William Henry McNeill (7 July 1803 – 4 September 1875) was an American marine captain and explorer, best known for his 1830 expedition as the captain of the brig Llama (also spelled Lama), which sailed from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 12,000 miles (19,000 km) around Cape Horn, to the Pacific Northwest on a maritime fur trade expedition.
The Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company for the region, Roderick Finlayson, purchased the Llama and its cargo in Honolulu in 1832 and retained McNeill as captain.
[3]: 268 In 1834 John McLoughlin had McNeill take Lama to Makah territory to rescue three Japanese sailors whose vessel, the Hojunmaru, had wrecked near Cape Flattery after being damaged in a storm near Japan and drifting across the ocean for over a year, with all but three of the crew dying of scurvy.
[4] In 1836, the Hudson's Bay Company vessel, S.S. Beaver, the first steamship on the Pacific Northwest Coast, arrived at Fort Vancouver.
[5]: 392 On 11 May 1841, along with Alexander Caulfield Anderson, McNeill greeted United States Navy Lt. Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition when Wilkes anchored his sailing ship, USS Porpoise in southern Puget Sound near Fort Nisqually, a Hudson's Bay Company trading post near the present town of Dupont, Washington.