a base of operations he spent the summer trading for furs along the coasts of present-day British Columbia and Washington down to after having sailed as far south as Cape Lookout, having missed the Columbia River at Cape Disappointment. Meares later claimed that Maquinna, a chief of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people, sold him some land on the shore of Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound, in exchange for some pistols and trade goods, and that on this land some kind of building was erected. These claims would become a key point in Britain's position during the Nootka Crisis. Spain strongly disputed both claims, and the true facts of the matter have never been fully established. Maquinna himself later called Meares a liar and denied selling him any land. The land and building aside, there is no doubt that Meares' men, and a group of Chinese workers they brought, built the sloop North West America. It was launched in September 1788, the first non-Indigenous vessel built in the Pacific Northwest. In September Meares left, sailing the Felice Adventurero to China. The Iphigenia Nubiana and North West America wintered in the Hawaiian Islands. While on the island of Kauai, Meares picked up a Hawaiian chief or "prince of Attooi" (Kauai) by the name of Tianna (Kaʻiana – also spelled Tyaana & Tyanna), whom he took aboard his ship. He took Tianna to Guangzhou (Canton), China, where Meares found a Hawaiian woman by the name of Wynee, who had been left there by captain Charles William Barkley of the Imperial Eagle. Eventually, Meares returned Tianna to his homeland but Wynee died of illness on the voyage home. Wynee and Tianna are considered the first two Hawaiians to have traveled abroad. Later, Meares gained possession of Barkley's nautical gear and his journal. Barkley's wife, Frances Barkley, later wrote that Meares, "with the greatest effrontery, published and claimed the merit of my husband's discoveries therein contained, besides inventing lies of the most revolting nature tending to vilify the person he thus pilfered." During the winter of 1788–89 Meares was in Guangzhou (Canton), China, where he and others formed a partnership called the Associated Merchants Trading to the Northwest Coast of America. Plans were made for more ships to sail to the Pacific Northwest in 1789, including the Princess Royal, under Thomas Hudson, and the Argonaut under James Colnett. The consolidation of the fur trading companies of