Читать книгу The Ship, the Saint, and the Sailor - Bradley G. Stevens - Страница 8

CHAPTER 1

THE

SHIP

AND THE

SAILOR

A FRESH BREEZE BLEW IN FROM the southwest on the morning of March 30, 1860. Wind from that direction was usually a steady 15 to 20 knots; it was good weather for sailing, especially if one’s course was southeast on a broad reach, with the wind off the starboard beam. After a long, arduous winter with constant storms blowing in off the Gulf of Alaska, bringing nearly constant wind and rain to the island, it was a refreshing change. Captain Illarion Arkhimandritov looked at the telltales in his rigging, sails flapping gently, as bellwethers of the coming trip. Standing on deck, he checked the sails, the rigging, and the deck arrangements, and made mental notes of items that needed repair. It was a good ship, this one. It was named the Kad’yak, after its home port, Kodiak Island, in the Gulf of Alaska.

While the crew stowed the cargo, Captain Arkhimandritov checked his chronometer, wanting to make sure he got underway in time to catch the incoming tide. In most harbors, ship captains timed their departures to catch the outgoing, or ebb tide, to help carry their ship out of the harbor into the ocean. But not in Kodiak.

Here, the flood tide didn’t come directly into the harbor. Because the harbor was situated in a narrow channel between Kodiak and Near Island, the tide moved completely through it. Situated in the northwestern part of the Gulf of Alaska, Kodiak was at the downstream end of the Alaska Gyre. Currents moving counterclockwise around the Gulf swept by Kodiak, creating a slow but steady current to the southwest. During the outgoing tide, this current was accentuated as water funneled in from Shelikof Strait on the north side of the island, building up to several knots in the narrow channels between the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago. They were famous for their torrential currents, and only the most foolish sailor would pass through those channels on the outgoing tide. But on the flood tide, the backflow of water going against the prevailing current created a gentle river flowing to the northeast, into the island channels and out to the Shelikof Strait. It was that current that Captain Arkhimandritov wanted to take advantage of.

Normally, he would depart from St. Paul’s Harbor at the small village of Kodiak. This morning, however, he was departing from Ostrov Lesnoi, the wooded island one mile to the east. There, his ship was tied to the pier, while the crew brought the cargo out from the island in small wooden carts. The cargo was precious. It was the primary product being exported from Alaska, and the predominant source of income for the Russian-American Company (RAC). What the crew was carefully moving was ice, cut from a pond on the island of Lesnoi.

The ice was bound for San Francisco. The fastest growing city on the west coast of North America, San Francisco boasted a booming economy fueled by the gold rush. No longer a sleepy little trading port, it had developed a level of sophistication never before seen on this shore of the Pacific Ocean, and its citizens wanted better lives. More specifically, they wanted ice. Its major purpose was practical. Ice was needed for refrigeration, to prevent food spoilage. But its secondary purpose was purely cultural, and somewhat faddish. It seems the gentry of San Francisco had developed a taste for cold drinks. Ice in their whiskey. Ice in their tea. Ice in their mint juleps. And, of course, ice-cold beer. Where else could you get ice for the greater part of the year but in Alaska? So began the lucrative ice trade with the Russian-American Company.

By mid-morning the crew had finished loading the cargo of ice, all packed in between layers of insulating straw, and made the ship ready for sailing. The fore and main topgallants were unfurled and quickly filled with wind. As the Kad’yak began to move forward, the topsails were loosened and bellowed out. The captain’s breast swelled with pride at the sight; it was as if the ship had come alive, filled with breath, as it began life anew. Within minutes, they were ghosting steadily down the channel past Ostrov Lesnoi and out into the Pacific Ocean. Their course required them to make several tacks within the first 2 miles in order to pass the extensive shallow reef system that reached out almost a mile from the north end of the island and threatened to grab the ships of unwary sailors. As it glided northeast through the channel that morning, the Kad’yak probably had all but its royals set to catch the breeze that blew in from the southwest.

View of Kodiak waterfront, 1893. A schooner (with sails) is tied up in front of the Erskine House, now the site of the Kodiak Historical Society Museum, along with two 3-masted ships, of similar size to the Kad’yak, with Russian Orthodox Church at right. (W. F. Erskine Collection, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, Document #UAF-1970-28-418, Archives, University of Alaska Fairbanks.)

BUILT BY HANS JACOB ALBRECHT Meyer in Lubeck, Germany, in 1851, the three-masted barque was purchased by the Russian-American Company in 1852 and put into service in Alaska as the Kad’yak. In those days, ships were not built from plans but from the memories and experience of their builders. So although its exact dimensions were not recorded, it was reported to have a capacity of about 477 tons. It would have been about 132 feet long, with a beam of 30 feet, and a depth, from deck to keel, of about 20 feet. When loaded, its draft was about 14 feet. The hull and keel were covered with “Muntz metal,” a mixture of copper and tin which prevented shipworms from attacking the wood.

Top: The Charles W. Morgan, a new England whaling ship (ca. 1849), similar in size and sailplan to the Kad’yak. (Photograph 1972-2-59 from Mystic Seaport Organization.) Bottom: The Belem, a three-masted barque of similar size to the Kad’yak. (Source unknown.)

Not to be confused with the bark—a blunt-nosed, flat-bottomed hull built to sit on the mud of harbor bottoms while loading cargo—the barque was defined by its rigging, or arrangement of sails. Three-masted barques were the epitome of fast trading ships and the most common vessels on the seas in the years after 1850. The foremast and mainmast were rigged with square sails, including mains, topsails, topgallants, royals, and perhaps a skysail on the mainmast. The topsails may have been split into upper and lower, a modification that became popular in the mid-nineteenth century because they could be furled more easily in heavy weather. Inner and outer jibs and a staysail graced the bowsprit, and multiple staysails hung between the masts. But unlike the traditional square-rigged ship, which would have square sails on all three masts, the barque carried on its third mast, or mizzenmast, a fore-and-aft sail, like that on a modern sailboat. In the latter part of the century, the barque form evolved into the longest, tallest, and fastest sailing ships ever built, with four or five masts, commonly known as clipper ships.

Under the command of Captain Bahr, the Kad’yak left Lubeck in July 1851 with a full crew, twenty-eight employees of the Russian-American Company, and a priest, as well as unspecified cargo. After visiting the ports of Kronshtadt, Copenhagen, and Hamburg, the ship headed into the South Atlantic, sailed around Cape Horn, and made a brief stop in Valparaiso, Chile, where several of the crew scattered. The Kad’yak finally arrived in New Arkhangelsk (now known as Sitka), capital of Russian America and home of the headquarters of the Russian-American Company in Alaska, on May 7, 1852, after an around-the-world trip of nine months.

The ship underwent a series of changes. Since its purchase by the RAC, the Kad’yak was put to work carrying cargo between the Russian-American settlements of Sitka, Unalaska, and Kodiak. It first sailed under the command of Captain V. G. Pavlov, then Captain Herman Debur in 1857, and then Captain Rozmond in 1858. In 1853, the Kad’yak made a trading trip to California and Hawaii with Johann Furuhjelm, the chief of port at Sitka (one could consider this the first Hawaiian vacation cruise). Shortly thereafter, the deckhouse of the Kad’yak was deemed unseaworthy and removed, replaced by a glass skylight covered by a metal grate.

The Kad’yak first carried ice to San Francisco in 1857, and over the next two years it made six more trips. Although it usually carried ice on the southbound trip, it occasionally took furs, fish, timber, and candles, and usually returned to Alaska with a cargo of beef, flour, and other provisions. Most of the trade stayed between Sitka and San Francisco, but the ship also carried freight between Sitka and Kodiak.

It was not until 1859 that the Kad’yak came under the command of Captain Illarion Arkhimandritov.

CAPTAIN ARKHIMANDRITOV WAS WELL KNOWN throughout Alaska. Unlike most ship captains, he was a Creole, the product of a Russian father and a Native mother, and was born on St. George Island, one of the Pribilof Islands, way out in the Bering Sea, probably in 1820. His status in society was somewhat below that of a full-blooded Russian. That he was also a ship captain was an anomaly. When Arkhimandritov was seven, his father paid to have him enrolled in the Mission school in Unalaska. A few years later he started going to sea on sailing ships, and at the age of thirteen he was sent to the School of Merchant Seafaring in St. Petersburg to learn navigation. After graduation, he returned to Russian America, where he was required to earn back the investment the RAC had made in him. Early in his career, at the age of 22, he proved his mettle by saving the company ship Naslednik Alexander from what should have been complete disaster.

In September of 1842, the Naslednik Alexander was sailing back from California to New Arkhangelsk under Captain Kadnikov, with Arkhimandritov serving as navigator. On September 27, the ship was running before a southeastern wind at a comfortable 11 knots. Captain Kadnikov turned the ship over to First Mate Krasil’nikov and went down to his cabin to change out of his wet clothes. But toward evening, the barometer dropped as the wind and rain increased. Suddenly, a rogue wave rolled the ship onto its port side and caused it to pitch sideways to the waves. The first mate and two helmsmen were instantly washed overboard. The main boom, gaff, ship’s wheel, binnacle, and lifeboats were lost, and the ship half filled with water. Below decks, the mass of seawater knocked down the cabin bulkheads and pushed Captain Kadnikov back and forth in his cabin among furniture and debris. Arkhimandritov found himself in a similar situation, but he managed to swim through the wreckage and water and escaped onto deck.

Realizing that the captain was trapped and the first mate lost, Arkhimandritov assumed command and ordered the crew to turn the ship close-hauled into the wind. He then sent rescuers to save the captain, who was still yelling orders, but they could not reach him and soon his voice faded away. Only after righting the ship and pumping out the water was the crew finally able to enter the captain’s cabin. They found him and a Kolosh crewman dead under a pile of debris. Arkhimandritov ordered both to be buried at sea. After two more days of storm, the winds abated and the ship was finally put in order, with most of the destroyed cargo and provisions jettisoned. The ship arrived safely at New Arkhangelsk on October 5, and the RAC launched an investigation and recorded details of the disaster. As a result of his efforts to save the ship and its crew, Arkhimandritov was awarded a gold medal by Emperor Nicholas I, which was to be worn on the ribbon of the order of St. Anna.

Thus Arkhimandritov’s skills as a navigator and cartographer were widely recognized, and in 1846 he was tasked by Captain Tebenkov, then the manager of the RAC and de-facto governor of Russian America, with mapping the coastline of Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and Kodiak. In 1852, many of Arkhimandritov’s original charts were incorporated into the first consolidated set of navigation charts for Alaska, known as Mikhail Tebenkov’s Atlas of the Northwest Coasts of America, which was engraved in New Arkhangelsk.

For a few years Arkhimandritov commanded the steamer Aleksander II on its voyages to the Aleutians and Pribilof Islands. While stationed in New Arkhangelsk in 1852, Captain Arkhimandritov had a dispute with the local priest, which escalated into the priest banishing him from the church and prohibiting him from receiving Holy Communion for seven years. In Sitka, this was the equivalent of excommunication. Arkhimandritov could not participate in community activities or continue to work as a navigator. What he did during that period is unknown, but he did not sail again until at least 1859.

All that time ashore may have made his navigation skills a bit rusty. Arkhimandritov may not have been at the peak of his craft when he undertook the final voyage of the Kad’yak in 1860.

PRIOR TO HIS LAST TRIP to Kodiak, Captain Arkhimandritov had dined with Chief Administrator of the RAC Stepan Voyevodsky, the acting governor of Russian America, at his home in Sitka. Before leaving, Mrs. Voyevodsky had made a request of the captain. She was a religious woman, devoted to the Russian Orthodox Church, and especially fond of the departed Priest Father Herman. Would he please, she had asked, hold a Te Deum for Father Herman the next time he visited Kodiak? Such a mission would have required the captain to make a separate journey to the grave of Father Herman on Spruce Island, say a prayer for him, and leave a small donation for the church. Despite his previous treatment by the Church, or perhaps because of it, Arkhimandritov did not have the same level of religious fervor as she did. However, his devotion to the Company and the desire to keep in good favor with the manager had convinced him to agree to her request. He would visit the holy man’s grave, he had promised, and make the offering. But time and work took its toll. Upon arriving in Kodiak, he found himself too busy and soon forgot about his promise.

At that time, Kodiak was mostly treeless, having been swept clean of all vegetation by glaciers thousands of years previously. In order to obtain wood for building and cooking, the Russians had to visit the wooded island, Lesnoi, or the pine island 10 miles from Kodiak island. The trees there were actually Sitka Spruce, and it became known as Ostrov Elovoi, or Spruce Island. But neither Lesnoi nor Ostrov Elovoi had a good harbor; only the village of Kodiak, with its deep channel next to the rocky shoreline, was deep enough to bring a tall ship in close to shore. Regular trips to collect wood were a necessity then, and the place they went most often was the pine island.

Leaving the channel, the Kad’yak passed south of Mys Elovoi, or Spruce Cape, at the northeast point of Kodiak Island. As they did so, Captain Arkhimandritov looked northwest to the island of pines. There on the southeast tip of Spruce Island lay Father Herman’s remains, buried under a small chapel in the woods. As he watched the island glide by from a distance, Arkhimandritov suddenly remembered his promise. Oh well, he thought, maybe next time. He had more important work to do, captaining a ship for the Company, than making frivolous trips to satisfy some doting matron’s superstitious whims.

He turned away from the sight and checked the sails and seas once more. His eyes doted on the twist of sails, the slight corkscrew formed as each sail was angled slightly more than the one below it; it was as pleasing a geometry as known to man. Satisfied with the weather and the ship’s progress, he ordered the raising of the royals to flesh out the rigging, then turned control over to the chief mate and went below into his cabin. It was the chief mate’s job to supervise the actual sailing of the ship. He had not only to carry out the captain’s orders but to anticipate them as well. If the captain had to tell him what to do, it was a personal rebuke. It also helped that the crew was a good one. The chief and the second and third mates were all Russians, as was the cook. The rest of the crew were Natives of the Koniag tribe. Only Arkhimandritov was a Creole—but he was a legend in Alaska, and the crew trusted him.

Below decks the captain sat at his desk and recorded in the ship’s log the exact time of their departure, the time they passed Mys Elovoi, and their course. Then he examined his charts to determine where they ought to be at the next change of watch. He marked it on the chart so that he could check their progress against it that evening. As he worked, he could hear the splashing of water against the hull as the ship coursed along and the clumping about of men on deck, working and shouting to each other. They were sounds so familiar to him, so comforting, that he could tune them out completely yet still hear even the faintest variation that would signal something unusual. As the ship gently surged over the sea surface, he settled into the rhythm of the sea and felt at peace. If anyplace was home to him, it was here, aboard ship, in the Gulf of Alaska.

The next sound he heard was one that he would never forget. It may have lasted no more than seconds but must have felt like minutes to him. It would live in his memory as the loudest, most excruciating, and most horrible thing he ever heard. First he felt it as a bump, then a scrape, then a loud tearing and crunching before it erupted into an explosive cracking sound. He knew instantly what it was, though his brain tried to deny it for a second. The shock jolted him out of his seat. He burst out of his cabin and ran up to the deck, praying silently that it wasn’t what he thought. But it was.

The Kad’yak had hit a rock. Sailing at a full clip of about 4 knots with all sails unfurled on a broad starboard reach, the ship had run into an uncharted reef just below the surface, not more than a few miles offshore of Ostrov Dolgoi, the long island. Immediately the ship began to list. The wind still filling the sails dragged the ship over even further. Boards continued to groan and crack as the ship twisted sideways, dragging itself across the rock. Men clung to the ship with panic in their eyes. Cargo and supplies stored on deck strained against their ropes, then broke free and fell into the water. In a moment it was over—the ship slipped off the reef, righted itself, and became silent once more.

The captain shouted orders to furl the sails, hoping to keep the ship upright. The sailors woke from their frozen stances and climbed up into the spars to reef in the sails, doing their jobs professionally in spite of whatever worries they may have had about their predicament. Slowly, the ship leveled out and began to drift, bobbing lethargically in the swells. Arkhimandritov shouted more orders, sending men down below to check the damage. Just as quickly, they came back up. The hold was filled with water, and it was getting deeper. The men uttered the worst words any ship captain would ever want to hear. He could still hear them many years later, as if in a time warp, replayed slowly over and over: “The ship is sinking!”

There was only one thing to do—abandon the ship. Arkhimandritov ordered the men to lower the ship’s small boats. Fortunately, no one had been injured during the crash, and all hands were quickly at work. Keeping them busy was also a good way to prevent them from getting out of hand or starting to panic. Turning away, he ran back down to his cabin to grab what he could. If he could salvage anything, it would be the tools of his trade: sextant, compass, spyglass, and chronometer. And, of course, the company books. After throwing them all into his seabag, he dashed back out on deck. The only thing he couldn’t take was his seatrunk; it was too heavy, and there wasn’t enough time. Anything left in it would have to go down with the ship.

Most of the crew were in the boats by now; a few stood by on deck, waiting for him. After the last man entered the lifeboats, Arkhimandritov climbed in, and they shoved off. The mood was somber. For a while they sat still and watched as the ship drifted and sank ever so slowly. It seemed to take forever. No one talked. They thought about their narrow escape, about things left on board, about their lost wages, their expectations for the trip, now all dashed. They thought about how sad it was to lose the only home many of them had known for some years.

Captain Arkhimandritov looked around and caught their mood. He knew he had to do something. “Is everybody here?” he shouted. “Is anyone missing?” No one was; all the men had escaped unharmed and were present in the boats. “Then grab the oars,” he ordered, “it’s time to go.” Reluctant to leave their ship but happy to be alive, they started rowing. As far as they could tell, the captain was still in control, doing his job. Whatever agonies of doubt and self-criticism may have crossed his mind were not something he would share with them or that they could fathom. A few hours later they dragged the boats ashore at St. Paul Harbor, tired and dispirited, but relieved to be on terra firma.