The Sound of Sea Otters: Nootka Sound and the Maritime Fur Trade
By Margaret E. Calloway
Length3h 41m
About this audiobook
Six canoes leave Yuquot at a dawn the color of cold iron. In the bow of the first kneels a harpooner who has fasted, bathed in cold water and scrubbed his skin raw with hemlock, because the right to that place in the canoe came with his family's name and a whale is never taken lightly. His weapon is a yew shaft as long as two tall men, tipped with ground mussel shell. Behind him ride the sealskin floats that will drag at a gray whale until it tires.
This was the Nuu-chah-nulth coast, the west side of what is now Vancouver Island, where the Mowachaht, Ahousaht, Hesquiaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and their neighbors each held their own chiefs, territories and rights to fishing and whaling grounds. In 1778 Captain James Cook's ships anchored in Nootka Sound, and the sea otter pelts his crews traded for later sold in Canton for sums that sent other captains racing back.
They came to bargain with Maquinna, the Mowachaht chief at Yuquot, and a decade after Cook his harbor brought Spain and Britain to the edge of war in the Nootka Crisis of 1789-1790. The narrative runs from that crisis through the conventions and the Spanish withdrawal to 1803, when Maquinna's people seized the American trading ship Boston, killed all but two of her crew, and held her armorer, John Jewitt, captive for more than two years. It ends with the long struggle for land, and with Yuquot today.
Cook's men had come for furs. They found a coast where every beach, channel and whaling ground already belonged to someone.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length3 hrs 41 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 19, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1: The Whale Road
2Chapter 2: A World Made of Cedar
3Chapter 3: The Ships That Came for the Sky
4Chapter 4: The Sea Otter Road to Canton
5Chapter 5: Maquinna of Yuquot
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6Chapter 6: The Nootka Crisis, 1789-1790
7Chapter 7: The Convention and the Withdrawal
8Chapter 8: The Boston and the Breaking of the Peace
9Chapter 9: Jewitt's Years
10Chapter 10: Fort and Famine
11Chapter 11: The Long Struggle for Land
12Chapter 12: Yuquot, Present Day
13About the Author
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