William Pope McArthur William Pope McArthur ( 2 April 1814 – 23 December 1850 ) was an American naval officer and hydrologist who was involved in the first surveys of the Pacific Coast for the U . S . Coast and Geodetic Survey . Early life . McArthur was born in Ste . Genevieve , Missouri to John and Mary Linn McArthur . McArthur ' s uncle , Dr . Lewis F . Linn was U . S . Senator for Missouri . At Linn ' s request McArthur was appointed Midshipman in the U . S . Navy on 11 February 1832 . In 1837 he attended the Naval School at Norfolk , Virginia . During the Second Seminole War ( 1837 – 1838 ) he was promoted to the temporary rank of Lieutenant and placed in command of a small craft . Among the passengers was future American Civil War General Joseph E . Johnston who accompanied the vessel as a civilian topographical engineer . McArthur was wounded in both legs at Jupiter , Florida . While one musket ball was pulled from one leg , the ball remained in the other leg . He was sent to the Naval Hospital in Norfolk where he was to court and marry the Mary Stone Young , the daughter of the Superintendent of the Hospital . Among their children is Lewis Linn McArthur , an Oregon Supreme Court Justice . In 1840 he began a survey of the Gulf Of Mexico aboard the brig " Consort " . Survey of the Pacific Coast . On 27 October 1848 A . D . Bache , Superintendent U . S . Coast Survey , instructed him to go to San Francisco , California to begin " the survey of the Western Coast of the United States . " After sailing from New York McArthur was delayed in Panama by the influx of settlers in the California Gold Rush . In Panama , McArthur was asked to captain a former coal storage ship to San Francisco . The " von Humboldt " left Panama on 21 May 1849 and took 102 days to arrive at San Francisco , the first 46 of which were spent getting to the Mexican port of Acapulco . Among the four hundred passengers on " von Humboldt " were Collis P . Huntington , the future president of the Southern Pacific Railroad and San Francisco Society portrait painter Stephen W . Shaw . In September 1849 , Lieutenant Commander McArthur was placed in command of the US survey schooner " Ewing " . The survey faced huge problems including a mutiny when crew members rowing into the city from the " Ewing " threw an officer overboard in an attempt to desert to flee to the gold fields . Faced with rainy weather in the early survey of Mare Island he wintered in Hawaii meeting the Hawai ' ian monarch King Kamehameha III and returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1850 with the coastal survey beginning of northern California on 1850 - 04 - 03 and continued up to the mouth of the Columbia River . He returned to San Francisco in September . Cape Disappointment and Cape Flattery Lighthouses . In 1848 Congress had appropriated funds for two lighthouses in the act creating the Oregon Territory . McArthur was to recommend placing one at Cape Disappointment on the Columbia and one at Cape Flattery at the entrance to Puget Sound . In his report McArthur wrote : The greatly increasing commerce of Oregon demands that these improvements be made immediately … Within the last eighteen months more vessels have crossed the Columbia river bar than had crossed it , perhaps , in all time past . Oregon Territory . McArthur and some of his ship mates were quite taken with Oregon and the Willamette Valley , he wrote : The climate is agreeable and healthy . The water is not inferior to any in the world . The face of the country is too uneven to permit as general cultivation , still it will and must soon become a great agricultural and stock growing country . The scenery is beautiful and in some places and some points of view the grandest that the eye ever beheld . Lieutenant Blunt who accompanied him on the expedition even made a land claim on behalf of himself , McArthur and another shipmate Lieutenant Bartlett . McArthur ' s uncle , Senator Linn , along with Senator Thomas Hart Benton , had been an advocate of American expansion in the West . Death . McArthur was not to survive the voyage ; he became ill with dysentery and died . First buried in Panama , his body was later disinterred and he was reburied on Mare Island , California . Ships and Placenames . McArthur ' s name is applied to several ships and placenames .