Stranger Than Fiction: History’s Most Absurd True Stories, Deadpan Delivered

On June 15, 1859, the only shot fired in anger during a twelve-year international dispute killed a pig. That pig remained the only casualty in a military standoff that involved three warships, eighty-four cannons, and nearly five hundred soldiers from the United States and the British Empire. Last week, Admin, we examined the War of the Oaken Bucket. It appears that inanimate objects—or, in this case, livestock—have a history of provoking international incidents. They do. And much like that bucket, the pig wasn't the real cause. It was just the catalyst. The root of the problem was the 1846 Oregon Treaty. It drew the border along the 49th parallel, but when it got to the sea, the language became… imprecise.

Imprecise how? It said the border should run through "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island." The problem is, there are two channels there. Haro Strait and Rosario Strait. And San Juan Island is right between them. Exactly. So Britain claimed the island via the Rosario Strait boundary. The U.S. claimed it via the Haro Strait boundary. For about a decade, both just… coexisted. You had American settlers, and you had the British Hudson's Bay Company running a huge sheep ranch. That sounds like a stable arrangement. What could possibly go wrong? Well, an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar found a pig eating the potatoes in his garden.

This wasn't the first time. He shot the pig. Okay. So a farmer shoots a trespassing pig. Right. But the pig belonged to an Irishman named Charles Griffin, who was an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company. Griffin demanded one hundred dollars in compensation. Cutlar offered ten. The situation escalated. British authorities threatened to arrest Cutlar. And the American settlers responded to that threat. They did. They petitioned the U.S. military for protection. The man who answered the call was Captain George Pickett. Wait—the George Pickett? Of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg? The very same. He was stationed in the territory at the time. On July 27, 1859, he landed on San Juan Island with sixty-six soldiers from the 9th U.S.

Infantry, declaring it fully under United States jurisdiction. So the British response to this must have been… measured. Extremely. They dispatched three warships under the command of Captain Geoffrey Hornby. The situation very quickly spiraled. By mid-August, you had 461 Americans with 14 cannons dug in, and on the water, you had three British warships with over 2,000 men and more than seventy cannons pointed at them. All over a pig. All over a pig and a potato patch. The British governor of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, ordered Rear Admiral Robert Baynes to have his marines land and engage Pickett's men. And this is where the shooting starts. This is where it should have.

But Admiral Baynes refused the order. His reported response was that he would not "involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig." A rare moment of high-level de-escalation. A critical one. News eventually reached Washington and London, and officials on both sides were shocked at what their local commanders had done. They immediately began negotiations. So how do you resolve a standoff with hundreds of soldiers aiming cannons at each other on a tiny island? Carefully. Both sides agreed to a joint military occupation. Each nation would maintain a force of no more than one hundred men on the island until a final settlement could be reached. And that was the solution?

Just… stay there together? For twelve years, yes. The British Royal Marines set up a camp on the north side of the island, the Americans on the south. And by all accounts, they got along quite well. They visited each other's camps, celebrated holidays together. They reportedly became great friends. So the war over a pig became a twelve-year camping trip. A very polite, well-armed camping trip. The issue was finally resolved in 1871, when both nations agreed to international arbitration. Who arbitrates a dispute between the U.S. and Britain? They asked Kaiser Wilhelm the First of Germany to decide. He referred the question to a three-man commission, and after a year of deliberation, they ruled in favor of the American claim.

The border was set through the Haro Strait. On November 25, 1872, the Royal Marines withdrew, and the island became fully American territory. All without a single human death. Correct. The only blood spilled was the pig's. It's a perfect case study in how national pride can inflate a minor dispute into a geopolitical crisis. And how it all could have ended very, very differently if not for one admiral's refusal to start a war.