For the practical navigator there remained only one course, and that course became the one aim, the consuming ambition of Vancouver's life--to destroy the {266} last vestige of the myth of a Northeast Passage; to explore the northwest coast of America so thoroughly there would not remain a single unknown inlet that could be used as a possible prop for the schoolmen's theories, to penetrate every inlet from California to Alaska--mainland and island; to demonstrate that not one possible opening led to the Atlantic. This was to be the object of Vancouver's life, and he carried it out with a thoroughness that left nothing for subsequent explorers to do; but he died before the record of his voyages had been given to the world. The two ships, _Discovery_ and _Chatham_, with a supply ship, the _Daedalus_, to follow later, were fitted out for long and thorough work. Vancouver's vessel, the _Discovery_, carried twenty guns with a crew of a hundred men. The tender, _Chatham_, under Broughton, had ten guns and forty-five men. With Vancouver went Menzies, and Puget, and Baker, and Johnstone--names that were to become place marks on the Pacific. The _Discovery_ and _Chatham_ left England in the spring of 1791. A year later found them cutting the waves from Hawaii for America, the New Albion of Drake's discovery, forgotten by England until Spain's activity stimulated memory of the pirate voyage. A swashing swell met the ships as they neared America. Phosphorescent lights blue as sulphur flame slimed the sea in a trail of rippling fire; and a land bird, washed out by the waves, told of New Albion's shore. {267} For the first two weeks of April, the _Discovery_ and _Chatham_ had driven under cloud of sail and sunny skies; but on the 16th, just when the white fret of reefs ahead forewarned land, heavy weather settled over the ships. To the fore, bare, majestic, compact as a wall, the coast of New Albion towered out of the surf near Mendocino. Cheers went up from the lookout for the landfall of Francis Drake's discovery. Then torrents of rain washed out surf and shore. The hurricane gales, that had driven all other navigators out to sea from this coast, now lashed Vancouver. Such smashing seas swept over decks, that masts, sails, railings, were wrenched away.