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.
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