Category: Pacific Fur Company
Categories: British North America | British America | Fur Trade
Pacific Fur Company
The Pacific Fur Company (PFC) was an American fur trade venture wholly owned and funded by John Jacob Astor that functioned from 1810 to 1813. It was based in the Pacific Northwest, an area contested over the decades between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Spanish Empire, the United States of America and the Russian Empire.
In 1810 Mackay, along with several other retired NWC personnel, such as Donald McKenzie and Duncan McDougall, signed a preliminary agreement with the American businessman John Jacob Astor. Astor intended to establish a new fur trading company to operate in the Columbia River region. MacKay, McKenzie, and McDougall recruited additional workers in Montreal for Astor's company, the Pacific Fur Company.
MacKay enlisted a number of people, including Gabriel Franchère, David Stuart, Robert Stuart, and MacKay's own son Thomas, who was 13 at the time. All of these people joined MacKay in his 1811 sea voyage to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Tonquin. During the voyage, enmity developed between MacKay and Jonathan Thorn, captain of the Tonquin. Thorn tried to maroon MacKay and others at the Falkland Islands.
Along with Alexander Ross, MacKay was instrumental in founding Fort Astoria in early 1811. MacKay led a trading and exploring party up the Columbia River in May 1811. Then in June 1811 he sailed as supercargo on the Tonquin, and led an expedition that attempted to acquire furs from natives along the coast to the north. In a conflict in 1811 with the indigenous people of Clayoquot Sound, the Tonquin was attacked and blown up. Nearly everyone on board, including Alexander MacKay, was killed.
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