George Vancouver in the context of "HMS Discovery (1789)"

Mount St. Helens (known as Lawetlat'la to the local Cowlitz people, and Loowit or Louwala-Clough to the Klickitat) is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It lies 52 miles (83 km) northeast of Portland, Oregon, and 98 miles (158 km) south of Seattle. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from that of the British diplomat Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who surveyed the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The Mount St. Helens major eruption of May 18, 1980, is currently the most economically destructive volcanic event in U.S. history. Fifty-seven people were killed and 200 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. A massive debris avalanche, triggered by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake, caused a lateral eruption that reduced the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 to 8,363 ft (2,950 to 2,549 m), leaving a 1-mile-wide (1.6 km) horseshoe-shaped crater. The debris avalanche was 0.6 cubic miles (2.5 km) in volume. The 1980 eruption disrupted terrestrial ecosystems near the volcano. By contrast, aquatic ecosystems in the area greatly benefited from the amounts of ash, allowing life to multiply rapidly. Six years after the eruption, most lakes in the area had returned to their normal state.

Nuu-chah-nulth (nuučaan̓uɫ), a.k.a. Nootka (/ˈnuːtkə/), is a Wakashan language in the Pacific Northwest of North America on the west coast of Vancouver Island, from Barkley Sound to Quatsino Sound in British Columbia by the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples. Nuu-chah-nulth is a Southern Wakashan language related to Nitinaht and Makah.

It is the first language of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast to have documentary written materials describing it. In the 1780s, Captains Vancouver, Quadra, and other European explorers and traders frequented Nootka Sound and the other Nuu-chah-nulth communities, making reports of their voyages. From 1803 to 1805 John R. Jewitt, an English blacksmith, was held captive by chief Maquinna at Nootka Sound. He made an effort to learn the language, and in 1815 published a memoir with a brief glossary of its terms.

The Presidio of Monterey (POM), located in Monterey, California, is an active US Army installation with historic ties to the Spanish colonial era. It is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI-FLC). It is the last presidio in California to have an active military installation.

Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens (1 March 1753 – 19 February 1839), was a British diplomat. He was Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia from 1783 to 1788, appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland and a member of the Privy Council (Great Britain & Ireland) in 1787, serving in the former position until 1789. He was Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain from 1790 to 1794.

He was a friend of explorer George Vancouver, who named Mount St. Helens in what is now the U.S. state of Washington after him.

Indian Arm (Halkomelem: səl̓ilw̓ət) is a steep-sided glacial fjord in southwestern British Columbia. Formed during the last Ice Age, it extends due north from Burrard Inlet, between the communities of Belcarra (to the east) and the District of North Vancouver (to the west), then on into mountainous wilderness. The name səl̓ilw̓ət is the Halkomelem word for the inlet itself, and from which the Tsleil-Waututh, Halkomelem 'people of the inlet' derive their name. Later Burrard Inlet and the opening of Indian Arm was mapped by Captain George Vancouver and fully explored days later by Dionisio Alcalá Galiano in June 1792.

Union was constructed at Barnstable, Massachusetts, later purchased by Edmund Fanning, who refitted and registered the vessel in New York under ownership of Fanning & Coles shipping company partnership.

Edmund Fanning was a seal skin and merchant trader who'd read the expedition journal of English navigator George Vancouver. Vancouver's journal was of particular interest to Fanning as Vancouver in 1791 had landed on the coast of New Holland at a place named King George the Third's Sound. Vancouver wrote about that region being rich with fur seals. On the strength of that information, Fanning made preparations to send Union there on a seal hunting expedition to gather 20,000 skins. His plan was to sell the skins in Canton for wares to bring back to New York.