Philip Hankin was penniless, starving and exhausted. He had tried his luck at prospecting for gold in the streams of the Cariboo region of British Columbia, but had failed miserably. Only a few months before, he had been a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy. Now here he was, in the summer of 1864, at rock bottom. Yet within five years he was the colonial secretary for the Colony of British Columbia and, for a few months in the summer of 1869, the Administrator of its entire government. How could this meteoric change in his circumstances have happened?