tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63436596934157458252024-03-20T18:24:36.462-08:00Kodiak Maritime MuseumUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-60604493412594538232022-09-21T15:35:00.000-08:002022-09-21T15:35:02.127-08:00Lowell Wakefield and the Birth of the Alaska King Crab FisheryThe Alaskan king crab fishery began in the late 1940s and rocketed into legend
by the 1960s, fueled by a huge swarm of crab, new fishing and processing
technologies, a boisterous fleet of enthusiastic fishermen and processors, and
the rising affluence of American consumers.
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<p>
Those circumstances perhaps made the fishery inevitable, but without Lowell
Wakefield, the fishery would likely not have happened as soon, or as
explosively as it did, and the history of Alaska would be different. While
there were other people present at the advent of the king crab era,
Wakefield’s vision made the king crab fishery happen the way it did.
</p>
<p>
Born in 1909 in Anacortes, Washington, Wakefield was the son of an Alaskan
salmon and herring cannery operator with plants at Seldovia and Raspberry
Strait, on Kodiak Island. He attended the University of Washington and
Columbia, but in his early 20s, instead of following his father to Alaska or
going into some other business, he became, like thousands of other young
Americans scarred by the Depression and the apparent failure of capitalism, a
Communist Party organizer and journalist.
</p>
<p>
In the early1930s he founded and edited the Voice of Action, the unofficial
newspaper of the Northwest Communist Party, based in Seattle, and then wrote
for the Daily Worker, the Party’s national newspaper. In 1934 he ran for the
Washington State Legislature on the Communist Party ticket.
</p>
<p>
But then, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Wakefield joined the
Navy. When he came back from the war in 1945, he abandoned the Communist cause
and headed for his father’s cannery in Raspberry Strait. He landed there just
as the big bang of the Alaskan king crab fishery ignited.
</p>
<p>
Japanese and Russian fishermen had been catching king crab in the Bering Sea
since the 1920s with tangle gear, fences of web laid on the sea floor which
the crab walked into. Some of this crab, canned at sea, was marketed in the
U.S through the 1930s.
</p>
<p>
Alaskan processors were aware of this fishery and persuaded a few investors,
and eventually the U.S. Department of the Interior, to send a catcher vessel,
the Dorothy, and a processing ship, the Tondeleyo, to survey for king crab
along Alaska’s coast and put into cans whatever crabs they might find. The
ships worked for four summers, 1938 to 1941, carrying a crew of scientists,
economists and fishermen. Using trawl nets, they found significant
concentrations of king crab in the eastern Bering Sea and around Kodiak
Island.
</p>
<p>
Some of the trawls were conducted in Raspberry Strait, right in front of the
Wakefield cannery. The expedition left some of its gear on the beach and
during the war Lee Wakefield used it to catch crab, which he canned in his
plant. But without knowing much about the crab’s habits, or how best to
process it, the American king crab fishery, including the effort in Raspberry
Strait, went nowhere.
</p>
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<p>
In 1946, with the crab surveys in mind, Lowell Wakefield formed a new company,
Deep Sea Trawlers Inc., with a plan to catch and process king crab in the
Bering Sea. With capital raised by selling company stock to friends and with a
loan from the Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Wakefield built the
Deep Sea, a 140 foot steel trawler. Designed for the heavy weather of the
Bering Sea, the Deep Sea carried everything necessary to catch, process, and
freeze Alaskan king crab. Frozen food was a new thing in the American
marketplace, but Wakefield believed that high quality frozen crab meat would
taste better than canned and appeal to consumers.
</p>
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<p>
At first the Deep Sea used trawl nets to catch the crab, just as the Tondelayo
had done before the war, but the nets mangled the crab as they were towed on
the bottom and crushed them under their own weight as the bag was hoisted to
the surface. This didn’t matter if the crab meat was canned, but it was not
ideal for Wakefield’s vision of high quality crab legs sitting on someone’s
plate in an upscale restaurant. The Deep Sea and other pioneer crabbers began
experimenting with baited steel traps, called pots by fishermen, which
captured the crab live and unharmed.
<p>
The early pots were round, like traditional Dungeness pots, but heavy offshore
currents tended to move them around on the bottom and they didn’t fish very
well. Fishermen adapted and by the early 1950s the Deep Sea and other catcher
boats were using square pots, which stayed put on the bottom. New hydraulic
power blocks also came into use, allowing the pots to be hauled faster than
the winches fishermen had previously used. The Deep Sea also pioneered the use
of radar to find its reflective crab pot buoys, allowing the ship to find its
gear far from land. At first the Deep Sea’s crew hand-picked the crab meat out
of the shells, a labor intensive effort, until one of Wakefield’s engineers
figured out a way to use water and compressed air to push the cooked meat out
of the shells. This soon became the industry standard.
</p>
Even though Wakefield had had figured out how to catch and process the king
crabs, he had a hard time selling it. A wholesale market for frozen crab meat
did not exist, and his first sales efforts, through canned salmon distributors,
did not go well.
<p>
Most restaurants chefs thought giant crab legs were too exotic to put in front
of customers until Wakefield convinced a single restaurateur in Atlantic City
to put king crab on his menu. People liked the taste and identified eating
crab as a status symbol of epicurean sophistication. Other restaurants took
notice. Wakefield also put the Deep Sea’s captain on the road between fishing
seasons, selling king crab out of a freezer in the trunk of his car.
</p>
<p>
And then, in a stroke of marketing genius, Wakefield hired Lowell Thomas, a
broadcaster and film maker who had made Lawrence of Arabia famous, to produce
a film about king crab. Called “Adaq, King of Alaska’s Seas,” the color film
showed fishermen hauling crab pots off Kodiak, the crab being processed in the
Raspberry Strait plant, and Wakefield and his wife and kids eating piles of
king crab at their house behind the processing plant. The film was shown like
a newsreel before the feature movie at theaters across the country and slowly
at first, and then suddenly, demand for king crab grew.
</p>
<p>
In the years spent figuring out how to sell crab however, Wakefield very
nearly went bust. In the spring of 1949, with zero cash flow and his suppliers
howling, Wakefield made a deal with his father’s herring company, Apex
Fisheries, to pay the upcoming season’s expenses in return for half of any
potential profits. That season, with the new processing and fishing
innovations lowering costs and consumers beginning to buy the crab, the
company made a profit for the first time. By the early 1950s Deep Sea Inc. was
consistently in the black and competing fishermen and processors were piling
into the fishery. The boom was on.
</p>
<p>
At first, the new fishery looked like blue skies and hundred dollar bills
forever. No one knew how many crabs were out there, but fishermen caught more
of them every year, which to some, indicated an endless supply.
</p>
<p>
Instead, as the 75 year bell curve of Alaskan crab catches reveals, a familiar
story played out- the profit driven harvesting of a finite resource. The
Kodiak king crab fishery peaked at 90 million pounds in 1966 and closed
entirely in 1983. The Bering Sea catch peaked at 130 million pounds in 1980
and was closed in 2021, though fishermen and managers remain hopeful the
fishery will reopen in the near future. King crab still walk the bottom of
Alaska’s continental shelf, but biologists and fishery managers believe there
aren’t enough of them to sustainably loose a modern fishing fleet upon them.
</p>
<p>
While Lowell Wakefield did not invent the Alaskan king crab fishery, his
practical vision bent its narrative arc in a historically significant way.
Revered in his own time as the leading innovator, if not the sole creator of
the early king crab industry, he died in 1977 at the age of 68.
</p>
<p>
What remains a mystery, and perhaps a more intriguing story than the timeline
history of the crab fishery, is how and when Wakefield’s world view changed
from a worker’s rights Communist in his 20s to a free range entrepreneurial
resource capitalist in his mid-30s. Did something particular happen to
Wakefield during the war to instigate that change or did he simply outgrow a
youthful social idealism as he saw the need to make a living and raise a
family? We don’t know, though such a transformation was not unique among
people of his generation. Should a future historian find interest in the
subject and dive deeper into Wakefield’s papers at the University of
Washington, perhaps that fuller story will be revealed.
</p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-53138631995046403782022-02-11T10:50:00.000-09:002022-02-11T10:50:22.575-09:00The Barbarossa and Its High Seas Desperado<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_yXR348oE0ZRYIAUaWj6NXmPQDs_Ax8AB30JT0pLi0O-JJGtiO8PaNPrslR5hqD4fb9aVzmErENkE6SsS9muYODWwUDOpSBz-r3oMHIXCaaaXfoBFJeqPaAwbA_-vropWWDGQXjvLfZ8wQZK0z1cbd32ZiwfSyLvuJdkf361O1FEos8khI2QODKZr=s2068" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1264" data-original-width="2068" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_yXR348oE0ZRYIAUaWj6NXmPQDs_Ax8AB30JT0pLi0O-JJGtiO8PaNPrslR5hqD4fb9aVzmErENkE6SsS9muYODWwUDOpSBz-r3oMHIXCaaaXfoBFJeqPaAwbA_-vropWWDGQXjvLfZ8wQZK0z1cbd32ZiwfSyLvuJdkf361O1FEos8khI2QODKZr=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the early
morning hours of February 10, 1991, the 98 foot crabber Barbarossa disappeared near
the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, most likely after rolling over with a
load of 80 crab pots on deck. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Six men died-
skipper <span style="background: white; color: #333333;">George Brandenburg, Dennis
Olberding, Tim Schmitt, Darryl Gross, Brian McPherson, and Don Bright.</span>
Brandenburg, Olberding, and Schmitt were long time Kodiak fishermen and their
loss still cuts deep in this community whose fortune is bound so tightly to the
sea, and for which it has paid so dearly with the lives of its fishermen. They
were good men who died young, undeserving of their fate.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">But there is more
to the story of the Barbarossa than its instability or the loss of six men, as
tragic as those deaths were. In a strange and circumstantial reminder that nothing
is certain at sea, and that fate is an invisible hunter, two crewmen got off
the boat only hours before she sank, and were replaced by two unluckier men. The
boat’s engineer, Dave Mathison, broke his wrist shortly before the last trip, and
the cook, Rodney Horning, was put ashore on St. Paul Island after an argument with
the skipper. Even more bizarrely, Rodney Horning was actually Danny Ray
Horning, previously convicted of molesting his daughter and fleeing from a California
murder charge to the wilds of the Bering Sea. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The story of how
Horning came to be on the Barbarossa began the previous September, when an
angler fishing in a river near Stockton, California hooked a trash bag
containing the dismembered leg of a local catfish farmer and sometime marijuana
dealer named Sammy McCullough. Police later found Mr. McCullough’s torso,
severed head and arms, and the steak knife he was cut up with in the same river.
He had been shot in the head with a .22 caliber rifle.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">McCullough had
previously been robbed of a large sum of money, presumably related to his
marijuana business, and had testified against Danny Ray Horning’s brother Steven,
who did time in prison for the crime. Police matched the slug found in
McCullough’s forehead with a .22 caliber rifle belonging to Danny Ray, but by
then he’d had skipped to parts unknown. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Five months later,
a few days after the Barbarossa went down, Danny Ray Horning, still calling
himself Rodney Horning, told an Anchorage reporter about his near miss on the
Barbarossa. He claimed the boat was unsafe and that he’d quit after quarreling
with skipper Brandenburg over a bowl of mushroom soup. Mathison the engineer would
later maintain that Horning had been fired for being incompetent and lazy, and that
he’d threatened to kill Brandenburg. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">On March 22, 1991,
six weeks after the Barbarossa rolled over, Horning was arrested in Winslow,
Arizona, coming out of a bank with $25,000 of other people’s money, a hostage
bank manager, and a 9mm pistol registered to the previously murdered Sammy McCullough.
At trial, Horning bragged that no prison could hold him and taunted the judge to
give him the maximum sentence. The judge obliged with four consecutive life
sentences for robbery, kidnapping, and assault. With Horning apparently on ice
for the rest of his life, California authorities declined to extradite him for
the McCullough murder, a decision they would long regret.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">In May 1992,
Horning escaped from the Arizona state prison in Florence, and led lawmen on a 54
day chase across Arizona and New Mexico. Along the way, he burglarized houses
for food, guns, and money, robbed another bank, hid out in the Grand Canyon, and
carjacked a number of people, including two female British grad students in a
rental car. He let them all go unharmed after cheerfully regaling them with
tales of his exploits, minus the parts about child molestation and dismembered
bodies. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi90HXGrkt2UksRQLqAvRxR19pXL2ul7p0EThiwx4MuLyuliH9jkgEkZxh7glo-7IbSy98kXeWtcJye8774asoOin3p4kPwRSY7OD1YfYmXnVshuCNELyfCN7yHFbgH1V63aXSUuMsWWSLiY8EHcfd7yWK9OtZTnrfEUN9OPQ8fAgEK9FKyjGbF0VxA=s1467" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1467" data-original-width="1458" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi90HXGrkt2UksRQLqAvRxR19pXL2ul7p0EThiwx4MuLyuliH9jkgEkZxh7glo-7IbSy98kXeWtcJye8774asoOin3p4kPwRSY7OD1YfYmXnVshuCNELyfCN7yHFbgH1V63aXSUuMsWWSLiY8EHcfd7yWK9OtZTnrfEUN9OPQ8fAgEK9FKyjGbF0VxA=s320" width="318" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Danny Ray Horning after his capture in July 1992</td></tr></tbody></table><br />When police finally
caught him asleep under a porch with a 44 magnum revolver in his hands, he told
his captors that “It was really a fun chase. I wish I could do this every
week.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Horning was
eventually extradited to California and sentenced to death for the murder of
Sammy McCullough. He has been on San Quentin’s Death Row since 1995. <o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-71396585158515058072022-01-26T14:22:00.000-09:002022-01-26T14:22:01.396-09:00The Wreck of the Selendang Ayu, December 2004<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Flight
Mechanics on Coast Guard helicopters, the people who hang out the door and run
the rescue hoist, wear a gunner’s harness to keep from falling out, with a
buckle that, depending on which way you put the harness on, can be released with
either hand. The Coast Guard doesn’t care which way a mechanic puts the harness
on, but Brian Lickfield put his on the same way for every flight for 17 years, against
the day when that might matter and his hand would hit the release without
thinking, and he would swim away from a sinking helicopter, and live. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL6J32KB9m7QS90BHIm8LK66NHDxqz9Y8DqEa-cZKX7p_R0X_apRVmITn_QZfBdrdJlsL_k2Fp-8GvLequVnapIPpGfR9QFbe75BAHili6IRQcXZ7Fmowjon4nz_qqp1z1gLK74HrxdFjBTdRociyUu0NZW-tXuLcOjADP8-er5kQCsL5AZ84nwJF_=s1795" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1363" data-original-width="1795" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL6J32KB9m7QS90BHIm8LK66NHDxqz9Y8DqEa-cZKX7p_R0X_apRVmITn_QZfBdrdJlsL_k2Fp-8GvLequVnapIPpGfR9QFbe75BAHili6IRQcXZ7Fmowjon4nz_qqp1z1gLK74HrxdFjBTdRociyUu0NZW-tXuLcOjADP8-er5kQCsL5AZ84nwJF_=w283-h215" width="283" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eastern Bering Sea</td></tr></tbody></table><br />In
December 2004, the 738 foot freighter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selendang
</i>Ayu was carrying 66,400 tons of soybeans across the Bering Sea on a great
circle route from Seattle to Xiamen, China. Commanded by a 52 year old Indian national
named Kailash Singh, the ship had 26 officers and men. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">On
December 6, 100 miles northwest of Dutch Harbor, the ship’s engine shut down,
the result of cracked rings in cylinder number three. As the ship’s engineers worked
unsuccessfully to get the engine going again, the weather deteriorated, towing
attempts by the Coast Guard and a commercial tug failed, and the ship drifted southeast
toward Unalaska Island. By the morning of December 8, the ship was five miles from
shore in a 60 knot northwest wind and 30 foot seas. The Coast Guard launched
two Kodiak based H60s Jayhawks from Cold Bay to get the crew off.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK0Zp0ExeWGpZcIWUJIr4dyrrdaDb5usOwOIb1W0zmon8HxE5cJFZ-B8nVf6mFw2Lc6mU164K7jKk_jWNkhKVNg4bLpR6MLQdiv9J2woiaDyQNFnE7kaf759wbituZ8sd6Y7r3JunymycHIxs8U_-Arw16Rm9NJJovyqSWgm1PS8vfwLow3BGKRWYa=s1490" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="1490" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK0Zp0ExeWGpZcIWUJIr4dyrrdaDb5usOwOIb1W0zmon8HxE5cJFZ-B8nVf6mFw2Lc6mU164K7jKk_jWNkhKVNg4bLpR6MLQdiv9J2woiaDyQNFnE7kaf759wbituZ8sd6Y7r3JunymycHIxs8U_-Arw16Rm9NJJovyqSWgm1PS8vfwLow3BGKRWYa=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Selendang Ayu drift route</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-X_5pyDFLC4XPHVag6DomSsnWT8OnFIa0g1ajRMA4CmPClCfCcIZc3GHzBMFgWngKzXcrNVFloUmG93QgiP-fL-z76DKnac8Zat5ZfqUvLk9CwGNRNPWpWYFsm0wrgw0ql1H56V5WVLolzTwwYV4DpjRwa6CyUm7pHpVOqcX1-lJcn8yordrwttmh=s744" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="573" data-original-width="744" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-X_5pyDFLC4XPHVag6DomSsnWT8OnFIa0g1ajRMA4CmPClCfCcIZc3GHzBMFgWngKzXcrNVFloUmG93QgiP-fL-z76DKnac8Zat5ZfqUvLk9CwGNRNPWpWYFsm0wrgw0ql1H56V5WVLolzTwwYV4DpjRwa6CyUm7pHpVOqcX1-lJcn8yordrwttmh=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Selendang Ayu aground on Unalaska Island</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: left;">When
the helicopters arrived, they found the sailors disorganized, panicked, and not
at all sure they wanted to be hoisted into a howling winter storm off a ship
that was not yet sinking. Perhaps not fully appreciating the situation, several
got into the basket with their suitcases. By 3 p.m. however, with the ship now less
than a mile from shore, the two H60s had each rescued nine sailors.</div></span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
first helicopter, CG number 6020, lowered its nine its sailors to the cutter Alex
Haley, which was standing by a mile away. The other H60 CG number 6021 flew to
a rendezvous point on Unalaska Island, transferred its passengers to the first
helicopter, and flew to Cold Bay, where it was grounded with mechanical
problems. The first H60 then flew Dutch Harbor, unloaded the rescued sailors, refueled,
and flew back to get the ship’s eight remaining crewmembers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
sea and wind conditions far outside the Coast Guard’s usual parameters, the
Alex Haley launched its own H65 Dolphin to fly backup. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At
5 p.m., with daylight fading, the ship grounded on a reef a thousand feet from
the breakers at Skan Bay. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Brian
Lickfield, the Flight Mechanic on the returning H60, would later tell a
reporter, “I flew for sixteen years before this happened, and that was the
worst conditions I've ever seen. It was just crazy- snowing, blizzard
conditions and thirty, forty foot seas.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Co-pilot
Doug Watson, sitting in the right seat, held the helicopter above the port side
of the ship’s bow, but as Lickfield lowered the hoist, blue bolts of static
electricity generated by the rotors arced from the basket to the ship. The
terrified sailors refused to get into the basket. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
rescue swimmer, Aaron Bean, went down to straighten things out. Gesturing, cajoling,
and tossing suitcases aside, Bean had just put the seventh man in the basket when,
pilot Dave Neel saw a wave larger than any wave he had ever seen coming out of
the darkness. He took the controls from Watson and pulled the machine up as
fast as he could make it go. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
hundred feet above the ship’s deck cranes, Lickfield had just pulled the
seventh sailor into the cabin when the wave struck the side of the ship, transferred
its mass and energy vertically, and engulfed the helicopter in sea water. The
windshield went white with sea foam and Lickfield hollered “We’ve got water in
the cabin sir! Up! Up! Up!” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alarms
sounded and red lights came on and the engines spooled down with the
diminishing whine of a train whistle going away. Watson pushed the nose down to
fly out of the problem, but there was no power to fly anywhere. The helicopter fell.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
torque in the main rotor spun the airframe counterclockwise, slamming the tail into
the side of the ship, immediately followed by the main rotor blades, which shattered
on the ship’s rail. Rescue swimmer Bean and Captain Singh, the last sailor on
the ship, crouched as pieces of steel ricocheted around them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Watson’s
attempt to fly had helped however, and the helicopter hit the water at somewhere
between a crash and a landing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Years
later Lickfield would tell an interviewer, “You never think there’s really
going to be a situation where you just crash in a helicopter… but you better
hope it's really a crash because I'm leaving. Right?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
the fuselage rolled over and the cabin filled with water, Lickfield grabbed the
edge of the door, instinctively hit the release on the right side of the
gunners belt he had put on the same way every time for 17 years, pulled himself
though the door, and swam for the surface.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Neel
and Watson swam out of the cockpit and the H65 flying backup hoisted them and
Lickfield and a crewman from the ship, who came up with the hoist cable wrapped
around his neck, unconscious but alive. The other six sailors were never found.
The H65 flew the survivors to Dutch Harbor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Just
after 7 p.m., the Selendang Ayu split in half, with Aaron Bean and Captain
Singh still standing on the bow. At 8:30 p.m. the H65 returned and hoisted them
off the wreck. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
the Dutch Harbor tarmac that night, as Lickfield walked away from the H65 that
had pulled him out of the water, he saw the CG number on its side, number 6513,
and realized it was the same helicopter he had qualified in as a flight
mechanic, in 1992. It had been rebuilt at least once, but it was the same
airframe. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeeaEdddvmkl5ZSlhjGvRMxh8ODCDSGT8yFm-XvnV2YzcCcpQUyYEMNCY-mi9VLgvIrZCE0yzDzLcQwiCIsczOZv7IDWtqLr7F3i9iFUdeI4LABK88RyH_iGkZbBue5sljX99Wi29k635bA8zs5ftyGK9YA7rncfoQaobAPGuWwdt8wkM1U-d8BhFd=s1800" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="1800" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeeaEdddvmkl5ZSlhjGvRMxh8ODCDSGT8yFm-XvnV2YzcCcpQUyYEMNCY-mi9VLgvIrZCE0yzDzLcQwiCIsczOZv7IDWtqLr7F3i9iFUdeI4LABK88RyH_iGkZbBue5sljX99Wi29k635bA8zs5ftyGK9YA7rncfoQaobAPGuWwdt8wkM1U-d8BhFd=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Selendang Ayu aground and broken in half <br />at Skan Bay, Unalaska Island, December 2004</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Over
the next few weeks, the ship broke up, spilling its cargo of soybeans and 440,000
gallons of fuel oil into the sea, prompting an expensive cleanup operation. The
ship’s surviving crew went back to India and the Philippines and China and the
Coast Guard people who rescued them went back to work. The rescue remains one
of the most logistically complicated operations the Coast Guard ever attempted.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinm2yLlDVMnAKBeNOTivcyndyw9sGorVQt3tTpBM5WtflkBvHKzdCaj-mnV-7GiHqsxAGU6wwpFWCh6gTqWvp0fjuSGwbskxYsEg1F7171vzhCDvpIY6lwWRqCM_MuPCZD3w3PoCneJ9weugN0VVIwZs3PM8y33A_iMGxBbk_zy5zMFVHEYxMikp2V=s1024" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinm2yLlDVMnAKBeNOTivcyndyw9sGorVQt3tTpBM5WtflkBvHKzdCaj-mnV-7GiHqsxAGU6wwpFWCh6gTqWvp0fjuSGwbskxYsEg1F7171vzhCDvpIY6lwWRqCM_MuPCZD3w3PoCneJ9weugN0VVIwZs3PM8y33A_iMGxBbk_zy5zMFVHEYxMikp2V=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coast Guard helicopter CG 6020 on the beach<br />at Skan Bay, Unalaska Island, December 2004</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sources:
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">National Transportation Safety Board Selendang
Ayu Marine Accident Brief, September 2006<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Selendang Ayu Incident: After Action Review
USCG MSA Anchorage 7/31/2005 <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Underwater Egress Handbook for U.S. Coast Guard
Aviation Personnel <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Edge of Survival, 2010, by Spike Walker <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Interview with Brian Lickfield, November 2021<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-8701081608734244252021-11-02T12:43:00.000-08:002021-11-02T12:43:32.079-08:00“Of knots it is necessary that I speak,” - A Naval Repository, 1762<p> <span style="font-family: arial;">For fisherman and sailors, the ability to tie a few useful knots is essential and among the first things a greenhorn learns. Knots can be learned from books and even YouTube videos, but most novices depend on their more experienced fellow deckhands for hands-on lessons, until their “fingers can see,” the knots and they can be tied without thinking.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiquT9_tH7iT1_K6XzfFQmWB_gMp4ocpEUcp3KVAixYU_XDOwYj0q4vwIMMQ3iMxPKQMCqF3BRIVLdw3U_AQg076CKFkvhZFzFhU63OYrFg3vRTIH8rdColNWoVCnqkv3fq5Ljx5SzZR1I/s1680/Ashley%2527s+sailors+tying+knots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1680" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiquT9_tH7iT1_K6XzfFQmWB_gMp4ocpEUcp3KVAixYU_XDOwYj0q4vwIMMQ3iMxPKQMCqF3BRIVLdw3U_AQg076CKFkvhZFzFhU63OYrFg3vRTIH8rdColNWoVCnqkv3fq5Ljx5SzZR1I/s320/Ashley%2527s+sailors+tying+knots.jpg" width="181" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sailors tying knots, from <br />Ashley Book of Knots</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In Kodiak, the basic knot kit includes a bowline, clove hitch, square knot, sheet bend, and a belaying knot to secure a boat to a dock. Crab fishermen also use the Carrick bend to tie buoy lines to their pots, and local longliners often use a Japanese longline knot to tie their skates together.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is worth mentioning here that while many non-mariners and green deckhands use the words “rope,” and “line,” interchangeably, these are two different things. Rope is unutilized cordage, as for example the spooled coils of rope for sale at marine supply stores. Line is rope which has been put to a specific task, such as a mooring line.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Aside from decorative knots, of which there are many, utility knots - whether used at sea or in other endeavors – are of three varieties. A “hitch,” fastens a line to an object, a “bend,” attaches two pieces of line to each other, and a “knot,” stands alone in a piece of line. Humans have been using these to master their environment for a very long time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The oldest evidence of knots as a technology are grooves carved around the base of stone spear points indicating that knotted plant fiber or animal sinew, long since rotted away, was used to tie the points to wood or bone weapon shafts. The oldest of such points have been found in South Africa and date to 500,000 years before the present, a place and time indicating the knots were tied by a hominid species called Homo heidelbergensis, an ancestor of ours who lived several hundred thousand years before modern Homo sapiens evolved into the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The first physical evidence of braided line is a wisp of three-ply cord found in a rock shelter in France, woven from the inner bark of an evergreen tree. Three strands, each twisted separately clockwise and then twisted counter-clockwise together, form the finished braid, exactly as rope is made today, though machines do this now instead of hands. Entwined around a flint blade, the assemblage is believed to have been made by Neanderthals 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Moving up the evolutionary tree of knot technology, a piece of mammoth ivory found in a cave in Germany in 2015 is believed to have been used by anatomically modern humans to make braided rope 40,000 years ago. Fiber strands would have been pulled through four holes drilled in the tool, and then twisted into a single plaited rope.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The oldest physical scraps of tied knots date back only about 15,000 years however, and the first recognizably modern knot, an early version of a bowline, was found on a 2,500-year-old Egyptian Pharaoh’s boat unearthed in 1954.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Knots enter the written record when John Smith, paramour of Pocahantas and a founder of Jamestown, mentions the bowline in “A Seaman’s Grammar,” in 1627: "The Boling knot is also so firmly made and fastened by the bridles into the cringles of the sails, they will break, or the sail split before it will slip."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">By the middle of the 19th century, as the Age of Sail reached its zenith and thousands of inexperienced young men were going to sea, numerous volumes described knots which had previously been taught only by direct demonstration, from hunter to hunter and sailor to sailor, since the dawn of history.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Ashley’s Book of Knots, first published in 1944, is now considered the gold standard of knot tying books. Clifford Ashley, trained as an artist, became passionate about knots after drawings sailors at work on a New England whaling voyage. With economical and elegant prose and easily understood diagrams, his book describes about 3,900 knots, from the ubiquitous bowline to arcane specialty knots, decorative plaits, and even “trick knots,” useful mainly for making sport of the gullible.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Of the previously mentioned Carrick bend, Mr. Ashley says it “is perhaps the nearest thing we have in a perfect bend. It is symmetrical, it is easy to tie, it does not slip easily in wet material, it is among the strongest of knots, it cannot jam and is easily untied.”</span></p><div style="text-align: right;"></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKiDgHWu7Y1lVk-S3gpa2JbECzjH505UnWAYDDeWBA9R3PP1VZsiowFovQx2NSHvCeidcfglwcj2UJpnAxLYJglGa-NSLJ9r_HeOKZmZQ0ZdJO90Aa37S5Pxn3GKn99cqf1aKOPeWtx1U/s1800/Ashley%2527s+carrick+bend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1798" data-original-width="1800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKiDgHWu7Y1lVk-S3gpa2JbECzjH505UnWAYDDeWBA9R3PP1VZsiowFovQx2NSHvCeidcfglwcj2UJpnAxLYJglGa-NSLJ9r_HeOKZmZQ0ZdJO90Aa37S5Pxn3GKn99cqf1aKOPeWtx1U/w200-h200/Ashley%2527s+carrick+bend.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Mr. Ashley does not exaggerate. Easy to learn and fast to tie, the Carrick bend allows crab fishermen to swiftly add or subtract pre-measured 25 fathom “shots” of line to or from the line connecting a pot to its buoy, to make the overall length appropriate to the depth into which the pot is dropped.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If made correctly the Carrick bend knot will hold so long as the line remains sound, yet can still be untied by hand, even after the knot has carried a loaded 1,000-pound crab pot to the surface a hundred times.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Interestingly, Alaskan crab fishermen have found a way to tie the Carrick bend faster and easier than shown by Mr. Ashley. A comparison between the method described in the book (see the drawing) and a demonstration by an experienced crab fisherman will prove this point.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I close with one last interesting knot, which Mr. Ashley somehow missed. Despite an otherwise encyclopedic effort he fails to mention a knot familiar to generations of seamen, perhaps even Pharaoh’s sailors, and demonstrated still for the benefit of greenhorns and children. I direct the curious to Google search for the “dragon bowline.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; text-indent: 0.5in;">Sources:</span></p><p></p><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Ashley Book of Knots, Clifford W. Ashley, 1944</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Science, November 16, 2012</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Science Daily, April 9, 2020<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Science News, July 22, 2016</span><o:p></o:p></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-47533701993773033972021-03-08T16:32:00.001-09:002021-03-08T16:32:34.396-09:00Two Men and Three Centuries of Alaskan Shipwrecks <p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-indent: 0.5in;">Warren
Good arrived in Kodiak in 1972 and like a lot of other young men in those years,
went crab fishing. Kodiak was booming, deckhand jobs were easy to get, and fishing
was grueling but fun, if you liked hard work. And the money was good— it was
not unheard of for 21-year-old deckhands with a scant year of nautical
experience to make $100,000 in a single four-month king crab season. The dark
side of the high times was the casualties.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the
years before the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act of 1988<span style="background: white; color: #494949;"> </span>commercial fishing was far and
away the most dangerous job in America, and the deaths of Alaskan commercial
fishermen drove that statistic. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sometimes
the accidents were the result of simple bad luck, but often they were the
predictable product of inherently dangerous work, lax safety regulations, and enthusiastic
but inexperienced fishermen making poor decisions. Catastrophic mechanical
failures, fires, breached hulls, groundings, capsizings, men swept overboard, and
ferocious winter sea conditions were common, and these often occurred in “cascading
event,” scenarios, where several bad things happened at the same time. Too
often, with the small leeway for human error in such circumstances, people died.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEejtEIQg-_wALWr0M00KCmOp9-ia7ztajYWu3YKBkKUAWM681J8XTztpDmtKeksHeGIHAz4FshpIb36h2ICv6fpum_AyVI_XiESGbC-b80C0Ng0Zn4Nl5xY5vmRUNxy8dzc9byPOw8rg/s1800/Warren+Good+1970s_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1243" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEejtEIQg-_wALWr0M00KCmOp9-ia7ztajYWu3YKBkKUAWM681J8XTztpDmtKeksHeGIHAz4FshpIb36h2ICv6fpum_AyVI_XiESGbC-b80C0Ng0Zn4Nl5xY5vmRUNxy8dzc9byPOw8rg/s320/Warren+Good+1970s_web.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Warren Good off Kodiak Island, 1970s. </span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Warren
Good reveled in the money, the work, and the high adventure, but in the early
1980s, as he watched people and boats he knew disappear, he wondered if anyone
was recording the particulars of these events in a systematic and publicly
accessible way. The Coast Guard and insurance companies kept their own lists of
losses for their own proprietary reasons, but as far as Good knew, no one else was
tracking <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the names of the lost boats and
their dead crewmembers except for friends and families.</span><p></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the
same time, no one seemed to recognize Alaska’s commercial fisheries as part of the
larger fabric of Alaskan and therefore, American history. Perhaps that was
because the fishing boom and the losses that went with it were happening in the
present and people were too busy living it, but Good wondered if anyone had ever
tried to list all the other marine disasters that had happened in Alaska before
the 1970 during the World Wars, the Gold Rush, the whaling days, all the way
back to the 18<sup>th</sup> century Russian fur hunting era.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">With the
vague notion that if a comprehensive list of Alaskan shipwrecks didn’t exist it
was something the world needed, he began researching in Kodiak’s A. Holmes
Johnson Library between fishing seasons. There he found an Alaska Packers
Association list of Alaskan marine accidents on microfiche, donated by a Washington
state historical society and apparently sent to every library in Alaska. The
APA list was itself culled from an old Customs Service publication. Good cross
referenced the names and dates on that list against citations in books and newspaper
articles and began keeping a file. He took photos too of the boats and
fishermen on Kodiak’s waterfront in that present moment of the 1970s and 80s, knowing
they would not all be afloat or alive in some near and uncertain future.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At
some point he realized he was on a mission to document all the vessels which had
ever untied from an Alaskan dock and never come back. As far as he knew he was
alone on his own crusade.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But
Good was not alone. A Federal employee named Mike Burwell was doing the same
work in Anchorage as part of his job with the U.S. Mineral Management Service (MMS),
a division of the Department of the Interior.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG8Gg8I2Jk6zyBJxeS-XxTFTXHuyLPiW8NlaK88hecNOrbcfW9GAxwTVGfZvgYBg-67-WChhje8I9o6tGEJ2RlgKBU8f8TG9TGlHfRolsTklDdzXCG1s-A85bmAG_oQ0Fq2VPWXb62bh4/s1800/Mike+Burwell++2011_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1318" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG8Gg8I2Jk6zyBJxeS-XxTFTXHuyLPiW8NlaK88hecNOrbcfW9GAxwTVGfZvgYBg-67-WChhje8I9o6tGEJ2RlgKBU8f8TG9TGlHfRolsTklDdzXCG1s-A85bmAG_oQ0Fq2VPWXb62bh4/s320/Mike+Burwell++2011_web.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Mike Burwell in Kodiak 2011</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the
mid-70s MMS was planning to lease millions of acres of underwater real estate in
the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea to oil companies. Being a Federal agency,
MMS was required by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act “…to
take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic properties.” As
a first step in that direction an MMS employee named Everett Tomfelt wrote a
technical paper listing a few known Alaska shipwrecks. Burwell, an MMS technical
writer, was asked to edit the paper but soon was passionately researching and
expanding the list himself. He began with the same Customs Service shipwreck
list that Warren Good was working on in Kodiak.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In
1992 MMS published Tomfelt and Burwell’s shipwreck list. The list was mentioned
in an Anchorage Times article but except for a few Alaska historians it remained
virtually unknown to anyone outside MMS and the oil industry.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For
two decades Good and Burwell researched and catalogued many of the same shipwrecks
from the same sources, including books, newspaper stories, Coast Guard reports,
and court documents from lawsuits against insurance companies. Until computers
and the internet arrived in the mid-90s, everything was on paper or microfiche.
Burwell catalogued his list temporally, by year, month and day, while Good catalogued
his alphabetically, by ship names.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At
some point in the early 2000s they became aware of the other’s work but continued
to work independently until Burwell uploaded his database onto the MMS website
and retired to Arizona in 2011. By then his list had grown to a 600 page table
of shipwrecks from 1729 to 2000. That same year Good, who had stopped fishing
in the 1990s and moved to Florida, put his own database online as the Alaska
Shipwreck website.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The MMS/BOEM
database has not been updated since Burwell left the agency in 2011, but since
then, he and Good have worked together to update the Alaska Shipwreck website archive.
It now includes thousands of documents, articles, photographs, Coast Guard
records, obituaries, and marine charts. Good also has a modest collection of
physical artifacts and ephemera including crew share contracts and pay stubs, old
Kodiak bar and restaurant menus, photographs, slides and film negatives, and
hundreds of 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century books and magazines.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The
two men continue to research independently, Burwell compiling his findings by
date and Good alphabetically, but the combined database is now searchable by both
year and ship name. Burwell sends Good his findings, which Good “scrubs,” to crosscheck
information he may already have, and then he uploads the data to the Alaska
Shipwreck website. The website itself generates hundreds of inquiries every
year from other researchers and relatives of lost mariners. Good answers all of
these, often with arcane details not listed on the website. The cost of doing
the research is not inconsiderable, including hardware and printing costs,
newspaper subscription fees, and for Good, website expenses.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">While
paper records have their own preservation issues with floods and fires, Burwell’s
hard drives have failed, Good’s have been hacked and destroyed by lightning. They
keep each other’s files backed up, which has saved the day, but the threat of future
mishaps is never far from their minds.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lately,
mortality being what it is, they’ve also started wondering what happens when
they can no longer do the research themselves. Both men are in their 70s and
their “somewhere down the road,” plan options include handing the database and
files over to some Alaskan state agency which can safeguard it and continue the
research, though no one in the state bureaucracy has expressed much interest in
this scenario. Another possibility is for a private institution to take over the
project, but so far, this idea has also not elicited any takers with the
necessary resources.</span></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Alaska
Shipwrecks database can be found here: <a href="http://www.alaskashipwreck.com/">www.alaskashipwreck.com</a>.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-87799520984086563052021-02-18T13:38:00.000-09:002021-02-18T13:38:00.315-09:00100 Years of Counting Fish at the Karluk Weir<p> </p><blockquote><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-size: small; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2yIoV7j9MaQKWaSX-v5yfdoJ9LKikDyyZQrNm_0XkBsU48PD9Wzk5zH1JQWe2RxfCq6g6iZIkFwEQne-OXo1wl8jQOrptPoT20FHLLo3kJI2RzWatqKlfEA5CtaSYJ5QMmA6Uhc9tqQ/s1158/counting+salmon+Karluk+weir+September+1948+E.P+Haddon%252C+Auke+Bay+Lab+FWS-1223+History+of+Sockeye+Salmon+Research+Karluk+River+pg120.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1158" data-original-width="952" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2yIoV7j9MaQKWaSX-v5yfdoJ9LKikDyyZQrNm_0XkBsU48PD9Wzk5zH1JQWe2RxfCq6g6iZIkFwEQne-OXo1wl8jQOrptPoT20FHLLo3kJI2RzWatqKlfEA5CtaSYJ5QMmA6Uhc9tqQ/w263-h320/counting+salmon+Karluk+weir+September+1948+E.P+Haddon%252C+Auke+Bay+Lab+FWS-1223+History+of+Sockeye+Salmon+Research+Karluk+River+pg120.jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Counting salmon at Karluk Weir, Sept. 1948</span></td></tr></tbody></table>The first salmon counting weir in Alaska was constructed
on the Karluk River in 1921, and every summer since then the weir has provided
a remarkable stream of information which has been vital to understanding salmon
and successfully managing them.</span></div></span></div></blockquote><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The original Karluk weir was a series of wooden tripods
set across the river with planks laid horizontally between them on the upriver
side. Spaced a few inches apart, the planks allowed water to flow downstream
but prevented fish from swimming upstream. A narrow open section allowed biologists
to count salmon as they swam through.<br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For much of its length the Karluk River is about a
hundred yards wide and three feet deep, a modest stream compared to other great
salmon rivers. But Karluk Lake, where the river’s sockeye lay their eggs, is an
overachiever, and its huge numbers of returning spawners drew the early attention
of the commercial canning industry.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The first cannery at Karluk put fifty-eight thousand red
salmon into cans in 1882, and by 1901 four million Karluk sockeye salmon were processed,
a number which has never been equaled.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The fish were caught with hand hauled beach seines, a
crude technology by today’s standards. But the nets were pulled across the
opening to Karluk Lagoon relentlessly, one behind the other like the spokes of
a giant paddle wheel, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they were deadly
effective. Single haul catches of 30,000 fish were not unheard of, and a single
haul in 1896 took 75,000 fish.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This kind of unbridled resource extraction was common in
the 19</span><sup style="text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> century, and even celebrated, from salmon and buffalo to whales
and dodo birds. Most people then believed God would keep putting fish and
whales in the water no matter how many were taken by humans. </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; text-indent: 0.5in;">As British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley
put it in 1833, “I believe then, that the cod fishery, the herring fishery, the
pilchard fishery, the mackerel fishery, and probably all the great sea
fisheries, are inexhaustible… and any attempt to regulate these fisheries seems
consequently, from the nature of the case, to be useless.”</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But as salmon runs in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest
declined, it began to dawn on biologists, and even some canners, that the more
salmon they took the fewer seemed to return in following years, and that some
minimum number had to get upstream for a run to continue.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">With this vague notion in mind the Federal government
began instituting various restrictions and even the canners themselves decided
to close the Karluk fishery a few hours a week in the 1890s. Still, by the
1920s, Karluk sockeye catches had fallen to fewer than a million fish a year-
still substantial, but far below the record 1901 season.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the time no one knew how many spawners it took to
sustain a particular run, or even how many salmon actually went up the Karluk
or any other Alaskan river. It was also not fully accepted that salmon migrate quite
specifically back to the streams where they had spawned.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In this information vacuum, Federal salmon managers were
pulled between conservation minded biologists with unverified hunches and processors
who wanted to can more fish. Since Congress wrote Alaska’s fishing regulations
and the processors had the political power to bend Congress to their point of
view, regulations remained weak and salmon runs kept declining.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In 1918 however, a Russian fisheries professor named Fedor
Baranov wrote a formula which calculated future fish catches as a function of
initial fish population and pressure on that population from natural mortality
and past human fish catches. This revolutionized fisheries management theory but
came with a catch- it required knowing how many fish there were to begin with.
But since fish usually swim where they cannot be easily seen or counted, this was
not a simple thing to determine.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fish populations can be estimated by tallying catches
and doing surveys with hooks or trawls or pots or today, sonar. But catches and
surveys provide only a statistical estimate of how many fish there were before
the catching started, and if this initial population of fish is overestimated,
or the estimated percentage of that population which can be sustainably caught
is too high, they can be overharvested, leading to a population crash. If
you’ve lived in Kodiak long enough you’ve seen several once abundant fisheries
managed this way go bust, including shrimp and king crab.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But salmon, unlike almost all other marine fishes except
for eels, migrate up rivers, and when channeled through weirs can be counted
with great accuracy. This allows Baranov’s formula to be successfully applied,
and the weir counts on the Karluk allowed salmon biologists to do just that.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Once they knew how many fish swam up the Karluk in any
given year, biologists could add the number caught by fishermen and then
compare that total number to the number of fish returning in following years. This
gave them a very good idea of how many spawners it took to produce a given
number of returning fish, and therefore how many fish had to escape past
fishermen to maintain a long-term run. And because salmon can be counted every
day as they pass through the weir, fish managers could track daily fish counts against
the historic data to sustainably manage the fishery day by day.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hundreds of weirs were eventually installed in rivers
all over the state and since 1959, when ADF&G managers began using weir
data to manage salmon, that system has proved remarkably successful, first to rebuild
Alaska’s salmon runs, and then to maintain them.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Weirs make it relatively easy to manage fishermen and overfishing
has been regulated out of existence in most areas of the world where salmon
historically returned in great numbers, including Alaska. However, the
incremental destruction of spawning habitat with dams, roads, parking lots,
houses and irrigation systems is exquisitely hard to manage and is now the main
threat to remnant salmon populations in Northern Europe, Japan, New England,
and the Pacific Northwest.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Indeed, as Alaska’s urban population grows, this may be
happening now in the Mat-Su Valley. Even as commercial fishing in Cook Inlet is
constrained, growing suburban sprawl, plus predation by invasive pike
introduced by humans, may be driving the decline of salmon numbers there.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Weirs helped Alaskans keep our salmon runs strong for a
long time, and in places where the human footprint on spawning lands is slight,
they will continue to be useful in controlling fishing effort. In the coming
centuries however, as humans take more and more land away from salmon in Alaska,
and as chemicals from our global civilization drain into the ocean salmon swim
in, how we keep salmon runs alive in Alaska remains to be seen.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This article first appeared in the Kodiak Daily Mirror January 13, 2021</span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b> </b>Key Sources:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">Gard, Richard, and Richard Lee Bottorf, <i>A History of Sockeye Salmon Research, Karluk River System, Alaska,
1880-2010</i>, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Orth,
Don, <i>The Overfishing Problem</i>, <o:p></o:p></span></span></h3>
<h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><a href="https://vtichthyology.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-overfishing-problem-by-don-orth.html"><span style="font-weight: normal;">https://vtichthyology.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-overfishing-problem-by-don-orth.html</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></h3>
<h3 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">Roppel, Patricia, <i>Salmon
From Kodiak</i>, Alaska Historical Commission, 1986<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Fedor Baranov </i> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Baranov#The_catch_equation</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-9801361213301411102020-05-13T12:12:00.003-08:002021-02-18T13:41:09.245-09:00Disease Comes by Sea<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMQpvwIyqZlrO3WDJDgv2Gmd8YlWNQrJ52CkX3AetBOhtOHNh4SSOQEGm76MjBOoX8FZRqHMm5qbTahXQn4ns3Tb4hDOBngQ-cZnDy5vfuGzzudjRxybQUGTaXdugFoT7t-Xfyxe93-CM/s1600/Orphans+at+Nushagak+1919+AK+State+Library-+cropped.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1600" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMQpvwIyqZlrO3WDJDgv2Gmd8YlWNQrJ52CkX3AetBOhtOHNh4SSOQEGm76MjBOoX8FZRqHMm5qbTahXQn4ns3Tb4hDOBngQ-cZnDy5vfuGzzudjRxybQUGTaXdugFoT7t-Xfyxe93-CM/s320/Orphans+at+Nushagak+1919+AK+State+Library-+cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orphans at Nushagak, Alaska 1919<br />Photo: Alaska State Library</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In the long
sad history of contagious diseases in Alaska, at least since written records have
been kept and until the invention of airplanes, all have come by sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">European
contagions first arrived in the Americas with Columbus, and for the next four
centuries, sailors and passengers regularly delivered diseases to a population
of First Americans who had little immunity to them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result was a seaborne genocidal disaster which
killed millions, and from which indigenous American cultures have never fully
recovered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Europeans and
their ships did not arrive in Alaska until the mid-1700s, but the local inhabitants
were no better at surviving the new viruses and bacteria than their southerly cousins.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The first recorded
Alaskan epidemic was a respiratory ailment brought to the Aleutians by a
Russian ship in 1791 and subsequently spread to Kodiak Island. In 1802 a fever came
to Atka on the Russian ship Alexander Nevsky. Influenza ravaged Kodiak in 1804
when the Boston ship O’Cain arrived from California with a crew of returning Alutiiq
sea otter hunters. Well into the 20<sup>th</sup> century epidemics continued to
sweep Alaska with depressing frequency — influenza, smallpox, measles, tuberculosis,
and various unclassified fevers and coughs — all carried on ocean crossing ships.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">An influenza
outbreak in 1819 is particularly well documented. It first killed about fifty
people in Sitka after its arrival from Java on an American merchant ship. In
November it sailed from Sitka to Kodiak on the Russian American Company vessel
Finlandia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Within a
few days of the Finlandia’s arrival, nearly everyone in Kodiak was afflicted, from
babies to elders, and a few days after that, forty-eight people were dead, a
third of the local population. The symptoms, speed, and lethality of the
disease have led modern epidemiologists to believe it was a strain of the
influenza virus which has afflicted humans for millennia, and of which Covid-19
is only the latest variety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Seymon
Yanovsky, the 31-year-old Russian American Company manager for Alaska, was in
Kodiak with his wife and infant son at the time. He wrote later that the
illness began with “a fever and a heavy cold, a cough, shortness of breath,
choking, and three days later death followed!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Yanovsky
described the scene in a “kashim,” a large wooden communal structure, where
more than a hundred Alutiiq people suffered through the disease: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Some were
already dying, their bodies growing cold, next to those who were still alive;
others were already dead: groans and screams tore at my heart. I saw mothers
already dead on whose cold breasts hungry children crawled, crying and trying
to find food for themselves, but in vain.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At the
height of the epidemic there were not enough able-bodied people to bury the
dead, and corpses lay above ground until the survivors rose from their sickbeds
to do the digging. According to Yanovsky, “It was good the weather was frosty
because there was no smell.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Yanovsky
nursed the sick with cammomile tea and warm food, accompanied by the Russian
Orthodox monk Father Herman. The future saint was in his mid-60s at the time
but remained healthy, and according to Yanovsky, “ceaselessly, tirelessly, and
at great personal risk, visited the sick, not sparing himself in his role as
priest- counseling those suffering to be patient, pray, repent, and prepare
themselves for death.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Yanovsky and
his family got the flu and prepared their own selves for death, but after a few
days recovered and returned to Sitka. Father Herman went back to Spruce Island and
built an orphanage there for the children whose parents had not survived. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">While the influenza
epidemic of 1819 is forgotten in Sitka and Kodiak, its return in 1918 and 1919 remains
a shattering cultural memory in western Alaska. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The virus
arrived in Nome in the fall of 1918 on the steamship Victoria from Seattle. Before
it burned through the available human kindling in mid-winter, it killed
hundreds of people in villages on the Seward Peninsula. The following spring it
came to Bristol Bay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">No one
knows what ship brought the virus— historians argue over a boat from Unalaska with
an infected priest or a cannery supply ship from Seattle. Regardless of its
origins, by July the flu had killed an estimated 40% of the adults in Bristol
Bay, orphaned hundreds of children, and destroyed the social fabric of dozens
of communities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">With 1919 still
very present in their minds, the people of </span><span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Dillingham
recently asked the Governor to shut down this summer’s Bristol Bay salmon
fishery to prevent the arrival of Covid-19 carrying fishermen and processing
workers. Given the current low profile of the virus in the state however, not
to mention the economic weight of the fishery, the State has decided instead to
proceed with the fishery using protocols and mandates to maintain a Covid-free
salmon season. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Viruses defy prediction however,
and whether those edicts will prevent an outbreak is this summer’s
multi-million-dollar question. A few cases in Egegik in the next few weeks could
change the current calculus of risk and reward, of mortality versus money. For
now, just days away from the state’s first salmon opening of the year, in
Cordova, the only certainty is that humans have yet to outrun viruses and the power
they wield on individual lives and global history remains undiminished. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt;">Sources:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Chills and Fever:
Health and Disease in Early Alaska, Robert Fortuine, 1989<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An Epidemic, A
Governor, and a Saint (1819), Alaska Medicine, Fall 1990<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alaska Packers
Association Report on the 1919 Influenza Epidemic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: arial;">Influenza in Bristol
Bay 1919, Maria Gilson de Valpine, Sage Journal, Spring 2015</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-51368951411504635602020-03-16T12:31:00.001-08:002020-03-16T12:31:55.991-08:00The Fate of the Marten at Spruce Cape<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKQVw-0aI32ux2J1LPjavUMLslIocnWcLOQin0hdTnzgFErROAYS3WsZUmOpqds0Ex4SqZxkhTT9v4qfC6Uez0Xkftn-Z4fPpU-7VdfrZ6XPjMEInu2JXtlWxvvMH4OOrtOFCTQt3aLdI/s1600/FV+Marten-+Michelle+Fisk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="911" data-original-width="1600" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKQVw-0aI32ux2J1LPjavUMLslIocnWcLOQin0hdTnzgFErROAYS3WsZUmOpqds0Ex4SqZxkhTT9v4qfC6Uez0Xkftn-Z4fPpU-7VdfrZ6XPjMEInu2JXtlWxvvMH4OOrtOFCTQt3aLdI/s320/FV+Marten-+Michelle+Fisk.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Marten. Photo: Michelle Fisk</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">The Marten
was an 82-foot wooden power scow rigged for crab, a twin shafted boat with a
white wheelhouse on the stern of a white hull. A Kodiak fisherman named Jim
Fisk had owned and skippered her for years, but in February 1975 he had Jeff
Alexander, 21, running the boat with three men on deck- Jim</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">
Rich, Mike Rowe, and Deere Alioski. </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">After working near Sand Point for several
weeks, the boat tied up in Kodiak around four in the afternoon of Thursday,
February 20. Around 9:30 p.m. they untied and headed to the Wakefield
processing plant in Port Lions, thirty-five miles away. </span><span style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjwAK-Re6y602SKAbtlHgO6OEqHoq8rACXBpBz8C3cAq6s4J0l1rKo1YmABpQ8Q28CmDTw65f8Jj008MQtOCMMQSjW5Wimk1kaWIVZ9kNnXgv7GG-PEgf_Xzoh4bVCDFG0Vr0kHxmrdQ0/s1600/Bodron+Marten+Report+Marten+Route+to+Port+Lions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="855" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjwAK-Re6y602SKAbtlHgO6OEqHoq8rACXBpBz8C3cAq6s4J0l1rKo1YmABpQ8Q28CmDTw65f8Jj008MQtOCMMQSjW5Wimk1kaWIVZ9kNnXgv7GG-PEgf_Xzoh4bVCDFG0Vr0kHxmrdQ0/s320/Bodron+Marten+Report+Marten+Route+to+Port+Lions.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Marten's planned route to Port Lions, <br />according to the Coast Guard. <br />Courtesy Don Bodron</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">A 40-knot
northeast wind loaded with snow met them as they came out of the channel,
passed Jackson’s trailer court and the red Number 10 channel buoy, and aimed
for buoy Number 8, a flashing red light moored just east of Channel Rock, 500
yards from the cliffs on Spruce Cape Road. The snow obscured the light however,
and the Marten’s radar was suddenly useless too, as snowflakes smothered the
scanner. Alexander backed off on the throttle and idled ahead, trying to get
his bearings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">The smell
of smoke suddenly diverted the crew’s attention but was determined to be engine
exhaust blown back into the wheelhouse by the wind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Just as Alexander
returned to looking for the Number 8 light, the hull bumped hard against
something solid and a mass of white water came out of the darkness, a wave breaking
over shallow rock. The light they intended to pass on their port side was now
somewhere off to starboard, and the rock that should have been even farther
away to port was now under the boat. Twenty-foot seas repeatedly dropped the
boat on the rock and the hull planks began splintering. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">At 10:00 p.m., Alexander called
the Coast Guard on the single sideband radio, but the Coast Guard did not hear
him. The transmission was picked up instead by a local pilot named Herb Downing
from his house near Mill Bay. Downing phoned the Coast Guard and by 10:30 a
helicopter was in the air. The 84-foot steel vessel Theresa Marie also heard
the call and left the harbor to come to the Marten’s aid<span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Alexander told Downing they
were “off Spruce Cape near the red buoy… in the channel,” meaning the red buoy
off Channel Rock. The Coast Guard and the Theresa Marie misunderstood this
however, and headed for the Number 4 red swing buoy, a mile and half beyond
Channel Rock, off the tip of Spruce Cape. Then Mart<span style="color: #222222;">en’s
engine room flooded and the lights and radio died. The boat was invisible in
the snowy darkness, and the helo flew past it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCNj-GQnm9A69mvsSKTPCKpJc9tv94Cj21gzASGi7eK3S9CMSqygK6IrnF3hK9VjAt5bhVghDyDWnXbIOc6tqGubAdQXKJIvhwCvAX1KzAcQLVW8ZFZIs60J9YvKWzjhYG6hG1ANfcpmU/s1600/Bodron+Marten+Report+search+area+color.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1192" data-original-width="1600" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCNj-GQnm9A69mvsSKTPCKpJc9tv94Cj21gzASGi7eK3S9CMSqygK6IrnF3hK9VjAt5bhVghDyDWnXbIOc6tqGubAdQXKJIvhwCvAX1KzAcQLVW8ZFZIs60J9YvKWzjhYG6hG1ANfcpmU/s320/Bodron+Marten+Report+search+area+color.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Coast Guard search area and actual wreck site.<br />Courtesy Don Bodron</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"> In 1975 survival suits were common but not
required, and there were none on the Marten. The crew donned their life
jackets. They deployed the life raft off the wheelhouse roof, but it swamped in
the breaking surf, and the weight of the water in it prevented the men from pulling
it back to the boat against the wind and waves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">The seas banged the boat across the rock and
then rolled it upside down off the rock’s shoreward side. The fishermen clung to the propeller
shafts for forty-five minutes and then, one by one, were swept away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Alexander and one crewman swam 500 yards to
shore, but the crewman died in the surf. Alexander climbed the rock face almost
to the top before seizing up. He watched the lights of the Coast Guard
helicopter and the Theresa Marie searching out near the swing buoy, until the
helo ran out of fuel and went back to the Air Station.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuroxeFsLEy8fDNH-4AEHBEiAdmzLW2vyctZshL6cvKtKubpRAJ29vviKj_DxiOPXUqto05m1NcPD5B4qLC2EXehQSjTcOt5pYP1AajRXMkN5jvYKGQ1PpQsGxlCnjxHw9YzJjEtmDfCM/s1600/FV+Marten+at+Spruce+Cape+2-21-75+Don+Bodron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1264" data-original-width="1600" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuroxeFsLEy8fDNH-4AEHBEiAdmzLW2vyctZshL6cvKtKubpRAJ29vviKj_DxiOPXUqto05m1NcPD5B4qLC2EXehQSjTcOt5pYP1AajRXMkN5jvYKGQ1PpQsGxlCnjxHw9YzJjEtmDfCM/s320/FV+Marten+at+Spruce+Cape+2-21-75+Don+Bodron.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The capsized hull of the Marten at Spruce Cape<br />February 21, 1975. Photo: Don Bodron</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">At 2:30 a.m. a policeman found Alexander on the
cliff,</span><span style="line-height: 200%;">
hypothermic but conscious. <span style="background: white; color: #222222;">The
bodies of the three crewmen were recovered along the shoreline the next day. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Alexander told the Coast Guard investigator they were headed for
Port Lions to deliver 500 king crabs which they’d picked up from storage on the
way into town that day, presumably from crab pots with the tunnels tied shut. </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 200%;">He cited the urgency of getting another of Fisk’s boats ready
for fishing as the reason for leaving that night, rather than waiting for the
storm to subside. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9kQqdT-4YxxVY5-Rg4akLNXy3CpAF4xC-8nCtBgopfOK05UGOVqSukdivRB5wG5b6eArkrZzJuDin_ZkfyLkO3wH0vdXv7cOIkrOQxBJMnP3j13B8bgWpm6tSevLTclUpas0oMXgY8kA/s1600/Bodron+Marten+Report+Closeup+of+Marten+at+Spruce+Cape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1192" data-original-width="1600" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9kQqdT-4YxxVY5-Rg4akLNXy3CpAF4xC-8nCtBgopfOK05UGOVqSukdivRB5wG5b6eArkrZzJuDin_ZkfyLkO3wH0vdXv7cOIkrOQxBJMnP3j13B8bgWpm6tSevLTclUpas0oMXgY8kA/s320/Bodron+Marten+Report+Closeup+of+Marten+at+Spruce+Cape.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Closeup of the Marten at Spruce Cape, February 21, 1975.<br />Photo: Don Bodron</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Alexander did not mention that King Crab season had been
closed for weeks by then, or that fear of being caught with illegal crab in
Kodiak might have influenced the decision to make for Port Lions, where
enforcement was less likely. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">Jim Fisk </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 200%;">was in Anchorage that night, and presumably reachable by
phone, but whether he talked with Alexander before the boat left for Port
Lions, or how much he knew about the boat’s activities before it arrived in
Kodiak, is unknown. He died in a car wreck in 1995. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1N8Rq5bPpec5-x2OYRp20lejsX2ppdFU0_0GRdflJkIeDyy7TfQJ7yCp1XMJ6YwKIYp1bT6ZqEXjp_D4UMwA84vkVu4fy-gsNTkEptXCMivd_qMtYUQOF2qzprhWn69VQ9vUVS7RaUEc/s1600/1975_2_21+Marten+sinks+KDM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1209" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1N8Rq5bPpec5-x2OYRp20lejsX2ppdFU0_0GRdflJkIeDyy7TfQJ7yCp1XMJ6YwKIYp1bT6ZqEXjp_D4UMwA84vkVu4fy-gsNTkEptXCMivd_qMtYUQOF2qzprhWn69VQ9vUVS7RaUEc/s320/1975_2_21+Marten+sinks+KDM.jpg" width="241" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Kodiak Daily Mirror, February 21, 1975.<br /> KMM archives. </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 200%;">Jeff Alexander
hung around Kodiak for a year or so and then disappeared. In 2006 a Seattle reporter
talked to him while doing a story on homeless people. He was on methadone, living
in his truck and panhandling in Ballard. He’d done time in prison for drugs and
assault and theft, but he showed the reporter a garden he’d built near the
bridge. The orderly rows of kale and flowers seemed a minor miracle in an
otherwise desperate story of trauma and addiction. </span><span style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Later that
summer, Alexander was jailed for failing to appear on a couple of traffic
citations and a theft charge. In September 2006 he fell out of a bunk in the
King County jail, broke his neck, and died. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">It is
impossible and unfair to conjecture on what Alexander’s life might have been
had the Marten stayed tied to the dock that February night, or if the other men
on the boat had survived. Alexander’s family and friends remembered him as
intelligent and kind, a talented young man who could have done anything with
his life. But knowing what we know now about the costs of trauma, it is not
hard to imagine a trail of cause and effect from that night on Spruce Cape to
heroin and panhandling at the foot of the Ballard Bridge. And for sure, not
every sea story ends when the wind calms and the sun comes up the next day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kodiak Daily Mirror, February 21, 1975.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Report on the Marten.” Don Bodron, former U.S.
Coast Guard Investigator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Blossoms of Hope
Wilt Away.” Danny Westneath, Seattle Times, September 24, 2006</span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-74786849660219007602020-03-10T13:45:00.000-08:002020-03-10T15:13:19.249-08:00The Once and Mighty Kodiak Shrimp Fishery<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoyFJRfd1uFPYt488GATXPduvbqKtnWC5B9KJvB2aL0V0CEkcH5JGoh4N-Bs3gk8lE7q_9DXv_3iRS4YhfrbA_9sjlan2lzDXFcG31YsSwVKDeAqkgmKHa4t3MjZd6CxuT42dPtgS6qAs/s1600/Shrimp+Harvest+1958-1985.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1600" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoyFJRfd1uFPYt488GATXPduvbqKtnWC5B9KJvB2aL0V0CEkcH5JGoh4N-Bs3gk8lE7q_9DXv_3iRS4YhfrbA_9sjlan2lzDXFcG31YsSwVKDeAqkgmKHa4t3MjZd6CxuT42dPtgS6qAs/s320/Shrimp+Harvest+1958-1985.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Almost forgotten
now, thirty four years after it ended, a mighty shrimp fishery once thrived around
Kodiak and down the Alaska Peninsula. From a modest harvest of 31,000 pounds in
1958, to a peak of 122 million pounds in 1973, to the last deliveries in 1986, the
fishery followed the classic bell curve of a boom and bust resource. But unlike
some other once healthy fisheries, most observers believe the shrimp fishery
died, not from overfishing, but from a natural cycle of warmer water and
increasing numbers of cod and other shrimp loving fish. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Though dock prices
were never spectacular- $.04 per pound in 1958 to $.35 per pound in 1986- the fishery
was worth $11.5 million at its peak in 1979. About fifty boats fished shrimp that
year for an average of $230,000 per boat, and crew shares between $18,000 and
$25,000, before expenses. But of course, as in every fishery, the wealth was
distributed unevenly, so some boats did spectacularly better than that, and their
crews were the envy of the waterfront. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The fishery came
to be after a NOAA research vessel, the John N. Cobb, did some test trawling in
the Gulf of Alaska, beginning in 1950. The boat found large concentrations of northern
pink shrimp, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pandalus borealis,</i> around
Kodiak Island and the Shumagin Islands. The findings got the attention of both fishermen
and processors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjO2Ot94FJLNRxo4Lwn671LZJ_XvxGeKm4bz2y62szDHFVw2twUHOAXnR-pYNx7PSMqM8A2tHwtty83X3ONYVPr7oEeqQoz-nAv-C8Q5C1HqIYmDSvtLMh9iCDD6ISICixOat0YVwrLGY/s1600/Pick+belt+line.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="690" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjO2Ot94FJLNRxo4Lwn671LZJ_XvxGeKm4bz2y62szDHFVw2twUHOAXnR-pYNx7PSMqM8A2tHwtty83X3ONYVPr7oEeqQoz-nAv-C8Q5C1HqIYmDSvtLMh9iCDD6ISICixOat0YVwrLGY/s200/Pick+belt+line.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shrimp processing workers, 1970s.<br />
Photo: Dave Jackson</td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">But while there
were plenty of shrimp to be caught, the processing end of things was more
problematic. Northern pink shrimp are small- 50 to 100 per poun</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">d- and getting
the shells off the cooked shrimp by hand was slow and labor intensive. In 1958
however, a Kodiak processor brought in three peeling machines from the Gulf of
Mexico shrimp fishery. With some tinkering they worked, and other processors
rapidly set up their own peelers in Kodiak, Seward and Seldovia. By the late 1950s,
the fishery was on.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRmSZOnBEKdT4rlzqYEL_4H-sJsyw-Qq47xDvhV9aDHZmYetSfm3UDS3f0i1k3H2ifMJf1LpFqnVWIv9RsdnspsXU7DeJe8ueGy5wxLRqE3lSWwlbCbvmgpKobMy5_R6bhF2KgW-Hqzfc/s1600/5+Bottom+Trawl+Drawing+-Sainsbury-Commercial+Fishing+Methods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1164" data-original-width="1600" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRmSZOnBEKdT4rlzqYEL_4H-sJsyw-Qq47xDvhV9aDHZmYetSfm3UDS3f0i1k3H2ifMJf1LpFqnVWIv9RsdnspsXU7DeJe8ueGy5wxLRqE3lSWwlbCbvmgpKobMy5_R6bhF2KgW-Hqzfc/s200/5+Bottom+Trawl+Drawing+-Sainsbury-Commercial+Fishing+Methods.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bottom trawl in action</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shrimp congregate on
muddy bottom in depths of around 50 fathoms, or 300 feet. To catch them, fishermen
tow or “drag,” a large, open mouthed, trawl net across the bottom. Once the net
is hauled back the shrimp are washed with hoses to remove mud and small fish,
and then carefully layered with ice in the hold. A well iced load can be safely
held for three or four days, but a poorly iced load produces methane gas as the
shrimp decompose, which has killed a few unlucky fishermen over the years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTha8YwADXX6HPqk2hn4DC3sMNa8r3AOS5PGRSvPXr6s3z6EJmbVqeO3-miFkU30m409vnXMEioMZQ2Wsgor4siTtNYURdtjJkRKV4-TmY82x4hv0yjRXog40NlDylwHfjDX_kfcVDOn0/s1600/Shrimp+bag+1970s+Dave+Jackson+ADFG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="1503" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTha8YwADXX6HPqk2hn4DC3sMNa8r3AOS5PGRSvPXr6s3z6EJmbVqeO3-miFkU30m409vnXMEioMZQ2Wsgor4siTtNYURdtjJkRKV4-TmY82x4hv0yjRXog40NlDylwHfjDX_kfcVDOn0/s320/Shrimp+bag+1970s+Dave+Jackson+ADFG.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A shrimp tow on deck.<br />
Photo: Dave Jackson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96uufpuXMQ4iM3l49je1hK7hYmtOeFU4l7Vc8MbgoQkLppZMwHp8DrhyphenhyphenjrTB1d0stAXwlO563jo98P5GzHVFxujPswcYC12w6IJf0hbKbiIQXAvpd_H_ryTEfV1_Jnb94wJp3Gv2gKjY/s1600/Washing+Shrimp+FV+Salu+1976+Dave+Jackson+ADF%2526G.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1353" data-original-width="1574" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96uufpuXMQ4iM3l49je1hK7hYmtOeFU4l7Vc8MbgoQkLppZMwHp8DrhyphenhyphenjrTB1d0stAXwlO563jo98P5GzHVFxujPswcYC12w6IJf0hbKbiIQXAvpd_H_ryTEfV1_Jnb94wJp3Gv2gKjY/s320/Washing+Shrimp+FV+Salu+1976+Dave+Jackson+ADF%2526G.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shrimp being washed on deck.<br />
Photo: Dave Jackson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the late 1970s it
was not uncommon for a boat to haul in 20,000 lbs. in a single hour-long tow,
and to leave the dock in Kodiak and be back with a 200,000 lb. load in 24
hours. At first the fishery was unregulated, but by the early 70s there were quotas
and four seasons a year, which spread the effort and made processing and
marketing the shrimp easier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One of the first
boats to go after Alaskan shrimp was the Mylark, which skipper Chet Peterson
brought up from Westport, Washington. He was followed by many others, including
the Burch brothers, Al and Oral, who went shrimping in 1959 with the Marigold.
They delivered shrimp caught on the east side of Kodiak to the Halibut
Producers Coop plant in Seward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzwOg2lILAgoU3x5M5q5eNhlqnb1xZGPLD5F0Olse-Wl80OSZX6MznkjvIXV8eqoDgEH6JssqbNYRNsq18uWnZk-iCD2MVXgSSQpEYLm8MW2Ymm07AOe5U2b4mjOLFkGpazGsULplUYo/s1600/FV+Dawn+1970s+Dave+Jackson+ADF%2526G.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1362" data-original-width="1488" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzwOg2lILAgoU3x5M5q5eNhlqnb1xZGPLD5F0Olse-Wl80OSZX6MznkjvIXV8eqoDgEH6JssqbNYRNsq18uWnZk-iCD2MVXgSSQpEYLm8MW2Ymm07AOe5U2b4mjOLFkGpazGsULplUYo/s320/FV+Dawn+1970s+Dave+Jackson+ADF%2526G.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dawn<br />
Photo: Dave Jackson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Burch brothers
fished the Marigold for a few years and then bought the Celtic, which ended up a
mile inland in Seward after the 1964 tsunami. The brothers then bought the
Endeavor, and because the Seward processing plant had been destroyed by the
tsunami, found a market at Ocean Beauty in Kodiak, and relocated there in 1964.
They went on to own and operate the draggers Dawn and Dusk until the mid-2000s.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While these facts of
the Kodiak shrimp fishery are fascinating, other shrimping stories have their
own historical charm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the late 1960s
Frank and Eben Parker arrived in Kodiak to go shrimping after<span style="color: red;"> </span>making a name for themselves whaling off the Oregon
coast in 1961. (See “Whaling on the Tom and Al,” <a href="https://kodiakmaritimemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/09/">https://kodiakmaritimemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/09/</a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">). </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Following a successful shrimp trip in the early 70s, the men </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">headed
to an uptown Kodiak establishment for some relaxation. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">They found however, that neither had enough
money to pay the barman, so one of them went back to the harbor to retrieve his
wallet. Exactly which brother went is now lost to history.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Arriving on the
boat, either Eben or Frank found a miscreant aboard, stealing the crew’s
personal belongings. The fisherman overpowered the robber, tied him by the
ankles, hoisted him up with the single hook, and then lowered him overboard,
upside down, so the man’s head was an inch above the water. He told the thief the
tide was rising, but he’d be back as soon as he could with a policeman. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The thief,
misunderstanding the nature of floating boats on rising tides, hollered and
swore and begged a gathering crowd to be rescued from certain drowning, until
lawmen and both Parker brothers arrived and brought him back aboard, with nothing
wet but his hair. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sources: ADF&G biologist Dave Jackson; “Back to the Sea,
The Autobiography of a Marine Biologist,” 2008, by Dayton Alverson; and recollections of fisherman
Al Burch. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-51428292341357657232020-03-10T13:03:00.000-08:002020-03-10T13:03:04.561-08:00Sea Otter Skins and the China Trade<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ae1pPJBqcvc_orkZHShkpnJmam1pGFbgnSe3ommYmCLNP-JZ8fIQCHQ_UbPeCeDia636P1_URsHUFlGd2i44IjAHU8o0TbMQrHrNYHmJ2nqlpxRE8BpwaU8P2EDlNwfGnlUBwZmwtCw/s1600/Alexandr+Andreyevich+Baranov%252C+painting+by+Mikhail+T.+Tikhanov%252C+1818+Wikipedia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ae1pPJBqcvc_orkZHShkpnJmam1pGFbgnSe3ommYmCLNP-JZ8fIQCHQ_UbPeCeDia636P1_URsHUFlGd2i44IjAHU8o0TbMQrHrNYHmJ2nqlpxRE8BpwaU8P2EDlNwfGnlUBwZmwtCw/s320/Alexandr+Andreyevich+Baranov%252C+painting+by+Mikhail+T.+Tikhanov%252C+1818+Wikipedia.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alexandr Andreyevich Baranov, <br />painting by Mikhail T. Tikhanov, 1818 <br />Wikipedia </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the summer of 1792, Alexander Baranov, the 45 year old manager
of the Russia’s Kodiak colony, chanced upon the British ship </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Phoenix</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> in Prince William Sound, commanded
by Hugh Moore, and his first mate, Joseph O’Cain, an Irish Bostonian. The three
men hit it off immediately, using German to communicate and Boston rum to
lubricate their new friendship.</span><br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From Moore and O’Cain, Baranov learned that American and
British ships were carrying sea otter skins from southeast Alaska directly to
China, where they were traded for luxury goods which were carried back to
Boston and London at great profit. Baranov also learned that Southeast Alaska
was far richer in sea otters than the Aleutian and Kodiak grounds, depleted by
fifty years of relentless exploitation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Baranov had been struggling to keep the Russian colony supplied
with food, clothing, and hardware, which had to come by land across Russia, and
then by ship from Siberia. The sea otter skins which paid for the supplies had
to go back the same way to Irkutsk, and then to China where they were sold to keep
rich people warm in the winter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihMtcOf8bVYSl-EWc0q4G3yTN2jgjrPAqBPHOSr7tdemlcst1vRmcC206EGyh4oeCSzsH-5sVGX7VRzwmEUq_jFPt-vtRC1RIOr4LUd238gD2_edC-rhT8kX9Mc2fACcQPHMx4ME_cdpI/s1600/Sea_Otter+by+John+Webber+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihMtcOf8bVYSl-EWc0q4G3yTN2jgjrPAqBPHOSr7tdemlcst1vRmcC206EGyh4oeCSzsH-5sVGX7VRzwmEUq_jFPt-vtRC1RIOr4LUd238gD2_edC-rhT8kX9Mc2fACcQPHMx4ME_cdpI/s1600/Sea_Otter+by+John+Webber+copy.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sea Otter 1778, by John Webber,<br />ship's artist on Captain cook's third voyage of discovery.<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But communication between Alaska and Russia was tenuous, and
the colony often went several years without a supply ship. Baranov realized
that if he had ships of his own he could eliminate the colony’s dependence on
the Siberian route. He persuaded a British shipwright and adventurer, James
Shields, to build the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Phoenix</i> in
Resurrection Bay. It was the first ship built in Russian Alaska. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Baranov also decided to build a fort in Sitka to have access
to the sea otters in Southeast. The Tlingit natives were not friendly, but the
Russians prevailed, and soon the new station was providing the lion’s share of
the annual harvest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Phoenix</i> never
sailed to China, but it made the trip between Okhotsk and Kodiak until it was
lost off Kodiak in May 1799. All 90 people on board died, including James Shields
and the Archimandrite of Kodiak. The loss of the ship and the supplies it was
bringing to Alaska was devastating. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The following spring
Joseph O’Cain was in Spanish California as first mate on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enterprise</i>, trying to trade foodstuffs
for sea otter skins. California produced more food than it could consume
however, and trade was going badly. O’Cain remembered his conversations with
Baranov eight years before about the Alaskan supply problem, and told the
captain of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enterprise</i> about this potential
opportunity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it turned out, no Russian
ship had arrived in Kodiak in several years, and the colony was desperate when
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enterprise</i> arrived. Trading was
brisk and O’Cain headed for Canton loaded with sea otter skins. He vowed to be
back for more as soon as he could. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">But when O’Cain
returned in October 1803, as captain of the </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">O’Cain</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">,
a 280 ton ship with eighteen cannons, and loaded with supplies and rifles, Baranov
had no sea otter skins to trade.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">A year earlier
Sitka had been overrun by the Tlingits and Russia’s access to the Southeast sea
otter grounds was gone.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The two men pondered
the problem until O’Cain had an idea- if Baranov supplied the native hunters
and kayaks, O’Cain would sail to Spanish California, hunt through the mild
winter there, and split the harvest with the Russians, fifty, fifty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baranov jumped at the plan, with the condition
that the ship’s cargo be held in Kodiak as security. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In three
months, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">O’Cain</i>’s hunters killed
2,000 sea otters while the Spanish authorities watched, cowed by the ship’s
cannons. Baranov traded his share of the harvest for the O’Cain’s food, supplies,
and firearms, which he used to rout the Tlingits in Sitka. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKIKUei_oPGxGDbA1JMzBjC_Re7m0IQWLIZsUP77f-W7DTjmjEk8oOeYYfe62S5TEMxCtLA99IgBd2v5_VWLi35-UXYGXZDZZCettZEUniZ3t29Y5BFhJ1YGlI03NoSSPiScDi1rnDI7Y/s1600/%25E2%2580%258EWhampoa+in+China+William+John+Huggins+1835+Peabody+Essex+Museum+mit.edu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="400" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKIKUei_oPGxGDbA1JMzBjC_Re7m0IQWLIZsUP77f-W7DTjmjEk8oOeYYfe62S5TEMxCtLA99IgBd2v5_VWLi35-UXYGXZDZZCettZEUniZ3t29Y5BFhJ1YGlI03NoSSPiScDi1rnDI7Y/s320/%25E2%2580%258EWhampoa+in+China+William+John+Huggins+1835+Peabody+Essex+Museum+mit.edu.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whampoa in China 1835 by William John Huggins<br />Peabody Essex Museum</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">O’Cain sailed
for Whampoa, just downriver from Canton, China, where he traded<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>$100,000 in sea otter skins for tea and silk,
which he sold in Boston to great advantage. He and his partners in Boston reckoned
that a few more such voyages would set them up for life. In 1806 O’Cain sailed
out of Boston in command of a brand new ship, the 340 ton <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eclipse</i>, bound for California and his old friend in Alaska,
Alexander Baranov.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">O’Cain loaded furs
in Kodiak, sold them in Canton and then sailed for Okhotsk to take on supplies
for Kodiak. In October 1809 however, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eclipse</i>
was wrecked south of the Alaska Peninsula on its way to Kodiak. </span></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Baranov sent a
rescue mission but the relief ship too foundered in a northwest storm on the
west side of Kodiak. Some of the men stranded on Sanak made it safely to
Unalaska, but O’Cain drowned in the surf off Unimak Island. (Read our January 2015 </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">blog post about that here: </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://kodiakmaritimemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/01/">https://kodiakmaritimemuseum.blogspot.com/2015/01/</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Baranov and
O’Cain’s grand design, brilliant as it was, to use Yankee ships to carry Russian
America’s trade, worked only as long as there were sea otters to kill. But like many resource extraction schemes, the drive for profit overwhelmed the resource, and the economic
viability of Russian Alaska evaporated. When Russia decided to sell, the Boston
sea captains who had come to know Alaska well were singularly poised to advise William
Seward on the fire sale opportunity of future harvests of timber and fish, and
gold. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-38681943264084130432020-03-09T16:14:00.000-08:002020-03-10T11:25:10.110-08:00Captain Cook in Alaska, 1778<div class="MsoNormal">
In April 1778, the two ships of Captain James Cook’s 3<sup>rd</sup>
voyage of discovery, Resolution and Discovery, left Nootka Sound, on Vancouver
Island, and sailed north in search of the Northwest Passage, the fabled and
perhaps imaginary sea route between Europe and the Orient. Over the next few
weeks they would explore Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet, sail past Kodiak
Island on their way to the Bering Sea, and reject walrus meat as “disgustful.” While
the Russians had been in Alaska for thirty years, Cook and his sailors were the
first Englishmen to visit this part of the North Pacific. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The impetus for the voyage had been a dinner in London in
January 1776, attended by Cook and hosted by the First Lord of the Admiralty,
John Mantagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich. Sandwich mentioned that the British
government was launching a new expedition to find the Northwest Passage, which,
despite centuries of speculation, numerous expeditions, and a £20,000 prize
offered by the British Parliament for its discovery, remained unfound. Cook, back
from a three-year voyage only since the previous July, and presumed to now be
in glorious retirement with two young sons and a pregnant wife, volunteered to
lead the new venture. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In July 1776 Cook and his two ships, the Resolution and the
Discovery, left England, passing a military fleet gathering to repress the recent
rebellion in the American colonies. Sailing around Africa, across the Southern
Ocean and north to Hawaii, they arrived off what is now Oregon in March 1778. The
plan was to sail up the coast looking for a chink in the Pacific wall of North
America that would lead to the Atlantic<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The British knew that Vitus Bering had sailed from Siberia
as far east as Yakutat in 1741, and that he had previously determined that
Siberia and America were separated by the Bering Sea. The British also possessed
a chart Bering had made of Alaska’s coast, but it was vague in many details. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiD3GJNaRruCvOEWHxQnGXmWEz7sm4765qibjDEP6tExEnBRtWfO90VbhDQyKSDmdqUp_2gG4bEHgSm20ui0UTkj3ojNP911YgHcwJTe01i3C1u2Szhd1iEzYowJjD3W9GzqcEzLTW-QI/s1600/ArtCollection_HMSResolution_Large+Captain+Cook+Hotel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="590" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiD3GJNaRruCvOEWHxQnGXmWEz7sm4765qibjDEP6tExEnBRtWfO90VbhDQyKSDmdqUp_2gG4bEHgSm20ui0UTkj3ojNP911YgHcwJTe01i3C1u2Szhd1iEzYowJjD3W9GzqcEzLTW-QI/s320/ArtCollection_HMSResolution_Large+Captain+Cook+Hotel.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">HMS Resolution in Cook Inlet, June 1778</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, during the late spring of 1778, Cook and his men felt
their way north. In early May the Resolution’s sailing master, a young William
Bligh, later of HMS Bounty infamy, mapped the various islands of Prince William
Sound, and Cook buried a bottle with a note in it on Kayak Island. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The expedition then sailed into Cook Inlet and spent two
frustrating weeks inching north on the flood tide and anchoring on the ebb, before
realizing it was a dead end, and that if there was a viable Northwest Passage,
it would be through the Bering Sea, not through the Pacific coast of Alaska. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqK_uct0exFoDwcdh5D4S1HccDBTRjrPUpAS77O13JbFW9k1wM_6qiTRi3wjH2qAFPlMcxoOnsd6ITJljAMU9bBKG6QrP09DgcypYrCmQpaeWfoFCzQYOnp7MfPOBP__Lc9AT77KkHekg/s1600/map-cook-river-1788.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1111" data-original-width="1600" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqK_uct0exFoDwcdh5D4S1HccDBTRjrPUpAS77O13JbFW9k1wM_6qiTRi3wjH2qAFPlMcxoOnsd6ITJljAMU9bBKG6QrP09DgcypYrCmQpaeWfoFCzQYOnp7MfPOBP__Lc9AT77KkHekg/s320/map-cook-river-1788.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early 19th century French chart of Cook Inlet</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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On June 1<sup>st</sup>, at Point Woronzof, off the end of the
what is now Anchorage International Airport, they “hoisted English colors on a
pole… and left a bottle with a paper in it whereon was wrote the ship’s names
and that of the Captain and the time of our being here as is usual on these
occasions, and each drank a bumper of porter to his majestie’s health.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ships then passed down the Inlet and the east side of Kodiak
Island. On June 6<sup>th</sup>, they struck a reef east of Shuyak Island but
managed to get off safely. They passed Pillar Cape and Marmot Bay on the 7<sup>th</sup>,
Cape Greville on the 8<sup>th</sup>, and Cape Barnabas on the 12<sup>th</sup>. Off
the Trinity Islands on the 14<sup>th</sup> they saw people in kayaks in the
distance. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
In the Shumagins on June 19<sup>th</sup> two men in a kayak
paddled up to the Discovery and handed a small box with a piece of paper in it
to the English sailors. While none on board could read the Russian writing, it
was later determined to be a receipt for the payment of “iasak,” a fur tax imposed
on the natives by the Russian government.
The British eventually came to believe the note indicated the eastern
limit of Russian influence in Alaska. They were correct, at least for the
moment, as the massacre and subjugation of Kodiak Sugpiak by the Russians at
Refuge Rock near Old Harbor, was six summers in the future.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On June 21<sup>st</sup>, Cook’s sailors caught several
hundred pounds of halibut and met a man in a kayak wearing “green breeches,”
who seemed entirely comfortable in the presence of Europeans. Soon after, they
entered the Bering Sea. On August 18<sup>th,</sup> north of Icy Cape at 70
degrees north, they ran into a 12 foot wall of ice, moving south at a mile and
half an hour. Cook turned south. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjONTFee2YWrljnVaSLd-xvJTm0CiyykfPKeEUWjNYsfUAWei56oxCU7aT-WRMd5SSQNVy30PwFJTO2SzcjLhSNtZBUilZeoqXGI1PzkNsHhrzrXoI4Q3Wgd7UblgXC5bKn7vXd21EirjU/s1600/Captain+Cook+Royal+Museums+Greenwich.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1224" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjONTFee2YWrljnVaSLd-xvJTm0CiyykfPKeEUWjNYsfUAWei56oxCU7aT-WRMd5SSQNVy30PwFJTO2SzcjLhSNtZBUilZeoqXGI1PzkNsHhrzrXoI4Q3Wgd7UblgXC5bKn7vXd21EirjU/s320/Captain+Cook+Royal+Museums+Greenwich.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Captain Cook, Royal Museum, Greenwich</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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On November 26 the lookouts sighted Maui, and on February 14,
1779, in a violent encounter with the Hawaiians, Cook, four Royal Marines, and
an unknown number of Hawaiians were killed on the beach at Kealakekua Bay,
Hawaii. Cook’s body was dismembered and roasted, but a few days later his
remains were handed over to Captain Charles Clerk, now in command of the expedition,
who buried them at sea. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Resolution and the Discovery arrived home to England in
October 1780, having been gone four years. While several memorials to Captain
Cook exist in Alaska, the bottles and notes he buried on Kayak Island and at Point
Woronzof remain yet undiscovered. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sources: Explorenorthcom, Captain Cook Society, Royal
Museums Greenwich<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWXMWH_6k1a2DkyBx5ZhfKzDMIYabMaZbs8m9OQswgkyJn2vQORjUQ61f9hCMX5TCFP5M9zhG19APE9PmhvuSIrEqKmNJmCicwRT3asVf2JaaVB1qv0aP4HjZKBCpnGIIuP-dv7Q14788/s1600/Captain+Cook%2527s+Third+Voyage+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWXMWH_6k1a2DkyBx5ZhfKzDMIYabMaZbs8m9OQswgkyJn2vQORjUQ61f9hCMX5TCFP5M9zhG19APE9PmhvuSIrEqKmNJmCicwRT3asVf2JaaVB1qv0aP4HjZKBCpnGIIuP-dv7Q14788/s400/Captain+Cook%2527s+Third+Voyage+map.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Route of the Captain cook's third voyage, July 1776- October 1780<br />
Outward bound with Cook in command in red, homeward bound, after Cook's death, in red. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-23378504677243778222016-11-23T17:21:00.000-09:002016-11-23T17:30:18.646-09:00The Romance of the Sea Wears Thin- The St. Patrick Disaster, December 1981<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiQd4EmkbJMa6J2GOiHpCt3jTafgH5BYDOo2lrD4fUVrPo6B6-vbY8s5A5b6Bf5FOEmUpZF6sRVKruh7jutmfmux1aO5c-t9x6APVUb4VktZRuA4fsmQOoYlR22htkFp5GMMWAW-BndU0/s1600/138+foot+scalloper+towed+into+Kodiak+KDM+12-2-1981+Mike+Murray+no+caption.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiQd4EmkbJMa6J2GOiHpCt3jTafgH5BYDOo2lrD4fUVrPo6B6-vbY8s5A5b6Bf5FOEmUpZF6sRVKruh7jutmfmux1aO5c-t9x6APVUb4VktZRuA4fsmQOoYlR22htkFp5GMMWAW-BndU0/s320/138+foot+scalloper+towed+into+Kodiak+KDM+12-2-1981+Mike+Murray+no+caption.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The St. Patrick being towed into Kodiak, December 2, 1981</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
For a long time
after the St. Patrick was towed into Womens Bay in December 1981, you could
drive by on the road to Bells Flats and see it tied to a mooring buoy, right in
front of the rodeo grounds. The boat had a starboard list when they found it
abandoned and drifting off Afognak Island and that list never went away, and it
swung in the wind off the buoy for years, the rigging sagging, the hull rusting,
a ghost ship, until it sank at the end of its chain in the mid-1980s. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The St. Patrick had
been built in Bath, Maine in 1948. It was 138 feet long, and because it was
over 200 net tons, the Coast Guard required the vessel to be operated by
licensed officers, including a captain, first mate, and engineer. In the summer
of 1981 the owner, a man named Leroy Wharton, of Hampton, Virginia, hired Al
Palmer, an experienced fisherman and licensed master, to bring her to Kodiak to
fish for scallops. For six months, Palmer and his crew delivered scallops to
the Alaska Food Company plant in Gibson Cove. In late November 1981, when.
Palmer took a trip off, the mate, Cornelius Green, took command. Green was not
licensed to be a ship’s master however, and when the boat left Gibson Cove on
its final trip just after Thanksgiving, it sailed illegally, a condition which would
eventually have large legal consequences. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
There were 11 men
on board, most from the Lower 48, and one woman, Vanessa Sandin, of Kodiak, eighteen
years old, who sailed as the cook. Her sole previous marine experience was
working the previous summer on her dad’s boat in Bristol Bay. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The St. Patrick headed
for<span style="color: red;"> </span>Marmot Bay, thirty miles north of Kodiak,
and Cornelius Green told the plant manager they’d be back in about eight days. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
On Sunday the 29<sup>th</sup>,
the wind came up northeast<span style="color: red;"> </span>and by that evening
was gusting in excess of 65 knots. The crew secured the deck and the skipper
jogged slowly into the weather. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Shortly after
midnight a 25 foot wave struck the vessel on the port side, smashing several
wheelhouse windows and an engine room door on the port side. The engineer inexplicably
informed the crew that the engine room batteries would explode when the sea
water in the bilge submerged them. The skipper, in a visibly confused state,
and apparently believing the boat to be in imminent danger of capsizing and
sinking, ordered the crew to abandon ship. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The wave had toppled
a 55 gallon drum on deck being used as a day tank to supply fuel to the engines,
and as the crew frantically donned their survival suits, the fuel line from
this tank air-locked. With the fuel supply cut off, the main engine and electrical
generator shut down and the lights went out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Without
power, the vessel rolled violently in the trough. The wind screamed through the
rigging and waves swept the deck. The boat’s life raft, secured behind the
wheelhouse, either broke loose from its cradle or was released by a crewman,
and while exactly what happened has never been explained, the inflated raft
floated just off the stern, untethered, its canopy light glowing yellow in the
black storm. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
There
were twelve people on board but only nine survival suits, so three men went
into the 40 degree water wearing only life jackets. The crew swam for the
raft’s light, but the wind pushed it away faster than they could swim. It
drifted away, empty. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Two
crewmembers had gone over the side together but were soon separated in the
heavy seas. One of them, Robert Kidd, floated alone in the water for twenty
four hours until he managed to get ashore on Marmot Island late Monday night.
He was spotted and rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter on Tuesday, a day and a
half after he left the St. Patrick. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
The
other ten people clung or tied themselves together, but within an hour the
three men without survival suits lost consciousness to hypothermia and drowned.
The remaining seven survived the night and came in sight of land later that
day. Two of the men tried to swim to shore but retreated after watching 20 foot
breakers smashing against the cliffs of Pillar Cape. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Several
of the crew, including Vanessa Sandin, were wearing leaking survival suits and
as their second night in the water came on, they succumbed to the cold. The others
faded too, one by one, until only one man, Wally Thomas, was left alive. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBf0X5hU-FToCLdy4Z5vDkqMfqmH4SiqZMZfiJnsgW9MV_ZJN8q2paM90J1XfziMy_1jhOni0JLBCk49YZDoTb6SxpwFYz3lml1drQgHHijKzJraZrSKFGiwDr9c6AGjUW7bhsA7G8t9A/s1600/Thomas+Wallace+rests+in+hospital+KDM+12-2-1981.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBf0X5hU-FToCLdy4Z5vDkqMfqmH4SiqZMZfiJnsgW9MV_ZJN8q2paM90J1XfziMy_1jhOni0JLBCk49YZDoTb6SxpwFYz3lml1drQgHHijKzJraZrSKFGiwDr9c6AGjUW7bhsA7G8t9A/s320/Thomas+Wallace+rests+in+hospital+KDM+12-2-1981.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wallace Thomas at Kodiak Hospital, December 2, 1981</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
“I
was with six other people in the water,” Thomas would later tell the Kodiak
Daily Mirror. “I was taking turns holding them up. They were my friends and I
wanted them to live very badly. That was enough then, when we were still
together. That was enough to keep going.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Some
time before dawn on Tuesday, Thomas crawled ashore on Marmot Island, two miles
down the beach from Robert Kidd. A Coast Guard helicopter found him. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6YPnTegDFLDGt89TfkLi8c6bNfh8x961QMbnuOp5OHOqrFIqCe_Qz0jAXIzXtMqpochWpzXsAbNWW3SYtSC37D-Jw0V9afUeWN2MfcKocPZxMKzEHA0v2Ky-6pE7cr7YmXTO8Na64Zo/s1600/Wheelhouse+KDM+12-2-1981.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6YPnTegDFLDGt89TfkLi8c6bNfh8x961QMbnuOp5OHOqrFIqCe_Qz0jAXIzXtMqpochWpzXsAbNWW3SYtSC37D-Jw0V9afUeWN2MfcKocPZxMKzEHA0v2Ky-6pE7cr7YmXTO8Na64Zo/s320/Wheelhouse+KDM+12-2-1981.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Starboard side of the St. Patrick wheelhouse, <br />
after being towed to Kodiak</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Three
bodies were recovered from the Marmot Island surf and several from the sea
nearby. Vanessa Sandin’s body was found two weeks later near the entrance to
Womens Bay. The abandoned, but still floating, St. Patrick and the empty raft
were found adrift by Fred Ball, a commercial air charter pilot flying to
Afognak, less than 12 hours after the crew abandoned ship, and while eight of
them floated alive in the ocean nearby. The boat was taken under tow that
afternoon by another scallop boat, the Nellie Belle. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
On
clear days, from the Brechan yard on Mill Bay Rd, you can look north and see
Marmot Island lying blue like a frozen whale just off the east side of Afognak
Island. If the weather had been good that November night, and things had not
gone so wrong, you could have seen the lights of the St Patrick out there, flickering
silently and unremarkably thirty miles away. But the weather was not good that
night, and things did go wrong and the events of that night still reverberate thirty-five
years later. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Robert
Kidd and Wally Thomas never went to sea again, and the survivors of the men and
the woman who were lost on the St. Patrick carried on, or not, as people do
when calamity descends. During the legal proceedings which followed the
abandoning of the St. Patrick, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, surveying
the suffering which had resulted from the event, mentioned that for him, “the
romance of the sea wears thin.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
From
the road now there’s nothing to see of the wreck lying at the bottom of Womens
Bay, but there’s a video of it online- sea anemones along the rails glowing and
silent in the green light fifty feet down, the white letters of the name still
legible on the stern.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 139.5pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EgvRMc47IEOZZ77G-UCV_dF-HBfPuFnLg-hAz-dI5yXJlsoiHLIWiY_rvXDAPQYSUzUMGUkAxaEitYDmWPANZ_XSGvfvu-r2TXWt1EUh0BzmtZ0UnlWoH8ZcwzfXaXrJkQ5VumhlAEk/s1600/St+Patrick+in+St+Paul+Harbor_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EgvRMc47IEOZZ77G-UCV_dF-HBfPuFnLg-hAz-dI5yXJlsoiHLIWiY_rvXDAPQYSUzUMGUkAxaEitYDmWPANZ_XSGvfvu-r2TXWt1EUh0BzmtZ0UnlWoH8ZcwzfXaXrJkQ5VumhlAEk/s320/St+Patrick+in+St+Paul+Harbor_web.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The St. Patrick moored in Kodiak's St. Paul Harbor, <br />
early January 1982</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-35410734286083199722016-10-18T13:47:00.001-08:002020-07-09T10:49:28.945-08:00The Prinsendam Fire October , 1980<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM0rQomaaI9sWwlU9emP2wYvSP4wAob4YrMiKdbObPhJU_0R_mqQ52GJ_3BZ3Qj0pPi5Q1XB1j9iFH4IKlHcT_N0LsSaHuihZnaE8Sf-vk2svNuSw4G-tH3J6NSeVmW3WyaZlFwEZ9Lmg/s1600/1980_Prinsendam+photo+USCG_Page_01.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM0rQomaaI9sWwlU9emP2wYvSP4wAob4YrMiKdbObPhJU_0R_mqQ52GJ_3BZ3Qj0pPi5Q1XB1j9iFH4IKlHcT_N0LsSaHuihZnaE8Sf-vk2svNuSw4G-tH3J6NSeVmW3WyaZlFwEZ9Lmg/s320/1980_Prinsendam+photo+USCG_Page_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font face="arial" size="2">The SS Prinsendam listing in the Gulf of Alaska, <br />October 4, 1980<br />Photo: www.cgaviationhistory.org</font></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Just after midnight on Saturday, October 4, 1980, a fire broke out in the engine room of the 427 foot Prinsendam, a Holland America cruise ship with 320 mostly elderly passengers, and 200 Indonesian crewmen and Dutch officers on board. The ship was in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska, 150 miles south of Yakutat, on a cruise from Vancouver to Singapore. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">
The fire went quickly out of control. The crew sealed the engine room and flooded it with CO2, but the fire kept burning. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A few minutes before 1 a.m., Captain Cornelius Wabeke, a 52 year old mariner with 30 years’ experience, ordered his radio officer, Jack Van der Zee, to send out an URGENT Morse Code radio message. On hearing it, Coast Guard Communications Station Kodiak requested that the Prinsendam send a full SOS message, preceded by an international auto alarm, which would ring an alarm bell in the Radio Officer’s and Captains’ staterooms of any nearby ships, even if they were not on the bridge to hear an URGENT message at that late hour. The Captain however, concerned that an SOS would give legal permission for other ships to salvage the Prinsendam, directed his radio officer to hold off on the alert. Van der Zee made the SOS broadcast anyway, saying later that “If I lose my license, get fined, and go to jail, at least I will be alive and so will the passengers and crew, God willing." </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
At 1 a.m. Wabeke informed the passengers of a “small fire in the engine room,” and ordered them to the promenade deck. They arrived dressed in everything from tuxedos to night dresses. Some were barefoot. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The Coast Guard meanwhile began coordinating a rescue with H3 helicopters and C-130s from Sitka, Kodiak, and Anchorage, and the cutters Boutwell in Juneau and Woodrush in Sitka, and the Mellon, near Vancouver. The Exxon tanker Williamsburg, 90 miles south of the Prinsendam, hearing the SOS, turned around and headed for the burning ship. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
By 2:00 a.m. the smoke in the promenade lounge had forced the passengers outside. Unable to return to their staterooms because of the fire, underdressed people wrapped themselves in draperies torn from the windows. By 3:30 the fire had burned through the wiring to the ship’s firefighting pumps and the ship had developed a starboard list as water entered the hull through portholes blown out by the fire. Sometime between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. Wabeke gave the order to abandon ship. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOvGE2b1cDGgKeRJWfp-p8ephuzSZyJyZpWZ_j8NBQRY22BElyehyqDkuYB1GbHAXayY6vFalxeDbl0h0SLNrHArtKCEE7e8MFaPHY_xS9P8_6kpIkoCj80Gcg6m2PJ3hhMTXcJVHausk/s1600/1980_Prinsendam+photo+USCG_Page_03.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOvGE2b1cDGgKeRJWfp-p8ephuzSZyJyZpWZ_j8NBQRY22BElyehyqDkuYB1GbHAXayY6vFalxeDbl0h0SLNrHArtKCEE7e8MFaPHY_xS9P8_6kpIkoCj80Gcg6m2PJ3hhMTXcJVHausk/s320/1980_Prinsendam+photo+USCG_Page_03.jpg" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font face="arial" size="2">Prinsendam passengers await rescue from a lifeboat <br />October 4, 1980<br />Photo: www.cgaviationhistory.org</font></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Six lifeboats, four inflatable life rafts and a ship’s tender were lowered. While the officers tried to maintain order, many of the crewmen climbed over the passengers in a panic to get aboard the boats. When they pulled away, several, designed for 60 passengers, had 90 people aboard. Captain Wabeke and a firefighting crew stayed behind, along with several Coast Guardsmen who had helicoptered in, and some of the ship’s entertainers who had not found room in the boats. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The Williamsburg arrived around 8 a.m. and the helicopters began ferrying people from the lifeboats to a helipad on the tanker. A Coast Guard doctor triaged the passengers as they landed and put those in poor shape onto helicopters headed for Yakutat to refuel. He would later say that he’d seen a woman with a brain tumor, a man with a malaria attack, and others with epileptic seizures and terminal cancer. All of them were cold, wet, and hungry.
Winds at dawn were 10 knots and seas were less than 5 feet, but by 5 p.m., the wind had increased to 50 knots and the helicopters could no longer manage the lifts. The cutter Boutwell lowered a small launch, but many of the Prinsendam’s crew trampled the passengers again climbing from the lifeboats to the launch, so the effort was abandoned. The cutter then lowered a 40 foot Jacob’s ladder, but this was more than many of the passengers could manage. Eventually, and they were winched onto the Boutwell’s deck with a sling. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSvwjx9ROp_UxQmTPmOU1cdhOrNPqO_KuvYg0hVKbijoPZeLkkkLqFMCNFtq3box8BMkuqnCSa9DCXOp0QwBMqaNiEOj0KFhu35MwfN0pckyLuK-wqAH5GrBpqVGlO_Jw4xby8p8XOMCI/s1600/1980_Prinsendam+photo+USCG_Page_02.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSvwjx9ROp_UxQmTPmOU1cdhOrNPqO_KuvYg0hVKbijoPZeLkkkLqFMCNFtq3box8BMkuqnCSa9DCXOp0QwBMqaNiEOj0KFhu35MwfN0pckyLuK-wqAH5GrBpqVGlO_Jw4xby8p8XOMCI/s320/1980_Prinsendam+photo+USCG_Page_02.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font face="arial" size="2">The Prinsendam, just before sinking, October 11, 1980<br />Photo: www.cgaviationhistory.org</font></td></tr>
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Captain Wabeke, the last man on the Prinsendam, was lifted off the deck around 6 p.m. The Williamsburg headed for Valdez with 450 passengers. The Boutwell went to Sitka with the rest.
On October 11, a week after the fire began, the ship rolled on its side and sank in 8,000 feet of water.</div>
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Holland America told shopkeepers in Sitka and Valdez to run a tab and give the survivors anything they needed. They bought a lot of clothes. The national media descended on Southeast Alaska, and learned the hard way that a rental car cannot be driven from Juneau to Sitka. The passengers wrote letters of gratitude to the Coast Guard for saving their lives. </div>
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A Dutch Court of Inquiry reprimanded Captain Wabeke and some of his officers for mishandling the emergency, effectively ending their careers. Radio Officer Van der Zee was awarded the Order of the Netherlands by Queen Beatrix for doing the right thing. </div>
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As in most disasters there were moments of greatness and of ignominy, but in the end, remarkably, 520 people were rescued from a burning ship 150 miles from land, in October, in Alaska, without loss of life. In number of lives saved at sea, it is the U.S. Coast Guard’s finest rescue effort. </div>
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On February 20, Coast Guard Appreciation Day, we should remember too that some of the Coast Guardsmen who helped save people on the Prinsendam still live in Kodiak. </div>
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Note- The exact count of passengers and crew varies depending on which source is used. The numbers cited here are from an August 4, 2007, Coast Guard Report, “Top Ten Coast Guard Rescues.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Sources for this blog post:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://cgaviationhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/SAR/1980_PrinsendamCB.pdf"><font color="#000000">https://cgaviationhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/SAR/1980_PrinsendamCB.pdf</font></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.kcaw.org/2015/10/21/35th-anniversary-of-the-prinsendam-part-1-the-rescue/"><font color="#000000">https://www.kcaw.org/2015/10/21/35th-anniversary-of-the-prinsendam-part-1-the-rescue/</font></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>A Morning To Remember The Prinsendam fire kindles concern about safety at sea. </div><div>Time Magazine, 10/20/1980</div><div><br /></div><div>Coast Guard Announces 1,109,310 Lives Saved Since 1790. USCG Press Release 8/4/2007 </div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-42893106060792901452016-01-14T15:40:00.000-09:002016-04-07T12:14:30.408-08:00The Tragedy of the John and Olaf <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Early on the morning of Wednesday, January 16, 1974, John Blaalid, 45, the skipper of the 86 foot shrimp trawler John and Olaf, radioed the Coast Guard to inform them that he and his crew were experiencing heavy icing in Portage Bay, on the Alaska Peninsula, across Shelikof Strait from Kodiak Island. Blaalid reported that winds in excess of a hundred miles an hour and temperatures in the single digits had caused heavy icing on the boat, but believed they could ride out the storm until daylight. At some point after that call the crew managed to anchor the vessel in Jute Bay, a shallow dent in the coastline on the north side of Portage Bay.</span></div>
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Along with Blaalid, originally from Norway, were crewmen Arthur Gilbert, age 47, from Kodiak, Arthur’s son, David, 22, and Ivar Gjerde, a Norwegian national, age unknown.
Captain Blaalid called the Coast Guard again sometime between 7:30 and 9:30 that morning, to let them know he and his crew were abandoning ship. While no one knows for sure why they chose to abandon the vessel and get in the raft, conjecture has endured for years on Kodiak’s waterfront that Blaalid and his crew believed the John and Olaf was in imminent danger of capsizing from the weight of the ice on the superstructure and rigging. That was the last radio call from the John and Olaf.</span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The Coast Guard immediately began an air and sea search to rescue the fishermen in the raft. High winds prevented flights from Air Station Kodiak however, so a C-130 launched from Elmendorf Air Base in Anchorage. Over the Shelikof that evening the pilot encountered extreme turbulence, low visibility and sea spray at 700 feet. They did not see the John and Olaf or its life raft.</span><br />
The Coast Guard cutter Citrus and the F/V Elizabeth F also tried to reach Portage Bay, but winds in the Shelikof of 80 to 90 knots- 92 to 103 miles an hour- forced the Elizabeth F to abandon the effort. The crabber Virginia Santos and the research vessel Nautilus also joined the search, but the Nautilus remained stuck by 60 knot winds in Katmai Bay, forty miles north of Portage Bay.
The Citrus was delayed in getting to Portage Bay after it detoured to escort the F/V Chief into Jap Bay, on Kodiak’s east side, after that vessel’s radar malfunctioned.</div>
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">On Thursday the 17th a C-130 spotted the John and Olaf about 500 yards from shore in Jute Bay, “still in the water but touching ground.” A photo taken from the plane, of the boat encased almost unrecognizably in ice, ran in newspapers around the world.</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The tug Duncan Foss arrived at Jute Bay the next day, and searchers found coffee still in cups on the galley table of the John and Olaf, but no crew. According to longtime Kodiak resident Dick Waddell, who was a crewman on the Foss that winter, and who knew John Blaalid well, “everything was normal, nothing was tipped over like sometimes you get in a storm.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The crew of the John and Olaf had removed their life raft from its cradle atop the wheelhouse and presumably deployed it alongside the John and Olaf before climbing in. Whether they untied the raft from the vessel deliberately, in the belief that the boat might capsize from the weight of the ice and take them down with it, or if it was torn away from the boat by the wind, or if something else happened, remains a mystery.</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">What is known is that the hundred mile an hour, 10 degree wind blew the raft out of Jute Bay and into the southern end of Shelikof Strait. On Friday, two days after the crew had abandoned the John and Olaf, the empty life raft was spotted and recovered by the Citrus on Tugidak Island, off the southern end of Kodiak Island, 75 miles southeast of Jute Bay.It is conceivable that the raft was overturned by the wind on the exposed crest of a wave, or tumbled upside down by a breaking sea as it crossed the Shelikof.</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">In both of those scenarios, the men could have been tossed out into the water, or clambered deliberately out from under the overturned raft. Presumably in survival suits, and thus being low in the water, the sea current may have carried them south, past Tugidak Island, while the life raft, being more exposed to the wind, was carried directly to the island. In any case, the men were never found.</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">John Blaalid and his partner in the boat, Olaf Wellstein, were Norwegians who had fished for Dick Waddell on his boat the Pacific Pearl before deciding to buy a shrimper of their own. They bought the Ruth McKenzie and renamed it the John and Olaf. Blaalid had recently moved his family from Norway to Kodiak.</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Art Gilbert had lived in Kodiak for about nine years and had signed onto the John and Olaf the August before, with his son Tony. David Gilbert, a law student at the University of Oklahoma, had prevailed on his brother Tony to give up his place on the boat for a few weeks after Christmas so he could make money for college.</span></span><br />
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<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The John and Olaf remained where it was anchored in Jute Bay for many years, a cautionary hulk which gradually deteriorated before eventually breaking up and disappearing.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-22237184677330408982015-11-03T14:13:00.000-09:002016-01-14T14:14:17.599-09:00Life and Death on Aiaktalik Island<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93ZFnFEEvtvOarnw5ndrK3urvtRvuiXmCE_e_U3L_O8UD8FwjfzxCxzKxQxrR-_urIARMqTnXRqRZimLhDhqLaSuzKBA9y2D8Qj8pE426FSsH1_MNzFz7bTlKTFVxdYcRLEgHSqmwBxE/s1600/Marion+A+1975+Corky+KcCorkle+Kadiak+Times+10-14-1975.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93ZFnFEEvtvOarnw5ndrK3urvtRvuiXmCE_e_U3L_O8UD8FwjfzxCxzKxQxrR-_urIARMqTnXRqRZimLhDhqLaSuzKBA9y2D8Qj8pE426FSsH1_MNzFz7bTlKTFVxdYcRLEgHSqmwBxE/s320/Marion+A+1975+Corky+KcCorkle+Kadiak+Times+10-14-1975.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Marion a, 1978. Photo: Corky McCorkle, <br />Kodiak Harbormaster in the 1970s.</td></tr>
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On October 1, 1978,
two weeks into the Kodiak King Crab season, the <i>Marion A</i>., a 42 foot steel boat, headed for the south end of Kodiak
Island with sixteen crab pots. Onboard were skipper Delno Oldham, 25, and
deckhands Jerry Allain, 28, and Gerald Bourgeois, 29.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Delno Oldham, from
Washington State, had fished for about five years. Allain, from Kodiak, had worked
as the Kodiak Daily Mirror pressman before going fishing, and Bourgeois, from Covington, Louisiana, had gotten
to know Allain while salmon fishing. It was Bourgeois’s first crab season.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The next morning, 100 miles south of Kodiak
city, the boat turned into the mile-and-a-half wide channel between Aiaktalik
Island and Kodiak Island. A 20 knot wind
drove a five foot chop, with “waves breaking in all directions,” according to
later testimony by Bourgeois.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgrdGw6AgZHytwrrf4HXPHtvLymQVL9OmJGMXC-6oEM7BzWzUtZasAP9KlFiPlwbtc5uesLcgqaa_JIj2ZhhCwmr1Zn44oXF5d6f7FgAi_JcOb5r8_ZN6MRf6SCKGXm8TlkEjIIvmV_Q/s1600/Jerry+Allain+Kadiak+Times+10-14-1978.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgrdGw6AgZHytwrrf4HXPHtvLymQVL9OmJGMXC-6oEM7BzWzUtZasAP9KlFiPlwbtc5uesLcgqaa_JIj2ZhhCwmr1Zn44oXF5d6f7FgAi_JcOb5r8_ZN6MRf6SCKGXm8TlkEjIIvmV_Q/s320/Jerry+Allain+Kadiak+Times+10-14-1978.jpg" width="186" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jerry Allain. Photo: Kadiak Times</td></tr>
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Around 10:30 the
boat suddenly listed heavily to port. Allain and Bourgeois ran out on deck while
Oldham tried to maneuver the boat upright again. He turned into the seas and the
boat rolled back to starboard until it was upright again, but it kept going
over onto its starboard side and then upside down. Allain and Bourgeois went into
the water and Delno Oldham swam out the galley door just before the wheelhouse
went under. From the initial list to being upside down took a minute and half. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The men clung to
the keel for a few minutes until it sank under them, bow first. They found
themselves in 45 degree water, halfway between Aiaktalik Island and Kodiak
Island, three quarters of a mile from either shore. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Delno Oldham. Photo: Kadiak Times</td></tr>
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“I saw Jerry but I
didn’t see Delno anymore,” Bourgeois would tell a reporter later. His survival
suit in its stowage bag bumped the back of his head and with Jerry Allain’s
help, he got it on. He had tried the suit on only once before. They began
swimming for Aiktalik with Allain clinging to Bourgeois’s waist, but within fifteen
minutes Allain “started talking really slow,” according to Bourgeois. “He knew
it and I knew it. It was going to take too long to reach land.” Bourgeois held
his friend for awhile but then, “I was sure he was dead. I finally let go.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bourgeois told himself
“I want to live, I want to live,” over and over, until he washed up in the surf
on Aiktalik Island three hours later. He
had lost his glasses. He had two waterlogged matches. He built a driftwood
lean-to to get out of the wind. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Over the next
eleven days Bourgeois took the survival suit off only three times, when the sky
cleared enough to dry out in the sun. The suit’s feet tore off as he scrounged
for mussels on a reef, but the suit kept him warm enough to stay alive. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He watched for
passing boats from a high point above the beach and walked to a stream for
water. Temperatures were in the 50s, unseasonably warm, but he worried about the
inevitable coming of winter. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Bourgeois found
some wild celery and beach greens and ate mussels. On the seventh day he found
a half gallon of fresh milk in the surf, and a Hershey bar. He drank half the
milk, ate the Hershey bar, and saved the rest of the milk for later. He caught
a baby vole, but the animal blinked at him, a fellow creature in a harsh world,
and he could not bring himself to eat it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On the second day
two planes passed overhead and eventually more than 50 boats passed through the
channel, including a Coast Guard cutter, but Delno Oldham had not had time to
make a distress call and no one was looking for the <i>Marion A</i> or its crewmen. Bourgeois waved and blew a whistle, but the
planes and boats kept going. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On Friday the 13<sup>th</sup>,
Bourgeois prayed every half hour that the 13<sup>th</sup> would be his lucky
day. Around 10 a.m., as Oly Harder’s 38 foot <i>Moonsong</i>, passed by, a crewman saw a man on the beach. They turned
around to get a better look. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The <i>Moonsong</i> came closer and Bourgeois swam
out to it. They pulled him aboard and a
Coast Guard helicopter came out for him. He spent two nights in the Kodiak hospital,
but except for some minor immersion damage to his fingertips, he was basically
okay. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsqUvJ1BgZSHXFo7xK2kFPGZctU7_QwWTeSAvYgqlkt5V2syjvQs9U4eLNL52K9rsjiIHGdX-Y91YhSqE4dl6Wl9mIIOOFwGbPgXaZZ-uU2EVrcpMr3zVWH46x_flgaM7fGdlXujWbUsE/s1600/gerard+bourgeios+1978+Jerry+Martini_cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsqUvJ1BgZSHXFo7xK2kFPGZctU7_QwWTeSAvYgqlkt5V2syjvQs9U4eLNL52K9rsjiIHGdX-Y91YhSqE4dl6Wl9mIIOOFwGbPgXaZZ-uU2EVrcpMr3zVWH46x_flgaM7fGdlXujWbUsE/s320/gerard+bourgeios+1978+Jerry+Martini_cropped.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gerard Bourgeios. Photo: Jerry Martini, Kodiak Daily Mirror</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Bourgeois would
later allow that he had prayed himself off the island. “It was a solemn
experience…It got me closer to God, no doubt about it…” a few days Later he
flew home to Louisiana. The bodies of Jerry Allain and Delno Oldham were never
found, and why the boat rolled over and sank remains a mystery. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In a tragic post
script to the story, according to friends in Kodiak, Gerry Bourgeois was
reportedly killed in a car wreck in Louisiana a few weeks after his ordeal in
Alaska. <o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-23372696757367945482015-09-01T13:43:00.000-08:002016-01-14T13:55:02.804-09:00Whaling for NASA on the Tom and Al<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In last month’s
column, I wrote about a 1914 expedition to the high arctic whose people were
rescued by the <i>King and Winge</i>, a
historic fishing vessel known to many in Kodiak as a crab fishing boat, from the
1970s until it sank in the Bering Sea in 1994. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Not quite as
famous, but still well known in Kodiak, and similar in looks to the <i>King and Winge</i>, was the <i>Tom and Al.</i>, which had its own colorful
life. Launched as the <i>Ragnhild</i> in
1900, the vessel <span style="color: #222222;">was renamed after themselves</span>
by <span style="color: #222222;">Thomas J. King and Albert L. Winge when they
purchased it some time after 1910. The
two men </span>also owned the King and Winge Shipbuilding Company in West
Seattle which built the <i>King and Winge </i>in
1914, making the two vessels shirt tail relatives, if not exactly sister ships.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNEj6Gwj7A4DMTBKi2ZcWLxM7vShyuZL2rxDs5_xbypSxNfizLNbJ6iGJd9oIR6GdbiPSUQ-FHtMD4gtM-xk5zhRjzUmIWiv19YqcKZM3PuUqQs6CBw8bypitJRBrO52VKkN3SoVb-24/s1600/Tom+and+Al_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNEj6Gwj7A4DMTBKi2ZcWLxM7vShyuZL2rxDs5_xbypSxNfizLNbJ6iGJd9oIR6GdbiPSUQ-FHtMD4gtM-xk5zhRjzUmIWiv19YqcKZM3PuUqQs6CBw8bypitJRBrO52VKkN3SoVb-24/s320/Tom+and+Al_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tom and Al in Kodiak, about 1980.<br />
Photo: Kodiak Maritime Museum, Roger Page Collection</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Of note regarding
the shipyard is that Albert Winge, originally from Boston and arriving in Puget
Sound around 1880, learned the art of shipbuilding from Donald McKay, who in
the 1850s, designed clipper ships, some of which, including the <i>Lightning</i> and the <i>Flying Cloud</i>, remain the among the fastest sailing ships the world
has ever seen. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The <i>Tom and Al</i><span style="color: #222222;"> however,
sailed, if not particularly fast, at least gracefully, as a halibut schooner
off the Northwest coast and in Alaska for decades, manned by dory men who rowed
away each morning in their small flat bottomed craft to set and retrieve their
longline skates before returning the ship at the end of the day.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Around 1960 the <i>Tom and Al</i> was acquired by Tom and Eben
Parker, a pair of colorful and
imaginative siblings from the Oregon coast. Looking for a way to make the boat
pay for itself, they contracted to deliver a very special kind of sea creature to
the Bio Products processing plant on the Columbia River in Astoria. To get the
venture going, Bio Products purchased a 90 mm harpoon gun from a Norwegian outfit,
and gave it to Frank and Eben to mount on the <i>Tom and Al</i>’s foredeck. They set to sea looking for sperm whales.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ScsqGvhYou30tk_Q7sDsy-9jt7Xj2U86bN8AIJSlViNetBl6BwHNJSzAZxEtmEtdcOFNH5fjE_Na6zQtpQ8HSqqjSdR7oBA9jT-yBbpXI9rRtGFvkqnmxT5gDthM87PX2ma-LXa3znU/s1600/Tom+and+Al+gunners+1961_edit1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ScsqGvhYou30tk_Q7sDsy-9jt7Xj2U86bN8AIJSlViNetBl6BwHNJSzAZxEtmEtdcOFNH5fjE_Na6zQtpQ8HSqqjSdR7oBA9jT-yBbpXI9rRtGFvkqnmxT5gDthM87PX2ma-LXa3znU/s320/Tom+and+Al+gunners+1961_edit1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Alva Elliot, ex-Navy Chief Gunner's Mate, and</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Richard Carruthers, Jr., </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Bio Products Sales Manager, with harpoon gun. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Photo: Oregonian April 23, 1961</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In their later
years the brothers would regale young fishermen in Kodiak’s watering holes with
whaling stories, not all of them suitable for a family newspaper. Their
listeners, products of the 1970s anti-whaling enlightenment, were aghast at the
killing of these sentient creatures, but as fishermen themselves, were also fascinated
at the thought of hunting the Leviathan, the ultimate fishery. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The thing to
remember from where we sit now is that in 1961, when the Parkers went after
whales, it was perfectly legal and socially acceptable to do so in the United
States. In fact, Frank Parker’s son, Frank Jr., recalls seeing school groups touring
the rendering plant after the boat had delivered, gawking at the dead whales
laid out on the dock. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
According to Frank
Parker Jr., Bio Products sold the whale meat to Oregon mink farmers to feed
their fur bearing livestock, and the whale oil to NASA, which had just sent the
first American into space. While the notion of NASA buying whale oil seems
bizarre now, in the context of the times, and given the exotic nature of the oil,
it made sense.<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2hR9RqZP7Vg8G6HjhUUo023slk4NZ283y_yswr9ZJ6JsX9iZwZXqVu78IPBCvXuf7nWqy-YkhmgF2IowO2BbuqPJ5XT3xQPV8WZmb8oFNmPO1CTkiUdwYpL0Tx-Ht90FAJp_2K7pAkw/s1600/Workmen+cutting+into+whale+1962.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2hR9RqZP7Vg8G6HjhUUo023slk4NZ283y_yswr9ZJ6JsX9iZwZXqVu78IPBCvXuf7nWqy-YkhmgF2IowO2BbuqPJ5XT3xQPV8WZmb8oFNmPO1CTkiUdwYpL0Tx-Ht90FAJp_2K7pAkw/s320/Workmen+cutting+into+whale+1962.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Workmen cutting into a whale at Bio Products, Hammond, Oregon<br />
Photo: Oregonian, July 13, 1962</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Once rendered
down, whale oil burns with a clear white light, an extremely valuable property before
electricity, and which made the fortunes of several New England seafaring towns
until cheaper kerosene became widely available after the Civil War. But whale
oil also maintains its viscosity in an extremely wide range of temperatures and
pressures, a characteristic which made it useful for all kinds of earthbound mechanical
applications well into the 20<sup>th</sup> century. In 1961 that special
viscosity also made it invaluable for machinery headed into near earth orbit, where
things get very hot in direct sunlight and very cold in shadow, and where the
near vacuum of space causes most petroleum and vegetable based lubricants to boil
into vapor. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
These days, NASA denies
using whale oil in its spacecraft, and certainly using any part of a whale was
illegal in the United States after the 1971 Marine Mammal Protection Act became
law. However, equally suitable synthetic lubricants didn’t come into use until the
mid-1960s, and like other high technology items of the post war years,
including watches and transmissions, it seems probable that whale oil
lubricated some of the hardware NASA sent up in those early space flight years.
It is likely that the oil was used by subcontractors rather than NASA directly,
and probably without much discussion, given the general lack of empathy for
whales at the time. Still, a lively online debate endures on this topic, easily
accessible to the curious Google searcher.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
For the Parker
brothers however, it was economics rather than regard for cetaceans which ended
the <i>Tom and Al</i>’s whaling days. NASA,
or their suppliers, began using synthetic lubricants and stopped buying whale
oil, which made Bio Products drop its ex-vessel price for whales, which made
whaling un-profitable on the <i>Tom and Al</i>.
Frank Jr. says the Parkers were forced to give back the 90 mm harpoon gun and
replace it with a 60 mm weapon. The smaller harpoon bounced off the whales
however, which made the whole venture even more pointless. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Frank and Eben went
on to other fisheries, including Alaskan pink shrimp, which was blessed with an
insatiable consumer market and a huge biomass, at least until the shrimp
disappeared in the early 1980s. The shrimp fishery, like the Kodiak king crab
fishery, was, depending on your viewpoint, the victim of overfishing, an oceanic
regime change, or too many cod fish. The
<i>Tom and Al</i> missed all of that discussion
by a couple of years. It sank off the Barren Islands on February 2, 1980, hauling
a load of Kodiak shrimp to Homer. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p> </o:p><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>Sources: Off Beat
Oregon, August 8, 2011, Alaska Historical Society Blog, January 13, 2014, Oregonian, various dates, 1961 and 1962</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-72840483625386293042015-08-04T13:23:00.000-08:002016-01-14T13:54:35.648-09:00Disaster in the Arctic: The Final Voyage of the Karluk. <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In June of 1913 the
129 foot former Aleutian whaling ship <i>Karluk
</i>steamed north from British Columbia, part of an ambitious Canadian
expedition to survey Canada’s northern coast. The <i>Karluk</i> planned to sail across the top of Alaska before rendezvousing
with another ship, the <i>Alaska,</i> at
Herschel Island, just west of the Alaska-Canada border. The <i>Karluk</i> was then to survey the Beaufort
Sea as far east as the ice would permit while the <i>Alaska</i> documented the flora and fauna on the Arctic coast. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiupHqjOuWYvuZuKln0oNXCVXvTrvIaovbAFlBfDr5vpFx9FcoTpn3QXFsEo2FwV6_mr1aIvC3xTjfHIMrrp939LEOGSQeIyTMestqyEiHWaHgF43GTMk9uuP95nO7XxWUUQXedIm8AMlU/s1600/Karkuk_whaler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiupHqjOuWYvuZuKln0oNXCVXvTrvIaovbAFlBfDr5vpFx9FcoTpn3QXFsEo2FwV6_mr1aIvC3xTjfHIMrrp939LEOGSQeIyTMestqyEiHWaHgF43GTMk9uuP95nO7XxWUUQXedIm8AMlU/s320/Karkuk_whaler.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The expedition was
led by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a 33 year Canadian born anthropologist who had
made a name for himself by living with and documenting the culture and lives of
the Inuit, a legendary but still mysterious people in the early 20<sup>th</sup>
century. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The <i>Karluk</i> stopped in Nome to pick up dogs,
and at Point Hope, to hire two Inupiaq hunters. At the Cape Smythe whaling
station near Barrow, two more Alaska Native hunters, Kataktovik and Keraluk, came aboard, along
with Keraluk’s wife Keruk and their two young daughters, Helen and Mugpi. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The ship wiggled eastward
through increasing ice but became permanently trapped on August 13, 235 miles
east of Barrow and the same distance west of Herschel Island. Over the next few
weeks the ocean currents pushed the ice and the ship west, back along the
Alaskan coast. On September 19, considering the prospect of a long meatless winter
stranded in the ice, Stefansson decided to walk to the Colville River to hunt
for caribou. He was accompanied by the two Point Hope hunters and several men
from the expedition. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiofe82J-61h9EuXGxlcXXJcX2zFCyrmITwTtvI6YHepqpsuZCmXaE5hA_uQ5DWSPgrc9WWQzWROWKTGa3955EgZnP52FlrPCshmjg7TW_Aj8dMDtDsyM65p_mv1jcdobXoIVPXUuLj7b8/s1600/Karkuk+in+the+ice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiofe82J-61h9EuXGxlcXXJcX2zFCyrmITwTtvI6YHepqpsuZCmXaE5hA_uQ5DWSPgrc9WWQzWROWKTGa3955EgZnP52FlrPCshmjg7TW_Aj8dMDtDsyM65p_mv1jcdobXoIVPXUuLj7b8/s320/Karkuk+in+the+ice.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Stefansson planned
to be gone about 10 days, and instructed the ship’s captain, Robert Bartlett,
to place a beacon on the ice with instructions on the direction the ship was
headed, in case the ice-bound ship begin drifting faster than usual. On
September 23 the speed of the drift increased dramatically and soon the ship
was drifting west at 30 to 60 miles a day. Stefansson was unable to find the <i>Karluk</i> when he returned, and spent the
next year exploring the Arctic with his Native companions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Meanwhile, as
winter set in and the ship drifted steadily west, Captain Bartlett ordered supplies
unloaded and a camp to be made alongside the <i>Karluk,</i> in case the ice threatened the ship. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
By early 1914 the
ship was 50 miles north of Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast. On January 10
the ice began crushing the hull and the next afternoon Bartlett played Chopin’s
Funeral March on a Victrola record player, stepping off the sinking ship
moments before it disappeared below the ice. Twenty two men, one woman, two
children, 16 dogs and the ship’s cat were now stranded in the Arctic darkness, 50
miles from land. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
With sufficient
food and shelter the group was in no immediate danger, but ultimately, survival
meant getting to Wrangel Island. Pressure ridges twenty to a hundred feet high
blocked the way, so on January 21, a four man party left to scout a way through.
Ten years later another expedition found their bones on Herald Island, a few
miles from Wrangel Island. What killed them was never determined, though carbon
monoxide poisoning has been suggested, since intact cases of food and seemed to
rule out starvation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
On February 4
another four man party set out, but also disappeared. The party persevered
however, and after much tribulation hacking their way over and through the
pressure ridges, the remaining 17 people arrived at Wrangel Island on March 12.<span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
With several
injured men and food now running low, Bartlett decided to go for help by
dogsled, accompanied by Kataktovik, one of the hunters who had joined the
expedition at Cape Smythe. The pair left on March 18, traveled over the ice to mainland
Siberia and overland to the Bering Sea Coast, where they caught a whaling ship to
St. Michael, near Nome, arriving on May 24. From there Bartlett radioed news of
the disaster to the Canadian government.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
On Wrangel Island the
survivors were hungry and riven by dissension over lack of food. In May two men
died of a strange malady later diagnosed as nephritis brought on by poorly
prepared dried meat. On June 25 another man was found in his tent, dead of a gunshot
wound. Whether the shooting was suicide, accident, or murder was never determined.
The survivors continued to argue over their meager rations of birds and bird
eggs, their only food. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In June the
American revenue cutter <i>Bear</i> arrived
in Nome and Bartlett persuaded the captain to head for Wrangell Island to perform
a rescue. On August 25 however, after numerous stops along the Alaskan coast, the
ship ran into impassable ice twenty miles from Wrangel Island and then had to
return to Nome for more coal. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRrqo6RPZXClERu6_eKk3FQ6pKt2grJTwSBNfJJ5PfQETcC_iKk17ynoBNAftkuf5sTyNVy8Yr9LnPo6CT_b3wP8RMjMqtv0_oMiFfKBvfPzBG6BjCY_z2Z3DijrRon0d4wzBnxS2JEic/s1600/King+and+Winge+arctic+rescue+CNN.com.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRrqo6RPZXClERu6_eKk3FQ6pKt2grJTwSBNfJJ5PfQETcC_iKk17ynoBNAftkuf5sTyNVy8Yr9LnPo6CT_b3wP8RMjMqtv0_oMiFfKBvfPzBG6BjCY_z2Z3DijrRon0d4wzBnxS2JEic/s320/King+and+Winge+arctic+rescue+CNN.com.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The King and Winge in the Arctic</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In the meantime, Stefansson’s
secretary Burt McConnell, who had accompanied Stefansson on their caribou
hunting trip the previous September, encountered the 97 foot <i>King and Winge </i>in Barrow. The ship,
recently constructed in Seattle to fish halibut, had been chartered for the
summer to hunt walruses and trade for ivory in the Alaskan Arctic, but the ship’s
master agreed to steam for Wrangel Island. On September 7, 1914 the ship picked
up the fourteen survivors and after transferring to the <i>Bear</i> a day or two later, they arrived in Nome on September 13,
1914, to general happiness. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Of interest to
Kodiak readers is the rescue vessel <i>King
and Winge</i>, which fished halibut in the Bering Sea for decades and was well
known in Kodiak as a crab fishing boat from the 1970s until she sank in the
Bering Sea in 1994. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyS_bDoN1ymiQYmBqT1pOzVDqscyHKV3_wjGJHScxtaHieh1JIs7g-174Qd9zFwPJd6EarpM69_P0mziikTbX0_ZWiuaRWoU8RKVTYc1hTQ256OiT1kqrGX02JDeunDiKNQ6fmX1RgWtA/s1600/621px-Mukpie-Karluk-survivor.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyS_bDoN1ymiQYmBqT1pOzVDqscyHKV3_wjGJHScxtaHieh1JIs7g-174Qd9zFwPJd6EarpM69_P0mziikTbX0_ZWiuaRWoU8RKVTYc1hTQ256OiT1kqrGX02JDeunDiKNQ6fmX1RgWtA/s320/621px-Mukpie-Karluk-survivor.jpeg" width="194" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mugpi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #252525;">The Inuit family, Kuraluk, Kuruk and
their daughters, Helen and Mugpi, took up their previous lives in Barrow. Surviving
members of the expedition later credited the girls as "important sources
of cheer at the darkest moments.”<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Mugpi,
or Ruth Makpii Ipalook as she was later known, lived to age 97 and died in
2008. She was the last survivor of the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Karluk</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> expedition. </span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #252525; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">The ships cat, Nigeraurak, ("Little
Black One"), who had joined the ships company at the beginning of the
voyage at Esquimault BC, survived the sinking of the <i>Karluk</i>, the journey across the ice and the deprivations on Wrangell
Island, and was rescued in September 1914. According to Jennifer Niven in “Ice
Master: </span><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the
Karluk,” she lived long and had many kittens. <o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="color: #111111;">For more information on the Karluk disaster, see </span></i><i><span style="color: #252525; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Ice Master:
The Doomed Voyage of the Karluk (2001) by Jennifer Niven. </span></i><i><span style="color: #252525; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-80390946933637689292015-07-07T13:11:00.000-08:002016-01-14T13:53:54.273-09:007,500 Years of Karluk Sockeye Salmon<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It is July, the
peak of summer on Kodiak Island, and salmon are returning in their millions to
the island’s rivers, and to the prince of Kodiak’s rivers, the Karluk, on the
southwest coast of the island. Like many Kodiak rivers, the Karluk River system
supports all five species of salmon native to Alaska- pinks, chums, silvers,
kings and sockeyes, but it is the sockeye, the red salmon, which have made the
Karluk arguably the greatest salmon river in the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyfrlkibn3Y8eIQMTRQSUnUiUAa_wU4_Br07WypnhzXR0rH-lYDSdPk8seDdTFEOVQZ0BGApxvD4XZzKHR5rEk3lYYUrI1hkXJvQZLjwBaWB9LI3hwRrhgsDxLyCVXYiiJp567UaI9Xxs/s1600/Sockeye+salmon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyfrlkibn3Y8eIQMTRQSUnUiUAa_wU4_Br07WypnhzXR0rH-lYDSdPk8seDdTFEOVQZ0BGApxvD4XZzKHR5rEk3lYYUrI1hkXJvQZLjwBaWB9LI3hwRrhgsDxLyCVXYiiJp567UaI9Xxs/s320/Sockeye+salmon.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sockeye, or red, salmon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The word “Karluk,”
is itself derived from the Alutiiq word for salmon, “Iqaluk,” and these noble
fish have been spawning in the Karluk since the retreat of the last ice age
glaciers about 8,000 years ago. Archeological evidence indicates the first humans
on Kodiak arrived not long after the ice went away, in skin boats from Asia by
way of the Aleutians and the western Alaska coast. As evidenced by their hunting
tools found near the mouth of the Karluk, these immigrants focused their food
gathering efforts on the hunting of marine mammals, but as subsequent cultures
evolved on Kodiak, the focus of their diet changed from seals, sea lions, and
the occasional whale, to salmon. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Sockeye swim into
the Karluk for six months, beginning in May, peaking in late summer, and still
coming in decreasing numbers well into the fall, with stragglers as late as
December. This easily obtained protein source, available fresh for half the
year and handily converted to dried salmon for the fishless winter and spring months,
allowed the Alutiiq people and their ancestors to divert a substantial portion
of their time and energy from food gathering to the pursuit of high culture. All
summer they caught salmon with nets in the lagoon at the mouth of the river and
in v-shaped stone weirs they built in the river itself, which forced the salmon
to pass through narrow apertures where they could be speared or driven into
woven basket weirs. By the time the Russians arrived in the late 18<sup>th</sup>
century, the Alutiiq at Karluk had developed a society rich in politics, art,
and religion, all made possible by the easy availability of the king of fish. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The Russians of
course were single-mindedly obsessed with the gathering of sea otter skins, not
salmon, and despite their need for cash, viewed the fish almost exclusively as a
food source for themselves and their coerced Alutiiq hunters, not as a source
of capitalist wealth. While there is evidence the Russians sold some dried and
salted salmon from Karluk to markets in California, they never exploited the
incredible resource of the river’s sockeye run to its full potential. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Historians have
long conjectured on what might have been if the technology of the hermetically
sealed tin can had become available to the Russian American Company in those
last years of their Alaskan venture, when the sea otters had run out and the
colony was bleeding money. Instead, in 1867, ten years after the Hume Brothers
began canning salmon on the Sacramento River, the Czar sold Alaska to the
Americans. By the early 1870s, having already fished out the rivers in
California, Yankees began canning salmon in Southeast Alaska, and in 1882 built
the first cannery on Karluk Spit, where the river emptied into Shelikof Strait. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8qJofFpHggzhldAuHtTatCHoC6vdbJmbN9CACNNIvM48KFjgdvNcwhk_1s38ec1Gwqu3yZtbQFVrsUrCnJTGwH022sZJ2Ru8QCeRRnPDR61koi2PeBsCARUGxJIvn3KbC-ZRJuapd9uA/s1600/Karluk+Spit+1907+Frederic+Chamberlain+or+Harry+C+Fasset+from++History+of+Sockeye+Research+Karluk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8qJofFpHggzhldAuHtTatCHoC6vdbJmbN9CACNNIvM48KFjgdvNcwhk_1s38ec1Gwqu3yZtbQFVrsUrCnJTGwH022sZJ2Ru8QCeRRnPDR61koi2PeBsCARUGxJIvn3KbC-ZRJuapd9uA/s320/Karluk+Spit+1907+Frederic+Chamberlain+or+Harry+C+Fasset+from++History+of+Sockeye+Research+Karluk.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salmon canneries at the Karluk River, 1880s.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
For five years it
was the only cannery at Karluk, but within a few years the spit was covered
with other wooden cannery buildings, net warehouses, workshops and housing for
the seasonal workers. The money to build the canneries came from San Francisco
and New York, the fishermen were mainly working class Americans and recent European
immigrants, and the cannery workers were Chinese. The local Alutiiq found their
livelihoods where they could in this newly arrived industrial scene, as cannery
workers or as fishermen working for the canneries. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In these first years
of the canning industry at Karluk the extravagant wealth which might be taken
from the river became apparent to the American capitalists. In 1882, 58,000 salmon
were canned at Karluk, in 1887 a million, and for several years in the 1890s,
more than three million fish a year were commercially harvested and canned at
Karluk. The largest Karluk harvest ever was in 1901, when 4 million sockeye
were caught and canned, and the largest escapement was in 1926, when 2.5
million fish made it past fishermen’s nets into the lake. (This number must be
qualified by the fact that escapement was not measured at Karluk before 1920) The
run declined from there, unsteadily, with good years and bad, but trending always
downwards, until the nadir of the Karluk fishery in 1955, when fewer than 30,000
sockeye were caught. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24eQiKC-9JXEKQM3r_vw_qanaqPemt1mLVxbddHSfPScE1DzkelPNhlqMpoibEtV11tpMDZeTqet2x8WyU2KY847RXlrEZfAefHMmmAiZ7H2VyslgInSuZxhcqCExsS_qKQ7WTUWwuSs/s1600/Malutin_Karluk+beach+seining.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24eQiKC-9JXEKQM3r_vw_qanaqPemt1mLVxbddHSfPScE1DzkelPNhlqMpoibEtV11tpMDZeTqet2x8WyU2KY847RXlrEZfAefHMmmAiZ7H2VyslgInSuZxhcqCExsS_qKQ7WTUWwuSs/s320/Malutin_Karluk+beach+seining.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beach seining at Karluk, 1960s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Until the 1940s
the fish were mainly caught with beach seines, some as long as 300 fathoms- 1,800
feet. One end of the net was anchored to the beach on the spit and the other
end was towed out into the water with a steam launch, around the schools of
salmon, and back to the beach, at which point the fish were loaded into carts
and rolled directly into the canneries. It was a very efficient system. After
the Second World War beach seines were gradually replaced with seines deployed
from boats- the same kind of net, except a boat held both ends of it, which
allowed fish further from shore to be captured. Fishing went on six days a
week, and each year’s management of the fishery was decided in a smoky room in
Seattle by cannery owners and Federal fisheries managers. Concern for the
future of the run was trumped by the desire for profit.<span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
And then in 1959
Alaska became a state, and as our local narrative has it, with the end of 80
years of cannery influenced management, the hiring a young cohort of Alaska
Department of Fish and Game fish managers, and decisions based on the best available
science, the salmon runs were saved. The Karluk sockeye run has been rebuilt,
though not to historic levels. After a few bad years around 2010, the run this
year is healthy again, with about 200,000 sockeye having escaped up river past
fishermen’s nets so far this season, and 150,000 sockeye harvested. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Kodiak salmon, and
especially the Karluk sockeye, have been lucky in their choice of spawning habitat.
In recent years it has become apparent to fisheries scientists that rearing
habitat is the single most important factor in the health of a salmon run. This
would explain why hatcheries, fishing reduction, and even the elimination of
fishing altogether, cannot always save a salmon run which has no clean place to
mate and lay its eggs. The placing of
thousands of small streams around Puget Sound into culverts since the 1960s has
been blamed for the decline of a once massive silver salmon resource there, and
the threat of mines in the watershed of Bristol Bay looms as an existential
threat to that fishery. But with neither an encroaching population nor mineral
wealth, managers and fishermen on Kodiak are cautiously hopeful that, barring
unforeseen effects from climate change, salmon will live here forever.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-78406697033498577642015-06-02T12:58:00.000-08:002016-01-14T13:53:28.217-09:00Commercial Fishing Safety Regulations and the 1985 Sinking of the Western Sea <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
For thousands of
years mariners set off on their voyages trusting in their knowledge of the sea,
the seaworthiness of their vessels, the gods and luck, to come home safely. And
for thousands of years, when their luck ran out, mariners usually died. For
sailors and their families this was part of their bargain with the sea for
providing them a living. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Until the 1700s, even
as shipbuilding technology made huge advances through the centuries, not much
effort was put into figuring out how to survive once the ship had sunk. But by
the 1780s, lifeboats were being designed, and in 1882, a Philadelphia inventor
named Maria Beasley patented the first “<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Lifesaving Raft for Use in Case of Shipwreck.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzlCl1NyH4ObzxiIPDXaKJhCJOkMkeXHS2Cz089ZZRghdhbjHX8_TYv2ckra10PgE8AmmImOdoIN5ZE6xzd8d8Z5TZRnYlg6tBuAGY5U48_ibsu-YWGjHqnZwI4u4z-oCwTHDnxNoePsE/s1600/Beasley+life+raft+1880_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzlCl1NyH4ObzxiIPDXaKJhCJOkMkeXHS2Cz089ZZRghdhbjHX8_TYv2ckra10PgE8AmmImOdoIN5ZE6xzd8d8Z5TZRnYlg6tBuAGY5U48_ibsu-YWGjHqnZwI4u4z-oCwTHDnxNoePsE/s320/Beasley+life+raft+1880_web.jpg" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beasely life raft, 1882</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">But these inventions only helped when
they were installed on vessels, and ship owners resisted the added expense and the
regulations which would require them. When
the Titanic sank in 1912, with the loss of 1,513 people, the ship was sailing
legally with 20 lifeboats- enough for about 40% of the 2,224 passengers. The
shock of the disaster got the public’s attention however, and spurred the
adoption of the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Convention_for_the_Safety_of_Life_at_Sea" title="International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea"><span style="background: white;">International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> in 1914, which required lifeboats for
all steamship passengers, signaling devices, and improved hull design protocols
to make ships better able to survive flooding. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Neither the 1914 Convention nor
subsequent safety regulations in the decades following applied to American fishing
vessels however. Despite horrendous losses, fishermen and their congressmen
maintained the abiding principle that fishermen could weigh the risks
themselves and make their own decisions about safety equipment, vessel
construction, and training. In vessels under 200 tons they were free to do as
they liked- no vessel standards or inspections, no life rafts, no licensed ship’s
officers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">No one knows how many Alaskan fishermen died
before records began being kept in 1990, but 387 fishermen have died since
then. Historians estimate that 10,000 fishermen from Gloucester Massachusetts,
have died since 1620, but again, no one knows for sure, since records
before1900 are incomplete. But despite the loss of life unparalleled in any
other industry, fishermen were off the regulatory map until 1985. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">In that year, on August 20, a seine boat
crossing Marmot Bay north of Kodiak found the body of Peter Barry, a 20 year
old Yale University student, floating in the water. Barry was a crewman on the Western
Sea, a 58 foot wooden seine boat built in 1915. He was wearing a life jacket,
but no survival suit. The Coast Guard later found two more bodies- twenty five
year old Stewart Darling, and Jerard Bouchard, 58, of Coupeville, Washington, the
skipper. The two other deckhands were never found- </span><span style="color: #333333;">Chris Hofer, 27, of Fort Collins Colorado, and Bill
Posey, 24, of Anchorage. The cause of the sinking has never been determined.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Peter Barry had come to Alaska that
summer, worked in a cannery for a few weeks, and boarded the Western Sea in July. At first he wrote
home to his parents about the romance of working as a commercial fisherman, and
about the chance to make far more money on a boat than in a cannery. The work
was hard and he was treated as the greenhorn, but he accepted these things. But
as the season progressed he wrote that things on the Western Sea were not
idyllic. He wanted to get off the boat, but was dissuaded when the captain told
him he wouldn’t be paid if he did. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">In the investigation which followed the
sinking it became apparent that the Western Sea had carried no life raft, no survival
suits, no EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) and no emergency
pump. The crewman Peter Barry replaced told Barry’s father he had been afraid
of Bouchard and of the boat and had quit because he feared for his safety. An
autopsy later revealed the presence of cocaine in Bouchard’s body. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Barry’s father was dumbfounded and incensed
to learn that while doing cocaine at sea was against the law, it was perfectly
legal for a 70 year old fishing boat to sail with no safety equipment. There
were no vessel standards or inspections for most commercial fishing boats and fishermen
were not required to pass any tests or master any skills. A twelve year old boy
could set to sea as master of a fishing boat; with the fate of an inexperienced
crew, ignorant of the risks involved, in his hands. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">But unlike most survivors of dead
fishermen who had found themselves dismayed but powerless to change the
regulatory structure governing the lives of their loved ones, Robert Barry and
his wife Peggy knew their way through the thicket of Federal bureaucracy. Barry
had been in the U.S. Foreign Service for twenty five years and had recently been
ambassador to Bulgaria. He was on his way to a European Security conference in
Stockholm when his son was killed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">He and his wife began meeting with
congressmen and working to pass legislation to make safety equipment mandatory
on fishing boats. They also hoped to help prevent sinkings in the first place
by making fishing vessels subject to technical standards and inspections, and
to institute standards and licensing for fishing boat captains and engineers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;">The story of their, and others, efforts
to get such legislation passed is long, complicated, and in many ways
incomplete, but on</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 200%;"> September 9, 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed the “Commercial
Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act of 1988.” It was the first legislation in
the United States to specifically mandate safety equipment on commercial
fishing vessels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 200%;">The CFIVS mandates that life
rafts, signaling devices, and immersion suits be carried on fishing vessels; and
requires fishermen to conduct drills using that equipment, and to keep logs documenting
the drills. The result has been that commercial fishing fatalities in Alaska
have dropped from 37 in 1992 to eight in 2014, and 0 in 2015, the first time year there have been no commercial fishing fatalities in Alaska. But still, no law yet requires fishing
vessels under 200 gross tons to be built to any standards or be subject to inspection, or for fishing personnel on such
boats to be trained and licensed. </span><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-47543799465633138482015-05-05T12:51:00.000-08:002016-01-14T13:52:16.190-09:00A Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer’s Story <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
On February 9th, 2007,
the Coast Guard Cutter <i>Mellon</i> was
tied to the dock in Dutch Harbor with its helicopter, an H-65 Dolphin, parked in
a PenAir hanger near the airport. During a school group tour of the helicopter
that morning, a student asked about the strobe light on the rescue swimmer’s
dry suit. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM0I0fJv6V-fMq6pRLAGHMCpN3nNb_aOlXIGFXilT4zzFEfgZ2P_2LrE1OV3137qWsuKQHEi_xzFah7lyfpaJ9RIS_n2eC5jueYx67Q9ukhlCuAQ2NJgZy4gXcLOIxa-_yNWt0A76rhhw/s1600/PO+Willard+Milam+with+rescued+Chihauhau+after+Katrina_JuneauEmpire10-2-06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM0I0fJv6V-fMq6pRLAGHMCpN3nNb_aOlXIGFXilT4zzFEfgZ2P_2LrE1OV3137qWsuKQHEi_xzFah7lyfpaJ9RIS_n2eC5jueYx67Q9ukhlCuAQ2NJgZy4gXcLOIxa-_yNWt0A76rhhw/s320/PO+Willard+Milam+with+rescued+Chihauhau+after+Katrina_JuneauEmpire10-2-06.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer Willard Milam</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The rescue swimmer
giving the tour, Petty Officer Willard Milam, 41, told the kids the light was
for the rescue swimmer himself, in case he ever had to let the helicopter crew
know he needed help. The kids asked him if he’d ever used it, and he said no, in
the 14 years he’d been jumping out of helicopters into the water, he’d never
had to light that strobe. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eighteen hours
later, just before midnight, Milam and some of the other helo crew were uptown
shooting pool when the aircraft commander on the <i>Mellon </i>called to tell him that a 406 EPIRB signal from the 42 foot
fishing vessel <i>Illusion</i> was going off
in Makushin Bay, 50 miles away on the other side of Unalaska Island. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjYIXkw7wvDHrtQyU6wBzbAdGRmQkOUuHR57E7PumlwF3H0KeZtQI9vqUVHk1VUpT2vL5YyodPY7y_otldSPyHHDCqM7xF_0OoUzzwwI-LMKcXBTKsm53Yacleub-eTnGUSQHEgHOADys/s1600/H65+helo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjYIXkw7wvDHrtQyU6wBzbAdGRmQkOUuHR57E7PumlwF3H0KeZtQI9vqUVHk1VUpT2vL5YyodPY7y_otldSPyHHDCqM7xF_0OoUzzwwI-LMKcXBTKsm53Yacleub-eTnGUSQHEgHOADys/s1600/H65+helo.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">H-65 Dolphin helicopter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After some discussion about the frequency of accidental EPIRB
alerts, the helo took off into 40 to 50 mph winds with gusts over 60 and quarter
mile visibility. They flew in heavy turbulence at 150 feet to keep below the
ceiling, expecting to tell the captain of a seaworthy boat in Makushin Bay to
turn his EPIRB off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But there were no
deck lights in Makushin Bay, and nothing on the radar screen. Instead the
pilots saw two strobes faintly blinking, and flying closer, a tiny steady white
light- the kind that sits on the top of a life raft. And then off the right
side of the helo a red aerial flare glowed in the mist. Milam put his fins on
and got ready to be lowered into the night and a15 foot sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The summer
before, Milam had been set to retire, but when the Coast Guard offered him
another Alaska tour he re-enlisted. He loved Alaska, and was easily talked into
re-upping. But as he looked down at the black water he thought, “I pulled my
retirement letter for this?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Once in the
water, he swam where the helo’s searchlight pointed and saw the raft’s light blinking
between the waves. When he climbed in he found four men in street clothes huddled
inside- “two Russians and two Spanish speaking gentlemen.” Somehow they had
lost their survival suits, and one of the men was hypothermic and not fully conscious.
Milam knew he had a problem- the men would have to get into the water to swim
to the basket, and the water was 40 degrees. Getting them into the water would
be issue number one, but in a few minutes they might not be responsive enough to
swim or climb into a basket anyway, regardless of their opinion of getting wet.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Milam told the
helo crew about the situation, and advised they bring they basket right up to
the door of the raft. But after a conversation in the helo, the crew chief
radioed that they’d lower their own survival suits down, giving up any chance
of survival for themselves if anything happened to the helicopter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The tether line
came down, but as Milam slid off the door sill of the raft to retrieve it, he
felt water flooding into his suit. Somehow the suit had been compromised between
the time he’d swum to the raft and now. He grabbed the tether line, but with
the weight of the water around his legs he needed the fishermen to help him back
in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And already his
thinking was becoming muddled from the cold. Straddling the doorway as the survival
suit bags came down on the tether, he unhooked them all at once, thinking they
were tied together, but they fell off the hook separately. Two immediately blew away from the raft. Milam
told the men to get their hypothermic friend into a suit first while he retrieved
the two floating suits. When he returned with the suits he was shivering. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Milam pulled
the hypothermic man, now in a survival suit, into the water and headed for the
basket. Milam would tell an interviewer later that “The l</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">ast place a guy that was on a boat
that just sank wants to be is back in the water after he’s been in a raft,” and the man panicked and fought Milam until he pushed him into the
basket, signaled to the crew chief, and up he went. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">But when Milam turned back to the
raft it was now some distance away and only the dome light was visible between
the waves. He realized that with his suit full of water and the cold working on
him there was no way he could catch it as it drifted away in the wind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">For the first time in his career, he
hit his emergency strobe. They hoisted him up and tipped him into the
helicopter, his suit so full of water he could barely move. They considered
lowering the basket and letting the fishermen get themselves in unassisted, but
they were down to 15 minutes of fuel before they had to leave. Milam told them
there was no way they’d get all three of them in 15 minutes without his help. And they all knew that if they didn’t have
enough fuel to get all three men now, and had to leave someone in the raft
while they flew back to Dutch Harbor to refuel, the raft would be God knows
where by the time they got back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Milam told them he had fifteen
minutes of mojo left- he’d go down and get the men into the basket. At the door
of the helicopter he puked into the rotor wash, and then they lowered him into
the sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The three remaining men were in their
survival suits, but the next man to be hoisted tried to climb on the outside of
the basket. Milam fought to make to sit down, and finally simply threw him in. He
told the two remaining men to calm down, they were good, just go with it. The third
man went up with no problems. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">But the last fisherman, the skipper,
jumped feet first into the basket when it arrived for him. He went through the
webbing, the basket tipped upside down, and he came up on his belly with the
basket on his back, struggling to keep his face out of the water. The cable was wrapped around the basket and at
one point it became wrapped around the fisherman’s neck too, but the crew chief
paid out enough slack to keep it from going taut. “Had that cable gone tight we
wouldn’t have had to worry about rescuing that guy,” said Milam later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">He struggled to get the skipper
untangled but the man tried repeatedly to climb on top of him, until Milam executed
a “front head hold release,” a full palm in the face, which got the man into
the basket. Milam watched it go up. All the fishermen were now in the
helicopter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Then the cold really set in. When the
basket went down again the crew chief could see that Milam’s arms weren’t
coming out of the water as he tried to swim for it. He was done, but the pilot somehow
maneuvered the basket around and dragged it under Milam, pulling him out of the
water like scooping a piece of cheese with a Triscuit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">When they landed in Dutch Harbor
Milam remembers walking two of the fishermen to the ambulance, but he learned afterwards
he didn’t walk any survivors to the ambulance, it was the aircraft commander
and a paramedic who walked him to the ambulance. He was pretty out of it for
awhile, but they warmed him up and he walked out the clinic four hours later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">"They flat out told me for
the rest of my life that I would get colder easier. And I do notice -- I spend
a lot of times outdoors-- that I do wear one extra layer here, you know. I can
see now, (the doctor) was right…I do
feel a little colder, but it's not like life or death.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
For their actions that night, Milam and the rest of
the crew- Lieutenant Commander Joseph Carroll, Lieutenant Devin Townsend, AST1
Willard Milam and AET2 John Maghupoy- received numerous awards, among them the
Captain Frank A. Erickson Rotary Wing Rescue Award, “for extraordinary skill
and courage in carrying out a rescue on February 9, 2007.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
A lot of fishermen have been pulled out of the water
by the Coast Guard, and a lot of fishermen have not survived to see a
helicopter or a C-130. Knowing that, it’s sometimes easy to see the dangers of
a fisherman’s life in high contrast to the imagined comforts and safety of a 378
foot cutter, or the supposed ease of flying around in a helicopter or a big
airplane and being home for dinner every night. But it’s worth remembering, and
this story is proof of that, that the Coast Guard too has its own stories of
risk and heroism and survival, often accomplished at the far edge of human
abilities and technology for small glory and modest pay. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Sources for this article include a 2008 Coast Guard Oral History
interview of Willard Milam, and a Coast Guard News article from January 16,
2008. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-7878969795441293122015-04-07T15:12:00.000-08:002016-01-14T13:52:56.472-09:00Uganik Bay Cannery Workers and the Supreme Court<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
In 1981 two young cannery worker union organizers,
Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo, were gunned down in Seattle by hitmen hired by
a corrupt union president in league with Philippines President Ferdinand
Marcos. Viernes and Domingo were part of a uniquely American story involving racism,
violence, jobs, and a fight for what’s right. Centered on the salmon canning
industry, it is part of Alaska’s story too, and with its origins in Uganik Bay,
an intrinsic part of the history of Kodiak Island. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Xhlhp95NQiebEDgYDBIQ8nQMz6QwoMH3lgYwwxv_Doe_bzHraOwAvJEcj4OP8m9034Dh-tKTnX4c2oPB9wzmJIwr2zjvmkVuELdWY5jT5KwK8xS5z987ZqRXVErOtdlY_9Ggn_Atl9I/s1600/Gene+Viernes+late+1970s+_Remembering+Silme+do...Ron+Chew+pg+27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Xhlhp95NQiebEDgYDBIQ8nQMz6QwoMH3lgYwwxv_Doe_bzHraOwAvJEcj4OP8m9034Dh-tKTnX4c2oPB9wzmJIwr2zjvmkVuELdWY5jT5KwK8xS5z987ZqRXVErOtdlY_9Ggn_Atl9I/s320/Gene+Viernes+late+1970s+_Remembering+Silme+do...Ron+Chew+pg+27.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Gene Viernes, early 1970s. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Photo: Ron Chew, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">"Remembering Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes," </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">WSU Press, 2012</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Gene Viernes was originally from eastern Washington,
and went to work at the Red Salmon Cannery in Naknek in 1969. Silme Domingo was
from Seattle and also in 1969, began working at the New England Fish Company’s
cannery in Uganik Bay, where his father, one of the old cannery “manongs,” had
worked thirty years before. Like many other young Filipinos in those years,
both men found the century old system of separate bunkhouses, mess halls and
jobs for Filipinos and Alaska Natives a degrading anachronism in a society that
had outlawed “separate but equal,” facilities for African Americans twenty
years <o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu5g8NsdEQNebXPNT-2lBMHWk0xDwpW52LTrUNLV8agCdAoXCwWioN5vWE0n-VEjFZT8iFwTJZxRbcbVsldl5mEKgq_0ez_Zv8gWAK7zAdk28ygX6o5k62xoQx6OLQDcRPO9_3G-UswQ8/s1600/Silme_Domingo+photo+Eastern+Hotel+WSU+Press.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu5g8NsdEQNebXPNT-2lBMHWk0xDwpW52LTrUNLV8agCdAoXCwWioN5vWE0n-VEjFZT8iFwTJZxRbcbVsldl5mEKgq_0ez_Zv8gWAK7zAdk28ygX6o5k62xoQx6OLQDcRPO9_3G-UswQ8/s200/Silme_Domingo+photo+Eastern+Hotel+WSU+Press.jpg" width="175" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Silme Domingo</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Photo: Ron Chew, </span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">"Remembering </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Silme Domingo </span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">and Gene Viernes,"</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"> </span></div>
</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">WSU Press, 2012</span></div>
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
before.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Their experiences led eventually to reform of the cannery
worker union hiring system, and an end to racial segregation of jobs and living
facilities in Alaska’s canneries. The fight to end union corruption cost them
their lives. The larger struggle to desegregate the canneries ended up in the
U.S. Supreme Court.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The Alaskan canned salmon industry began in the 1870s
in Southeast Alaska and was immediately lucrative for everyone involved. Like
all extraction industries, it required three things: raw material, capital, and
people to do the work. Alaska had the salmon, San Francisco businessmen had the
money to build the canneries, and at least at first, Chinese immigrants did the
work. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The Chinese had come to California in the 1840s to
work in the gold placer mines, but as the gold played out, began working in
salmon canneries on the Sacramento River, and then the Columbia, and eventually
Alaska, including at Karluk, Uyak, and Uganik, on Kodiak Island. In 1882
however, driven by raw racism and fear of a “yellow horde,” of Chinese workers
taking white American jobs, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Act
mostly let the Chinese who were already here remain in the U.S., but it choked
off further immigration. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Fortuitously for the salmon industry however, just as
the resident Chinese began aging out of the work force in the early 20<sup>th</sup>
century, thousands of young Filipino men, many of them college students, began
arriving on the West Coast looking for work. Happy beneficiaries of the U.S. annexation
of the Philippines following the 1898 Spanish-American War, these men and their
sons and grandsons took the places of the Chinese on the cannery slime lines, eventually
becoming known as the “Alaskeros,” sailing north each summer from San Francisco
and Portland and Seattle to put salmon into cans. The Alaskeros would dominate
the fish processing industry for the next hundred years and their descendants,
having moved north to live, are a large part of the social fabric of Alaska
today.<o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpmRgrYmkQLIOH2hQUfR5YLuLOioqMNl_JgNlOQyF5atEN_3bvIF9JRC88dQWspc20a_KYwDJZyG7zXSd6MYtttSg7q-KwcTf2bJRxJK5NvT2pf9muYYDtorWtZEnfsBst-PAOpwSP5Q/s1600/San+Juan+Packaging+Crew,+Uganik+Alaska+1940_3+UW+archives.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpmRgrYmkQLIOH2hQUfR5YLuLOioqMNl_JgNlOQyF5atEN_3bvIF9JRC88dQWspc20a_KYwDJZyG7zXSd6MYtttSg7q-KwcTf2bJRxJK5NvT2pf9muYYDtorWtZEnfsBst-PAOpwSP5Q/s320/San+Juan+Packaging+Crew,+Uganik+Alaska+1940_3+UW+archives.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">San Juan Salmon Packers Packaging Crew, </span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Uganik Bay Cannery, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Kodiak Island, 1940s. University of Washington Archives.</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
In 1970, when Silme Domingo, his brother Nemesio, and
a group of other young Filipinos tried to enter the white mess hall in Uganik
for food not available at the Filipino mess hall, they were told to leave. That
winter, apparently based on their challenge of the segregation system, the
Domingo brothers received letters from New England Fish Company, which owned
the Uganik cannery, informing them they would not be hired for the upcoming
season, or indeed, ever again. In 1972, Viernes, by then working at Wards Cove
Cannery in Ketchikan, and similarly chafing at the old segregation rules, led a
boycott of the Filipino mess hall after being denied entrance to the white mess
hall. He too was blacklisted.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKZwL-_3k9B5nGIiUdROr4rE_B1gWrgrMp71fQgIP98O4JNwQAkJtuIytpn8y35NshadILKMmvL-Ucvcnf9XZsr8z_vKPYXOApdPx7YyUoTvIrn3sJyinNdY7ESW4xtqBvJi7HVBn0RM/s1600/Salmon+cannery+worker+Grimes+Cannery_Torsen+film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKZwL-_3k9B5nGIiUdROr4rE_B1gWrgrMp71fQgIP98O4JNwQAkJtuIytpn8y35NshadILKMmvL-Ucvcnf9XZsr8z_vKPYXOApdPx7YyUoTvIrn3sJyinNdY7ESW4xtqBvJi7HVBn0RM/s200/Salmon+cannery+worker+Grimes+Cannery_Torsen+film.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salmon cannery worker, Grimes Cannery,<br />
Kodiak Island, Alaska, 1960s<br />
KMM Salmon Cannery History Collection</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
With these experiences driving them, Viernes, the
Domingo brothers and other cannery workers, including Alaska Natives, formed
the Alaska Cannery Workers Association, (ACWA). In 1973 and 1974 ACWA filed
lawsuits against three Alaskan salmon packers, alleging discrimination under
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The first case, <i>Domingo versus New England Fish
Company (NEFCO) </i>ended in 1980 when NEFCO filed for bankruptcy. The second case,
<i>Carpenter vs NEFCO-Fidalgo Packing Co. </i>was settled out of court in 1985,
providing cash settlements for ten plaintiffs. The third case, <i>Atonio vs
Wards Cove Packing Co., </i>went to the Supreme Court, which, in a series of
decisions, ended the suit and limited the rights of workers to sue their employers
for discrimination. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
In response to the Supreme Court’s backpedaling on
labor and civil rights, Congress wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which explicitly
strengthened worker’s rights.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Before it passed however, bowing to pressure from the
salmon industry, Alaska’s Senators Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens inserted a
clause which exempted Alaskan cannery workers from the protections of the new
law. The irony of the cannery workers being exempted from a law explicitly
designed to remedy their experience of racist labor practices was not lost on anyone,
but the votes of the two Alaskan Senators being necessary for passage, and
compromise being the grease of politics, it was voted into law. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo did not live to see
any of this. In their efforts to enlist the help of Seattle Local 37 of the International
Longshore Workers Union in the lawsuits, they had challenged the local union
president, Tony Baruso, for control of the union. Baruso ran the union as a
corrupt minor fiefdom, charging bribes for cannery job placement, and sending
gambling shills north to rake off cannery worker’s pay in their off hours. He
was not interested in suing the salmon canneries over segregated mess halls. Baruso
was also an ally of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, no friend of
unions, at least fair practice unions, and whom Viernes and Domingo had angered
while on a labor organizing trip to the Philippines in the spring of 1981.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
On June 1, 1981, a few weeks after returning from the
Philippines, Viernes and Domingo were shot in the Local 37 union hall near
Pioneer Square by two gunmen hired by Tony Dictado, a local gang leader who worked
as an enforcer for Tony Baruso. Viernes died at the scene and Domingo died the
next day at Harborview Hospital. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Within days of the murders, the union rank and file
seized control of the union and eliminated the bribes for jobs system. Dictado,
Baruso, and the two shooters were all eventually found guilty of various
degrees of murder. Baruso died in prison in 2008.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
After evidence was produced that Philippines
President Marcos had supplied $15,000 to pay the gunmen, the families of Gene
Vierne and Silme Domingo filed a wrongful death civil suit against Marcos’s
estate, and in 1990 a Federal jury awarded $15.1 million in damages. Marcos
himself died in September, 1989. Later reduced to $2 million, the case stands
as the only successful lawsuit against a foreign government for the death of a
U.S. citizen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGiRZbKIkfVYmN7reQTUQgmnbcHt25WxXHghP87taI_QaMetp73diyIw5vIbadRYHX5Bxm4pcBGZEwm-qkZ6fNF1CYofSo9Hk_APhNTp820a4foZ4blBSrnPANRuSUD1n7FEZfuVCQYkg/s1600/Cannery+Workers+Union+Hall+April+2015_2_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGiRZbKIkfVYmN7reQTUQgmnbcHt25WxXHghP87taI_QaMetp73diyIw5vIbadRYHX5Bxm4pcBGZEwm-qkZ6fNF1CYofSo9Hk_APhNTp820a4foZ4blBSrnPANRuSUD1n7FEZfuVCQYkg/s320/Cannery+Workers+Union+Hall+April+2015_2_web.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seattle Local 37 Union Hall, April 2015<br />
KMM Salmon Cannery History Collection</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
For more information on the story
of Filipino cannery workers and their fight for labor rights, see: “Remembering
Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes: The Legacy of Filipino Labor Activism,” by Ron
Chew,” University of Washington Press, 2012.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-12747994964765353092015-03-06T09:34:00.001-09:002015-03-06T09:50:16.811-09:00Here There Be Dragons: Sea Monsters of Kodiak Island<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
A little after
four in the morning on a summer day in 2002, three setnetters pushed their 22
foot skiff off a beach in Uganik Bay on the west side of Kodiak and headed for
their gillnet a quarter of a mile away. It was daylight, but barely; the difference
between sea and sky and mountains still questionable, the shoreline and the greasy
water and the buoys on the net visible only in shades of gray. Dave Little, Tollef
Monsen and a third crewman had climbed into the skiff a few moments before with
four hours sleep. This sliver of rest was not unusual for them during salmon
openings, but they’d made the run out to the net hundreds of times that summer
and knew the routine at a level beyond consciousness. Dave Little, the fishing permit holder, was
driving the skiff, just enough awake to keep the boat headed in the right
direction and from hitting any floating logs. The two crewmembers focused on not
falling in the water. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
And then suddenly,
a couple skiff lengths off the port side bow, something stuck its head out of
the water. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Nine years later Monsen
would tell an interviewer, “There’s this neck and head, and it wasn’t like your
hands around the neck big, it was like your arms around the neck big.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In the same
interview, Little would say “I saw it do its movements, but I couldn’t tell you
if the neck was a foot in diameter or three feet in diameter. It was all
darkish but I was paying attention to driving the skiff.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
However big it
was, it didn’t pay them any mind. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Monsen remembers
that, “It didn’t really focus on us. It didn’t look at us, it didn’t make eye
contact, no. And whatever it was didn’t stick around. In a few seconds it was
gone, back under the water. I mean we were so tired that it was like, did I
just see that? Did we just see that?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
So what does he
think it was?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Who knows?” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The next summer Monson
stayed behind in the holding skiff one evening to clean it out while Little and
the other crewmember went to pull a net. It was calm and sunny. He was crawling
around scrubbing the fish totes when something hit the bottom of the skiff. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“All of a sudden
it was like DONG! And the skiff kind of lurches, and I’m like what the hell was
that?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
There was no motor on the skiff, it was at
anchor, and there were no whales nearby. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“It was big, like
a log (hitting the skiff). But nothing goes DONG! and lurches this big old
skiff like that. I don’t know what that was either.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEE45dIHTm-h28PeyRA-_P8tWNZQDqfHuZ1rxQCf2qoO6EmyrnwX8fRhh3bjOPgxLP821vaj7lEgf7Nz-4DIogn56xYi-VPGEl1lT_UX-QhpmBfpnEnAoorTYvmC7NPqVPNuv4rAtJ3C8/s1600/Uyak+Sea+Monster+1971+Elwani,+Spring+1977.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEE45dIHTm-h28PeyRA-_P8tWNZQDqfHuZ1rxQCf2qoO6EmyrnwX8fRhh3bjOPgxLP821vaj7lEgf7Nz-4DIogn56xYi-VPGEl1lT_UX-QhpmBfpnEnAoorTYvmC7NPqVPNuv4rAtJ3C8/s1600/Uyak+Sea+Monster+1971+Elwani,+Spring+1977.jpg" height="225" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sea creature observed in Uyak Bay in 1971</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Thirty years
before that, on a sunny day in the summer of 1971, another group of setnet
fishermen in a skiff had also seen a large sea animal they did not recognize. In
1977 Eddie Pakkanin, who was in that skiff that day, told the Kodiak High School oral history magazine, <i>Elwani,</i> that the animal was about 30
feet long and “had a head on it like a horse and would blow through its nose.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Pakkanin said that
another man in the skiff, DeWitt Fields, fired at the animal with a rifle as
they approached it. The animal went below the surface then and turned and swam
under the skiff before surfacing on the other side. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“We don’t know
what it was, but it had a grayish color and we couldn’t see any fins or any
tail and it never made any noise. It would just come up and you could see the
head and part of the body.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Another person in
the skiff that sunny day, also quoted in the <i>Elwani</i> article, remembered recently that the animal was “hanging
out,” when they first saw it, and like Eddie Pakkanin, he remembered that as
the skiff crowded the animal against the shoreline it turned and came toward
them on the surface, and then, about 25 yards out, dove and swam under the
boat. They all had a good look at the animal as it swam two feet beneath the surface
of the clear water. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In the <i>Elwani</i> interview this second witness
says the animal was more like 40 feet long, “with a dull brown color, and it
did have hair, sort of like sea lions, but not as thick. It had a real narrow
and long head, kind of horse shaped with two nostrils. When it came up, the
head and the neck and part of the back came up, with water covering the middle
part and then the tail would come up.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In a photo taken
that day from the skiff by DeWitt Fields’ wife Wanda, reprinted here courtesy
of <i>Elwani</i> and interpreted recently by
that second witness, a long snout skims the water ahead of the eye, the nape of
the neck behind the eye slopes down into the back beneath the surface, and the
tail just behind it just breaks the surface. Big eye. Long nose. Nostrils way
out in front. It looks like Alf, the late ‘80s Alien Life Form sitcom
character. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Eddie Pakkanin told
his interviewer that the animal appeared around two every afternoon for a few
more days before disappearing forever. That other person in the skiff remembers
seeing the animal one more time two or three years later. His family had closed
up camp for the summer and were loading their skiffs for the 100 mile run back
to town. They looked up and saw the animal right off their beach. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“If we hadn’t been
trying to beat the tide we would have gone out for a better look, but we were
pressed for time.” He never saw the animal again either. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiveZRaGM-Ec2QilhuRV00xojIyvRfMD4QGDM_aVxw8bCs673QbGhCn5UnfEe8TvsnsReNpQh5ZyXmc1pZZg_g7PPesmK4XnVn3k73ZB8LEc9NHffpW5k_j1f_kNkgkUO-88MmZEOssT3Y/s1600/Mylark+sea+monster+Kodiak+Daily+Mirror+4-30-1969.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiveZRaGM-Ec2QilhuRV00xojIyvRfMD4QGDM_aVxw8bCs673QbGhCn5UnfEe8TvsnsReNpQh5ZyXmc1pZZg_g7PPesmK4XnVn3k73ZB8LEc9NHffpW5k_j1f_kNkgkUO-88MmZEOssT3Y/s1600/Mylark+sea+monster+Kodiak+Daily+Mirror+4-30-1969.jpg" height="248" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unknown object, perhaps a sea creature, just above<br />
the bottom line on an echo sounder paper recording made<br />
on the F/V Mylark in Raspberry Straits, April 15th, 1969</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And finally, this.
On April 15<sup>th</sup>, 1969, the <i>Mylark</i>,
a 65 foot wooden shrimp boat working in Raspberry Straits recorded something on
its echo sounder at 55 fathoms (330 feet) that the Kodiak Daily Mirror put on
their front page five days later with the headline “A Sea Monster?” The tone of
the accompanying article treats the paper recording with droll skepticism, and the
incident comes up on a number of websites devoted to sea monsters, UFO’s and
other not quite measurable things. But the skipper of the <i>Mylark</i>, Chet Petersen, did some calculations and judged in apparent
good faith, that given the echo sounder’s field of view of the ocean floor at
that depth, the strange dinosaur-like object just above the curving bottom line
was over 200 feet long.<br />
But again, who
knows?<br />
<br />
<i>This story, by Toby Sullivan, Executive Director of the Kodiak Maritime Museum, first appeared in the Kodiak Daily Mirror, March 3, 2015</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-90551683042529017612015-02-04T15:17:00.002-09:002020-03-09T17:55:16.075-08:00The Day FDR Caught a Dolly in Buskin Lake<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
In the late afternoon of August 7, 1944, in the middle of
World War II, if you had been standing on Brooklyn Avenue in Kodiak, Alaska, which ran about
where the back of Sutliifs Hardware is now, you could have waved to President
Franklin Roosevelt as he drove by in a station wagon. It was Roosevelt’s first
visit to an Alaskan town, and the only visit by a sitting president to Kodiak. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
A few weeks earlier, Roosevelt had boarded the heavy
cruiser USS Baltimore in San Diego and sailed with several escorting destroyers
to Hawaii <span style="background: white; color: #333333;">to talk strategy</span> with
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Admiral Chester Nimitz and General
Douglas MacArthur, his commanders in the Pacific war against the Japanese. A
few days later, the flotilla headed north to the Aleutians, and then to Kodiak.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">The Japanese
had invaded the Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu in June 1942, and been
driven out in the summer of 1943. By 1944, the Aleutians had become a lonely backwater
of the war. For the troops on Adak, hunkered down in Quonset huts in an
unforgiving climate, with little to do and thousands of miles between them and female
companionship, spirits were low. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Roosevelt’s
aides figured a presidential visit would help the troops’ morale, but there
were other reasons to visit Alaska. By 1944, eleven years into his presidency
and three years into the war, Roosevelt was physically exhausted, and though
few knew it, suffering from heart disease. After seeing him in Hawaii, General
Macarthur told an aide that he thought Roosevelt would be dead in six months. But
Roosevelt loved the sea and his aides thought the trip might be good for him. And
too, Roosevelt was running for re-election that fall, and Roosevelt and his
team thought a visit to a war zone, even a now-quiet one like Alaska, would
look good to the electorate. Roosevelt left First Lady Eleanor at home, but brought
his Scottish Terrier, Fala. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTz5JvCqtkcfInU92QULF_ht2-WyGAqGv6HF4QWdV-P2-n4UyuR36yUJi2tjflHLad_7PkvijmQuqw9ngY7gjG51snVkzuoInYTSYIljf0Ui-_ijd2nHnP92q9jTQKlnZlf21mnLbQZUw/s1600/FDR+in+Aleutian+mess+hall+8-3-44+FDR+Library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTz5JvCqtkcfInU92QULF_ht2-WyGAqGv6HF4QWdV-P2-n4UyuR36yUJi2tjflHLad_7PkvijmQuqw9ngY7gjG51snVkzuoInYTSYIljf0Ui-_ijd2nHnP92q9jTQKlnZlf21mnLbQZUw/s1600/FDR+in+Aleutian+mess+hall+8-3-44+FDR+Library.jpg" width="156" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">FDR dines with the troops at Adak</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">At Adak,
Roosevelt dined with the troops and made a speech. “</span><span style="background: white;">I like your food. I like your climate.
(Laughter) You don't realize the thousands upon thousands of people who would
give anything in the world to swap places with you. I have seen some of them.
Of course, I haven't been down to the Southwest Pacific, but last year I saw
two battalions of our engineers down in Liberia, and I would much rather be
here than in Liberia.” The soldiers loved it. </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">After bypassing
Dutch Harbor because of stormy weather, </span>the Baltimore and its destroyers
arrived off Kodiak early on the morning of August 7, but stood offshore for
several hours waiting for a fogbank to burn off. Around noon the coast was
clear and Roosevelt and his party transferred to the destroyer Cummins, which
landed them in Women’s Bay where an honor guard met them on the dock, including
an all-black Navy band, reportedly the only such military band the President
had seen in his travels. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgubfhn2kq5mWu9iGZH8Jeqmpx576n-Tyq96KxU4AL_vSxkP8iSegRjKzcH9sCL-4HJAWzoLJFKoc-izTfg2MsL5yAfMqBLBAJnZP5aHXMBHsU7fsoGy70KmDVDUwOcFcEgGpZi5WMAq5A/s1600/FDR+on+Buskin+Lake+8-7-1944+FDR+Library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgubfhn2kq5mWu9iGZH8Jeqmpx576n-Tyq96KxU4AL_vSxkP8iSegRjKzcH9sCL-4HJAWzoLJFKoc-izTfg2MsL5yAfMqBLBAJnZP5aHXMBHsU7fsoGy70KmDVDUwOcFcEgGpZi5WMAq5A/s1600/FDR+on+Buskin+Lake+8-7-1944+FDR+Library.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The President on Buskin Lake</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">After meeting
with </span>the Kodiak Army and Navy commanders and reviewing the sailors in
front of the hangers, and the Seabees on the baseball diamond at Fort Greely, Roosevelt’s
entourage headed into the village of Kodiak, population 500. With the sun
shining, the town was at its best and the brief tour was a great success. According
to Roosevelt’s official appointment diary, “This was the first Alaskan town he
had ever visited and most of the delighted populace was out to welcome him to
their midst.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
On the way back to the ship, Roosevelt was taken fishing
on Buskin Lake. Two Dolly Varden were landed- the President caught one and the
fishing guide, a Lt. Branham, USNR,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
caught
the other one. The record is unclear as to whether Fala, the Scottish Terrier,
accompanied the President on the Buskin expedition. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Before heading back to the Baltimore, the President was informed
that “Mr. Chas. Madsen, Pres. of the Alaskan Guides Assn. had presented him
with an Alaskan bearskin rug. It was delivered in Seattle a few days later.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The President crossed the Gulf of Alaska to Auke Bay, near
Juneau, before disembarking in Bremerton, Washington. Almost immediately, Republicans
began railing against Roosevelt for allegedly having sent a warship to retrieve
Fala after he’d been left behind on an island. Roosevelt, a master politician, responded
at a Teamsters campaign dinner- <o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoDPoW4nFnI457QlHx8TywGgd53A4ZLzm6nAtzFj-HP7xNmYkS8s7pCCydgGKP5fyESmL04MfL6fCuEKkX9KmaA_S0bKs9KAJZfTAJ2E_040vW-2l1gzuPSB6zfaICH3DlM0MqxSI3ud4/s1600/Roosevelt+and+Fala+FDR+Library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoDPoW4nFnI457QlHx8TywGgd53A4ZLzm6nAtzFj-HP7xNmYkS8s7pCCydgGKP5fyESmL04MfL6fCuEKkX9KmaA_S0bKs9KAJZfTAJ2E_040vW-2l1gzuPSB6zfaICH3DlM0MqxSI3ud4/s1600/Roosevelt+and+Fala+FDR+Library.jpg" width="157" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">FDR and Fala</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“<span style="background: white; color: #252525;">These Republican leaders have not been
content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with
that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent
attacks, and my family don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them…as soon
as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had
concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a
destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight
or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same
dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself ... But
I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my
dog.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The Republicans stopped talking about Fala and Roosevelt easily
won election to a fourth term a few weeks later. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
In Kodiak seventy years later, Deedie Pearson still
clearly remembers standing as a little girl on the side of the street while the
President drove by, a few feet away. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
And as Clarence Selig told an oral historian in 1993,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“I can still remember everybody lining up the street down
at Brooklyn Avenue and he drove by waving at everybody. That was a highlight in
my life watching the President drive by our yard.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
But the sea trip to Alaska did not revive Roosevelt’s
health. He died eight months later, in April 1945, in Warm Springs Georgia. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
As the train carrying the President’s body back to Washington
went through Spartanburg, South Carolina, Myrtle Olsen watched it pass. The
previous September, a month after Roosevelt’s Alaskan visit, she had made a
twenty-one day journey from Kodiak to South Carolina to join her fiancé, a man
she had met while he was stationed in Kodiak. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“It’s funny,” she says now, “I worked at the Island
Fountain, right down there by where the Subway building is now, serving Coney
Island hot dogs and ice cream and chocolates they made right in Kodiak to all
those servicemen, and surely I would have seen the President that day, but I just
can’t recall him in Kodiak that day. But I do remember watching the train
carrying him going by after he died.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sources: KMM Archives: Clarence Selig Oral History, UAF Library and FDR Library</span><br />
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><br /></span>
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-89805841654377449642015-01-08T12:10:00.003-09:002015-03-19T08:54:26.713-08:00The Wreck of the Eclipse on Sanak Island, 1807<div class="MsoNormal">
In September 1807, a new American sailing ship, the <i>Eclipse</i>, wrecked on Sanak Island, twenty five miles southwest of Unimak Island. Aboard was a young Scotsman, Archibald Campbell, whose account of the wreck follows here. But while Mr. Campbell’s tale is a quite riveting sea story, it also holds interest as part of a much larger narrative- the three-cornered trade route imagined and implemented by Alexander Baranov, the Governor of Russian America, between Alaska, China, and the Russian Far East. That trade brought Alaskan furs to China; Chinese tea, spices and silks to the Russian Far East; and supplies from the Russian Far East to Russian America; all of which made Kodiak the center of the North Pacific world in the those years.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjkXQfdMWCqrrlnRrqFVwxQ-D8HGEI9uuMDD4omhTcMlOMDs2PuWOtomQt_u_JsCjeZRLeDzJAVLNH2igKHDX-EQIOg8lOkQEM-uyLvPJ98O6kWrkR2z5BFaf_uHK41qixKex9tD0gl4E/s1600/Grand+Turk+on+china+from+painting+by+Peabody.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjkXQfdMWCqrrlnRrqFVwxQ-D8HGEI9uuMDD4omhTcMlOMDs2PuWOtomQt_u_JsCjeZRLeDzJAVLNH2igKHDX-EQIOg8lOkQEM-uyLvPJ98O6kWrkR2z5BFaf_uHK41qixKex9tD0gl4E/s1600/Grand+Turk+on+china+from+painting+by+Peabody.jpg" height="198" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
The <i>Grand Turk</i>, a ship of similar tonnage to the <i>Eclipse,</i><br />
from chinaware, 1786. (Peabody Essex Museum)</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span> What’s also interesting about this story is that the ship's master, an American named Joseph O’Kean, (O'Cain, in other accounts) apparently was the man who helped convince Alexander Baranov to use American ships to do the transporting of furs from Alaska to China. While space here does not allow a more detailed account of their relationship, it is worth noting that O’Kean had made other previous voyages carrying Russian American furs to market, and like other American merchant sailors, was deeply involved in the economics of Alaska decades before Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. in 1867. <br />
<br />
Campbell however was merely a regular seaman, who had quit another ship and signed onto the <i>Eclipse</i> in Canton, China, in January 1807. It is believed the <i>Eclipse</i> had previously arrived from Petropavlovsk to offload Siberian furs and to take on silks, cotton cloth, tea, spices and rice. Campbell sailed aboard the Eclipse from Canton back to the Russian Far East, where in August, the Chinese luxuries were offloaded for shipment across Siberia to St. Petersburg, and supplies for Kodiak were put aboard. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<h4>
Shipwrecked</h4>
On September 10, after an uneventful passage from Kamchatka, the wind came up hard from the south as the <i>Eclipse</i> was off the south coast of Unimak Island. In the afternoon land was sighted fifteen miles to the north. With the wind bearing them landward, the ship’s course heading was changed from northeast to east to avoid the coast. <br />
<br />
About ten that evening the alarm was given of breakers ahead. Captain O’Kean, believing the white water ahead off the bow was frothed by the wind, not breakers on a shoal, ordered the helmsman to stay his course. Within moments however, the ship struck an uncharted reef with enough force to throw sleeping seamen out of their hammocks. <br />
<br />
The breaking seas carried the <i>Eclipse</i> across the reef and into deeper water, where the anchor was dropped in seventeen fathoms, and the longboat lowered alongside in case the ship should sink during the night. At first light land was spotted about ten miles to the north, and the ship appearing seaworthy, the anchor was slipped and the ship pointed landward to make repairs. As the rudder had been broken off coming across the reef, the ship was steered with mizzen and jib sails until it grounded just before noon on the south side of what the natives called Sanak Island, 25 miles southeast of Unimak Island and 160 miles east of Unalaska. <br />
<br />
The crew rowed safely to shore in the longboat, but later that afternoon the ship rolled over on her side, and later sank in four fathoms of water. They set up camp on the beach and used an axe found in the bottom of the longboat to cut a hole in the side of the ship, from which they recovered provisions, tools, sail cloth, hardware, and eventually much of the cargo. They were stuck however on a treeless, flat and waterlogged island about twelve miles long and four miles across, with nothing edible on it but berries. The sailors at first thought the island was uninhabited, though this was not the case. After considering their options, they made a plan to build another boat from the wreckage of the Eclipse and sail it to Hawaii, known then as the Sandwich Islands, to seek help from other American sailing ships. <br />
<br />
Over the next few weeks the crew stockpiled the lumber and hardware necessary to build the new ship. At one point they recovered Campbell’s personal sea trunk, from which he pulled out his Bible, which he dried out and carried with him through a second, more disastrous ship wreck. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDS9M3dVltWCgm2h-dOsLyGjlzoxQXmB78dMQQgslC2HfVE7Hd-p_wakwTFvSa1SjH2_ecoa1jTZSA7Kh2V9K3ND5dATAFJtk50IMqEVPc1T8frqMA8bJ7KOUuCL4l3T1Mmc07Mc0cP5Y/s1600/Aleut+Sea+Otter+hunters+off+Sanak+Island+NOAA+photo+library_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDS9M3dVltWCgm2h-dOsLyGjlzoxQXmB78dMQQgslC2HfVE7Hd-p_wakwTFvSa1SjH2_ecoa1jTZSA7Kh2V9K3ND5dATAFJtk50IMqEVPc1T8frqMA8bJ7KOUuCL4l3T1Mmc07Mc0cP5Y/s1600/Aleut+Sea+Otter+hunters+off+Sanak+Island+NOAA+photo+library_web.jpg" height="216" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aleut sea otter hunters at Sanak Island<br />
(Alaska State Museum)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On September 28th three natives arrived in kayaks, who had followed the trail of wreckage along the shore. One of the natives, wearing a gold medal around his neck, spoke Russian, in which O’Kean was conversant. This native immediately sent one of the other natives to their village on the north shore of the island, and the other to the Russian settlement at Unalaska, 170 miles to the west. The next day about 40 natives arrived from the north side of island with berries, seal oil and dried salmon, which they shared with the shipwrecked sailors. The natives then proceeded to build barabaras from the ship’s planks and moss, and settled in to help on the salvage operation. <br />
<br />
A week later the Russian commandant in Unalaska, a Mr. Bander, arrived with about twenty natives. Mr. Bander promised the help of a Russian carpenters from Kodiak, so the decision was made to make the longboat ready to sail there, a distance of about 500 miles. Planks were laid across the thwarts to form a deck, and sail cloth was nailed across to seal it somewhat, and allow for people to sleep below decks, out of the weather. The boat was rigged with a single mast and rigged as a sloop. She was twenty five feet long. <br />
<br />
<h4>
Sailing to Kodiak for Help</h4>
After provisioning the boat with dried salmon, berries and water, they set sail for Kodiak on the morning of October 18th, with a crew consisting of Mr. Campbell, Mr. Bander, the Eclipse’s 2nd mate, another seven of the ship’s crew, and an Aleut pilot. Captain O’Kean and the rest of the crew were left behind. A leak was discovered soon after embarking, but after going back to make the repairs, they set out again on the morning of the 19th. <br />
<br />
Under a good breeze, they arrived the next day at a native village on Unga Island, in the Shumagin Islands, a run of 160 miles. Upon landing they found that all the male inhabitants had gone on a sealing expedition three weeks before and had been lost in a storm. Besides women and children, only the Russian agent and his son and an interpreter remained in the village. The village welcomed the sailors however, and even treated them to a banya, which Mr. Campbell describes in his journal. The sailors hunted deer on the island and replenished their supplies, and set sail again on December 6th. <br />
<br />
Within a few days they were in the “harbor of Alexandria,” which we know today as Kodiak’s St. Paul Harbor. Upon landing, Mr. Bander and Campbell met with the Russian governor, presumably Alexander Baranov himself, who made arrangements to outfit a Russian brig then sitting in the harbor for a voyage back to Sanak Island to retrieve the Eclipse’s crew and cargo. Since this evidently might take some time, the governor advised the Campbell and the others to head back to Sanak immediately with Russian carpenters to help with the building of a ship from the timbers of the Eclipse. The idea was to sail this new ship to Hawaii- what Campbell referred to as the "Sandwich Islands.:<br />
<br />
<h4>
Shipwrecked Again</h4>
Campbell and his shipmates, along with the Russian carpenters, set sail in the longboat from Kodiak for Sanak on January 9th, 1808, sailing though Whale Pass into Shelikof Strait, provisioned with salt pork and bear meat, water, rum, berries and blubber.<br />
<br />
The next day however, the wind went hard northwest, and they sought shelter on a beach within a small bay somewhere on Kodiak’s west coast, surrounded by a forbidding snow covered landscape. The weather remained foul, but on the 21st, running low on food, they decided to make a run for Karluk, “at no great distance,” to the southwest. Out in the Shelikof however, the boat sprang a serious leak and they decided to head back to the bay they had just come from. Snow squalls and fog obscured their view however, and running blind toward the coast of Kodiak Island they suddenly they found themselves being driven upon a rocky shore, the force of the wind and the closeness of the headlands on either side making it impossible to escape grounding. They aimed for the least rocky part of the beach and leapt out as the boat hit. The mate mistakenly threw the anchor over, which caused the nose of the boat to turn back into the wind and hold it within the surf zone, whereupon the vessel was immediately pounded into kindling. <br />
<br />
They were now stranded on a narrow beach surrounded by snow covered mountains falling abruptly into the sea. They found shelter in a small hunter’s barabara nearby, but with only three or four days’ worth of food salvaged from the landing, Campbell and several of the others decided to work their way on foot along the shoreline to Karluk, still an unknown distance to the southwest. They left a Russian and a native behind to look after the items recovered from the boat.<br />
<br />
Trying to get to Karluk along the shore was a disaster. While rounding a rocky headland, Campbell’s feet became wet and froze, and after a three day travail in arctic conditions, the party stumbled back to the shelter of the barabara. Leaving Campbell in the care of several Russians, the party made a second attempt to reach Karluk, and was successful. A rescue party of natives in kayaks arrived some days later, which delivered the survivors first to Karluk, and eventually to Kodiak. <br />
<br />
<h4>
Epilogue</h4>
Campbell’s feet developed gangrene and after thinking on it for three days, and realizing that the alternative was death, he agreed to have them and a finger amputated by the Russian surgeon in Kodiak. Upon hearing of Campbell’s misfortunes, Governor Baranov raised a hundred and eighty rubles for his sustenance, and after some months of recuperation Campbell sailed for Hawaii, and eventually returned to Scotland. The Bible he salvaged from the Eclipse apparently made it home with him. He published his account of the sinking of the Eclipse in 1816.<br />
<br />
According to the Russian historian Kiril Khlebnikov, Captain O’Kean and the rest of the Eclipse crew did manage to build a ship on Sanak Island, and with the help of local Aleuts, set sail in it for Unalaska in February, 1808. That ship too was wrecked, this time on the south shore of Unimak Island, and although the crew managed to get safely ashore, Captain O’Kean did not. He died in the surf along with a dog and an unnamed “Sandwich Island,” woman.<br />
<br />
The wreck of the Eclipse is presumably still to be found in the shallows between the reefs along the southern edge of Sanak Island. An artifact of Yankee seafaring technology lost while furthering the strategic aims of the Russian Empire in one of the great trading schemes of the last few centuries, the vessel or its parts would be an amazing discovery for a marine archeology team. Perhaps someday, someone will find it again. <br />
<br />
<i>This retelling of Campbell's story, by Kodiak Maritime Museum Executive Director, Toby Sullivan, appeared in the Kodiak Daily Mirror January 6th and 7th, 2015.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>For Archibald Campbell’s full account of the wreck of the Eclipse, see “Tales of Terror and Tragedy,” by Edward R. Snow, 1979.</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6343659693415745825.post-69038034652662519252015-01-08T11:53:00.002-09:002015-01-08T12:00:25.176-09:00Joshua Slocum and the First American Salmon Fishing Venture in Cook Inlet. <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
Joshua Slocum is famous among mariners as the first person to sail alone around
the world, it is not as well known that he also led the first American commercial
salmon fishing expedition to Cook Inlet, in 1871. Fishing off the Kasilof River
with double ended Columbia River sailing dories, which later evolved into the
famed Bristol Bay double-ender, Slocum and his crew gillnetted salmon, survived
shipwreck, and visited Kodiak on the way home to San Francisco. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Slocum
was born in 1844 in a little town in Nova Scotia and apparently deciding early on
that work in his father’s small boot making operation was not for him, ran away
to sea when he was fourteen. Determined, ambitious, and intelligent, he worked
as a cabin boy on a Canadian fishing schooner, crossed the Atlantic to Dublin as
an ordinary seaman, and sailed out into the wide world from Liverpool. Before
he was twenty-one he had sailed twice around Cape Horn, crossed the Pacific to
California, and risen to Chief Mate on vessels delivering coal from Australia
to San Francisco. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
1865 he came ashore in San Francisco, become an American citizen and headed north
to the Columbia River to gillnet for salmon. At some point he became master of
a schooner carrying freight and lumber between San Francisco and Puget Sound
and in 1870, at the age of 26, was given command of the 332 ton barque <i>Washington </i>at San Francisco. His orders were
to deliver general cargo to Sydney and return home via the salmon grounds in Alaska.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sailing
from Australia to California by way of Alaska might at first seem bizarre, given
that the <i>Washington’s</i> owners were in
the business of profit, not exploration. But given Slocum’s salmon fishing
experience on the Columbia, and the recent 1867 purchase of Alaska by the
United States, it is likely that Slocum believed there was money to be made catching
and delivering Alaskan salmon to San Francisco, and somehow he convinced the
ship’s owners to back the venture. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
had long been a market for Alaskan salted salmon in California. The Russian
American Company had been shipping salmon to San Francisco for decades, along
with sea otter furs and even ice to cool gold miner’s drinks, from the lake on
Woody Island, near Kodiak. But the world had changed since the Russians had
colonized Alaska in the 1780s, and while the Americans were building the first
west coast salmon cannery on the Sacramento River in California in 1864, and the
first Columbia River cannery in 1866, the Russians lacked both canning technology
expertise and the capital to use it in Alaska. By 1867, with the sea otters nearly
extinct, and unable to efficiently exploit their Alaska salmon runs, they sold
out. Alaskan salmon became American salmon,
and the recognition of the opportunity those salmon runs presented began to
percolate though the west coast American salmon industry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">With
this new economic reality in mind, Slocum’s plan was for the <i>Washington</i> to deliver its load of
general cargo to Sydney, take on lumber and hemp there, and then sail for
Alaska to catch salmon. On the way the crew would use the wood and hemp to build
a small fleet of Columbia River dories and hang gillnets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuZubUVMaQ-oymqfeifK7dEtj491i-1tbdRcqI7hVUjIYA6HloqDIenX7hBV3jiGqgMFdPg51WdiF5fHfWddqR9860PCKpzJKAwqCS62BWr0DwNvhASQc7TyYvaO18KP9PY771pGrxxo/s1600/Joshua+Slocum+portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuZubUVMaQ-oymqfeifK7dEtj491i-1tbdRcqI7hVUjIYA6HloqDIenX7hBV3jiGqgMFdPg51WdiF5fHfWddqR9860PCKpzJKAwqCS62BWr0DwNvhASQc7TyYvaO18KP9PY771pGrxxo/s1600/Joshua+Slocum+portrait.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
<i>Washington</i> sailed into Sydney Harbor near
the end of December 1870. While the cargo was unloaded and the materials for
the Alaskan venture procured, Slocum strode confidently into Sydney society. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGWVjni44c6oAsjEaQ65wa4YF88fFiydA43jr7IlIOFhcsyR9Rf767L3wkRc3sIWau0woi7xCQLAwFSrWzB4QCgmRdd19f0iZaFoWYKA3qxWm0tAdGgljdLlQntvLnNZSbmXsOi2GzfUY/s1600/Virginia+Slocum+age+33+1883.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGWVjni44c6oAsjEaQ65wa4YF88fFiydA43jr7IlIOFhcsyR9Rf767L3wkRc3sIWau0woi7xCQLAwFSrWzB4QCgmRdd19f0iZaFoWYKA3qxWm0tAdGgljdLlQntvLnNZSbmXsOi2GzfUY/s1600/Virginia+Slocum+age+33+1883.jpg" height="200" width="123" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
a local Christmas party he met Virginia Walker, the twenty one year old
daughter of an American businessman who had emigrated with his family from New
York to California in 1849, and eventually to Australia. Slocum courted Virginia
for a month and married her on January 31<sup>st</sup>. The <i>Washington</i> set sail for Alaska soon
after with Virginia and her twelve year old brother on board. What her parents
thought about this turn of events is unrecorded, but Virginia would sail with Joshua
for the next thirteen years, delivering seven children at sea and in various
exotic ports. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
<i>Washington</i> made the 9,000 mile
passage from Sydney to Cook Inlet in 49 days, anchoring off the Kasilof River
in the late spring of 1871. Slocum immediately directed the construction of a
fishing camp onshore and soon after he and the crew began catching and salting salmon.
At one point Virginia nearly shot her new husband when he returned to camp at
night from a visit to a nearby native village. She heard someone approaching
her tent and cocked a rifle at the door flap, demanding the intruder identify
himself. Slocum called out and she put the gun down, and according to their son
Victor, they laughed about it for years afterwards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
fishing was good but in July a strong westerly storm blew up, which grounded
the <i>Washington</i> on Kasilof reef. No
lives were lost but the ship was wrecked. While the crew continued to fish, Slocum
directed the construction of a smaller vessel from the timbers of the <i>Washington</i>. In August, with fall coming
on and the salmon run diminishing, Slocum, his wife, her young brother, and most
the crew sailed the newly built vessel to Kodiak. In Kodiak, Slocum hired a vessel to sail back to
Kasilof to pick up the salted fish and the caretaking crewmembers. A few weeks
later the entire party and their summer’s harvest of salmon sailed from Kodiak
to San Francisco on board the <i>Czarevitch</i>,
a Russian American Commercial company ship. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Despite
the loss of the <i>Washington</i>, but apparently
impressed with Slocum’s initiative and ingenuity on the voyage, the ships
owners gave Slocum a new command, the <i>Constitution</i>,
which Slocum sailed between the West Coast, Hawaii, and Mexico. Slocum went on
to a long career as a sailing captain, with Virginia and their growing family sailing
with him until Virginia died of fever on board the <i>Aquidneck</i> in Brazil in 1884. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two
years later Slocum married his cousin Henrietta, who like Virginia, accompanied
her husband on the <i>Aquidneck</i>. Over
the next two years, Henrietta endured a hurricane, a cholera epidemic, an
attack by pirates, an outbreak of smallpox among the crew, shipwreck on the
coast of Brazil and a 5,500 mile voyage back to the United States in a thirty
five foot boat Slocum built with materials salvaged from the <i>Aquidneck</i>. They
arrived safely in South Carolina, but Henrietta was done with the sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Slocum
continued to sail cargo vessels around the world, without a wife aboard, but as
steamships replaced sailing ships, he became an anachronism and found himself
ashore, unemployed at the age of forty eight. In 1892 a friend offered him a
half rotten 40 foot Chesapeake Bay oyster boat “in need of some work,” in
Fairhaven Massachusetts. Slocum rebuilt the boat and keeping its original name,
the <i>Spray, </i>departed from Halifax,
Nova Scotia in July 1895. Sailing west, he endured storms, loneliness and attacks
by Tierra Fuegian savages before arriving back in Rhode Island in June 1898,
the first person to sail alone around the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Besides
sailing, Slocum also had a talent for writing, and his account of the circumnavigation, "Sailing Alone Around the World<i>," </i>was
an immediate success. Noting the high dose of adventure in the book, one
reviewer wrote that</span> "boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once." <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The book also
made him an instant celebrity, and gained him dinner invitations from Theodore
Roosevelt and Mark Twain, among others. Land was not for him however, and in November
1909 he set sail alone again, this time for the Amazon, intending to sail up
the river on a voyage of discovery. He never arrived at his intended first
landfall in the West Indies. His friends believed he had been run over by a
steamship, but the mystery of his disappearance has never been solved. Slocum
and the <i>Spray</i> were never seen again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
first Alaskan salmon cannery was at Klawock in 1878, and the Alaskan salmon
industry still thrives. That Joshua Slocum played a small part in its beginnings,
and that he once walked the streets of Kodiak with his young wife Virginia is remarkable.
Virginia often talked about the beauty of Cook Inlet and Kodiak and vowed to
return someday, but as far as is known, neither she nor Slocum ever saw Alaska
again. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<i>This story, by Kodiak Maritime Museum Executive Director Toby Sullivan, first appeared in the Kodiak Daily Mirror December 9, 2014.</i></div>
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