As one of the early maritime fur traders he rescued John R. Jewitt, who had been enslaved by the Nuu-chah-nulth chief Maquinna.
Hill was the first American to live in Japan, almost met Lewis and Clark near Fort Clatsop and received a letter from them, entertained King Kamehameha of the Hawaiian Kingdom on his ship, was involved in the Chilean War of Independence, was imprisoned by the British during the War of 1812, rescued victims of Malayan pirates, and much else.
[1] Accounts of Hill by officers serving under him and by other captains consistently describe him as a vicious and unstable tyrant.
[2][3] Samuel Hill was born on February 20, 1777, in the small port town of Machias, Maine, during the American Revolutionary War.
Hill's brutal and tyrannical behavior on the voyage was documented in the journals of several of his crew members and other fur trading captains.
He kept a young Native Hawaiian girl as a sex slave, frequently taking her on one of the ship's boats for days at a time.
His first mate and supercargo both wrote about the difficulties and general discontent this caused among the crew, and expressed pity for the "poor innocent girl".
In June 1805, in Haida Gwaii, the Lydia met two other vessels owned by Lyman and Associates, the Atahualpa and Vancouver.
Some personnel were exchanged and all but Hill agreed that one ship should take all the furs collected and leave the coast.
His rescue of Jewitt and Thompson made him a hero in Boston, more than offsetting the condemning reports of Hurd and Brown.
In 1822 the logkeeper of the trading vessel Rob Roy wrote that Chief Shakes intended to seize the first ship he could in revenge for the murder of his wife's father by Captain Hill of the Otter.