On April 14, 1858, as the Black community were celebrating the release of fugitive slave Archy Lee at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in San Francisco, Jeremiah Nagle, captain of the steamship Commodore, arrived at the meeting. It is reported that Nagle came well-prepared to the meeting with maps of Vancouver Island and a letter from “a gentleman in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company of undoubted veracity” inviting the Black community to come to the Colony of Vancouver Island and giving details about the colony. The Pioneer Committee arrived in Victoria on April 25, 1858.
