebraska Press 1989 1996 Rev. and enl. ed. p. 92 ISBN 0-8032-92287]Death
McArthur was not to survive the voyage; he became ill with
dysentery and died. First buried in Tobago, his body was later disinterred and he was reburied on Mare Island.hips and Placenames
McArthur's name is applied to several ships and placenames.
*
McArthur (schooner) - launched 1876
*SS William P. McArthur -Liberty ship launched in 1942
*McArthur I - NOAA ship now aBlackwater vessel
*McArthur II - NOAA ship
*McArthur Peak (Alaska) - convert|2239|ft|m|sing=on mountain onKuiu Island in Alaska
*McArthur Reef - In Sumner Strait offClarence Strait References
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