James Charles Stuart Strange (8 August 1753 – 6 October 1840) was a British officer of the East India Company, one of the first maritime fur traders, a banker, and a Member of Parliament.
James Charles Stuart Strange was born on 8 August 1753 in London, England, United Kingdom.
[3] From late 1785 to early 1787 he undertook a voyage to the Pacific Northwest Coast, hoping to be the first to capitalize on the nascent maritime fur trade.
[3] In 1785 while returning to India after marrying Margaret Durham, Strange read newly published accounts of the third voyage of Captain Cook,[5] including news of the large profits made by his crew in Guangzhou (Canton), China, selling sea otter furs they had obtained at Nootka Sound on the Pacific Northwest Coast.
[6] Captain James King, who had helped take over after the death of Cook, wrote of the possible profits to be made selling Northwest Coast furs in China.
[6] Overall the cost of fitting out the expedition rose to the point where only a major success in fur trading could possibly pay back investments, let alone make a profit.
As far as the EIC was concerned, Strange was a company servant in command of a company-sanctioned, private project that, it was hoped, would lead not only to the discovery of new channels of commerce but also forestall rival attempts.
This included instructions to return via Bering Strait, the Arctic Ocean as far as the North Pole, then Kamchatka, then China.
Despite these instructions, the actual voyage was a commercial fur-trading venture no different from other early maritime fur trading expeditions to the Northwest Coast.
Unable to acquire goods on the Malabar Coast for trade in Macau, Strange sailed directly for the Pacific Northwest.
[6] The Experiment was holed while still in the Indian Ocean, forcing a stop at Batavia (now Jakarta) for repairs, costing time and money.
[1] After a seven-month voyage the expedition arrived on the coast of Vancouver Island on 25 June 1786, late in the trading season.
Alexander Walker, an ensign of the Bombay Army and later Governor of Saint Helena, who had shipped aboard the Experiment, spent a great deal of time with the Nuu-chah-nulth.
He was astonished to learn that the British fur trader James Hanna had been at Nootka Sound a year before.
[6] Both Walker and Strange were confused about the rank of Maquinna and Callicum and generally about the Nuu-chah-nulth's system of social hierarchy.
Still, Walker's descriptions of the Nuu-chah-nulth are valuable as the earliest detailed documentation, other than Captain Cook's 1778 journal, since no first-hand account of Hanna's 1785 stay at Nootka Sound survives.
Strange's discovery of Queen Charlotte Strait revived speculation about Bartolome de Fonte's alleged Northwest Passage.
[12][7] Furs were not plentiful in this area, so Strange sailed north, making for Prince William Sound in Alaska, as Cook had done.
[1] Although his venture was a financial disaster, Strange was one of the first trader-explorers working on Pacific Northwest Coast, along with James Hanna, Charles William Barkley, and George Dixon.
[8] In 1796 James Strange, a Whig, became a Member of Parliament (MP) as a guest of John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset, a silent supporter of William Pitt's administration.
[14] Strange was an inconspicuous MP, speaking only once, arguing against severity toward James Trotter, an election offender.
[22] A fictional account of Strange, portrayed by Jonathan Pryce, appears in the television show Taboo on BBC One and FX.