Читать книгу The Ship, the Saint, and the Sailor - Bradley G. Stevens - Страница 7

INTRODUCTION

ON A SPRING DAY IN 1861, the Kad’yak set sail from Kodiak, Alaska, bound for San Francisco with a shipload of ice. Within a few miles from shore, it struck a rock, foundered, and was abandoned. But it didn’t sink. Now a wooden-hulled iceberg, it floated for four days before finally grounding on a reef in Icon Bay, on Spruce Island. That would have been the end of the story but for one detail. Captain Illarion Arkhimandritov, skipper of the Kad’yak, had promised to hold a service for Father Herman (now known as Saint Herman of the Russian Orthodox Church) before leaving Kodiak, but the captain did not keep his word. And the Kad’yak had somehow drifted through a maze of jagged reefs only to sink directly in front of Father Herman’s grave, with the top of the mast sticking out of the water, forming the Russian Orthodox cross—a public rebuke that would forever remind the captain of his perfidy and haunt the site for over a hundred years.

In 2003, after years of painstaking research, I led a team of volunteer divers to discover the wreck of the Kad’yak. This is the story about the amazing history of the Kad’yak and how it sank carrying Alaska’s most important export for two decades in the mid-nineteenth century—ice. Through painstaking research of historical Russian documents and deep analysis of the complicated and confusing log of the skipper who surveyed the wreck site, this is a story of the incredible discovery of a shipwreck over 140 years old, and how I had found it with “friends” who later tried to claim ownership of the shipwreck and credit for its discovery. It is a story about the personal, ethical, and legal struggles to keep the Kad’yak safely preserved for the Alaskan people and to illuminate its historical significance and linkage with Alaska Native knowledge.

A true tale of adventure in historical and modern-day Alaska told by a scientist who specializes in underwater research, the story ends with another tragic sinking of the Big Valley, the Bering Sea crab boat that served as dive tender and headquarters for the Kad’yak expedition, along with its captain and crew, in January 2005.

Come with me, if only briefly, to a faraway place and time. To the real Alaska that is not that different from the imaginary one that lurks in our collective subconscious. Wild, snow-covered in winter, and emerald green in summer, Kodiak Island is central to this story. Approaching it from the fog, Alaska’s Emerald Isle suddenly appears as the mists of time part to reveal verdant hillsides reaching up to snow-capped mountains.