Otter 1

Otter was a maritime fur trading vessel. Between 1795 and 1798 it visited the Pacific. It was most famous for the rescue of Thomas Muir, a famous Scottish political exile. Muir was convicted of sedition before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh in 1793. He was sentenced and transported to the convict settlement at Sydney Cove for the space of fourteen years on 31 August 1793. Otter, commanded by Capt. Ebenezer Dorr, was fitted out at Boston, and despatched for Sydney. The Boston register of clearances, Treasury Department archives, dates her clearance 20 August 1795. She anchored in Sydney Harbour on 25 January 1796. On 11 February 1796, Muir escaped from the convict settlement on board Otter. Captain Dorr took Muir and other escaped political prisoners onboard and sailed to the Pacific Northwest Coast. There the Otter cruised for furs in the spring and summer of 1796. Some sources say that the ship struck a chain of sunken rocks near Nootka Sound, on the west coast of North America, and was wrecked. Every person on board perished except Mr. Muir and two sailors. This is unlikely. Other reliable sources state that when Muir parted from Otter at Nootka in June 1796, Otter continued north to Bucareli Bay, on the west of Prince of Wales Island and then sailed into the harbor of Monterey on 29 October 1796, the first United States vessel to enter a Californian port. The voyage of Otter across the Pacific was famously chronicled by Pierre François Péron.