Two and a quarter centuries ago this week, when George Washington was president and France was plunging toward revolution, three small boats drifted around Point Wilson and into what we now know as Townsend Bay.

Aboard those boats were a dozen or so sea-weary Englishmen, led by a temperamental Capt. George Vancouver, whose naval orders were to explore and map this coastline and see if there was anything of value – including that legendary “Northwest Passage” across the top of the continent.

They found no gold or silver on these shores, and no convenient shortcut back to England. What they did find was a verdant and spectacular, but rather soggy, corner of the continent inhabited by native Salish people.

Their ship, Discovery, lay at anchor near what we now know as Contractors Point in Discovery Bay, where the crew worked at repairing sails and spars and provisioning with food and water following a monthlong voyage from Hawaii.

While that work continued, Vancouver and selected crew set off to explore in longboats, replicas of which remain moored today at the Point Hudson Marina.

“We rounded a low projecting point [Point Wilson],” Vancouver wrote in his journal on May 7, 1792.  “And though the fog prevented our seeing about us, yet there was no doubt of our having entered some other harbour or arm in the inlet [Admiralty] that took a southerly direction.”

They put ashore somewhere near what we know as Point Hudson, set a seine net off the beach, but caught little or nothing. Then, as the clouds lifted, they split into three parties to continue their explorations southward.

Over the month to come, Vancouver and company explored virtually every corner of Puget Sound, from Marrowstone Island to the bottom of Hood Canal to the Tacoma Narrows and beyond.

Along the way, they charted the coastline and assigned names to landmarks.

Some, like Port Townsend and Mount Rainier, got the names of relatively obscure English admirals and noblemen, most of whom never saw the landmarks that carry their names. Others, like Mount Baker and Puget Sound, were named for officers on Vancouver’s crew.

That exploration and meticulous mapping continued over the next three years – up the coast of British Columbia and Alaska. In 1795, the crew sailed home to England, where Vancouver set to work publishing his journals and maps.

Vancouver left more than place names on the landscape. Those journals and maps circulated across Europe and helped establish the British claim to the Puget Sound region. The Spanish sailors who passed through a few weeks before Vancouver didn’t sail south into Puget Sound. One wonders how history might have unfolded if they had made that right turn into these waters; we might all live in Port Quadra and this newspaper might be printed in Spanish.

Vancouver was no scientist, but his observations, and those of Archibald Menzies, the Scottish naturalist who accompanied him, provide a glimpse of the environment and wildlife prior to European intervention – a rudimentary database for natural historians.

But Vancouver himself never enjoyed the acclaim or celebrity of a Capt. Cook or other famed explorers. While his navigational skills and cartography were impressive, he was also a cranky skipper unpopular with his crew.

And by the time he returned to England in 1795, exploration was out of fashion; the world was more concerned with political revolutions and with the rise of a fellow named Napoleon.

Still, this is a good week to appreciate those hardy sailors of 1792 and their legacy, for better or worse, in this still soggy corner of the world.

(Ross Anderson is an occasional Leader contributor who lives at Cape George, overlooking Vancouver’s historic anchorage on Discovery Bay.)