Boatbuilding in Sitka Part 1: Before 1900

Here are the three parts of my Boatbuilding in Sitka, most of which I did in 1988 and 1993, when I interviewed boatbuilders and the sons and daughters of boatbuilders in Sitka. I also did quite a bit of research in the vessel documentation files at the Coast Guard offices in Juneau, in several volumes of the Merchant Vessels lists, and old newspapers.

This first part includes Russian boatbuilding; since then there has been much more published from the Russian American Company and other archives, so it could be updated.

Boatbuilding in Sitka Part One – to 1900

by Rebecca Poulson

Please do not use without attribution and permission

The first shipbuilding done at Sitka was in 1805, when Sitka was a Russian fort. From 1808 until 1867, Sitka was the center of government of Russia’s American colonies, which extended across Alaska and at one time as far south as California. For many of those years, Sitka was also the center for shipbuilding and repair in the colonies.

The Russians built at least 24 ships at Sitka, ranging from 38 to over 130 feet, before the colonial effort was abandoned and their claims sold to the United States.

The following information on shipbuilding comes from the History of the Russian American Company by P. A. Tikhmenev, written in 1863, published by the University of Washington Press in 1978; the Biographical Dictionary of Russian America by Richard Pierce, published by Limestone Press; and other books on Russian America, many of which are published by Limestone Press.

The construction and loss of ships reflected the Russian American Company’s successes and difficulties in establishing their presence in North America. Lack of skills, manpower and materials resulted in problems with many of the early ships. Many ships were wrecked on the thousands of miles of coastline they had to travel between outposts and between Alaska and their Siberian supply points.

THE EARLY DAYS

Before 1799, various Siberian merchant companies and independent hunters were in Alaska, hunting sea otter for their valuable pelts. In 1799 the Russian-American Company was formed from several companies, primarily the company of G. I. Shelekhov. This new company was granted a monopoly from the Russian government to trade in Russian America, and to colonize territory in the name of the Russian government. The chief manager of the company was also the governor of Russian America.

The first Russian ships built in Alaska were built to the west of Sitka, before the formation of the Russian American Company. Alexander Baranov was the Alaskan head of the trading company of G. I. Shelekhov, the forerunner of the Russian American Company. The company wanted him to build ships himself or buy them, because they had found building them in Okhotsk, the eastern Siberian port they used for supplying Alaska, was too expensive. They sent Baranof some iron, sails, rigging, and a shipbuilder, Englishman James Shields, an officer in the Russian Navy.ⁱ(2) Shields arrived on a ship he and his men had built at Okhotsk for the company in 1791.ⁱⁱ(3) Their first ship was built near the present town of Seward: the PHOENIX was finished in 1794, and was 73 feet long. The ship was built under very poor conditions. Workers were discontent, even violent, and Native people and rival traders were trying to drive them out, and the builders had inadequate materials.ⁱⁱⁱ(4)

After completing the PHOENIX in 1794, Baranof sent her back to Okhotsk with three years worth of furs. In the same year the company was granted an exclusive charter from the Russian government to trade in and to rule Alaska.^iv(5) Also in 1799, the Russians built a fort at Sitka, a few miles from the Tlingit fort and settlement on the present site of Sitka. English and American ships had already been coming into Sitka Sound to trade for furs with Tlingit leaders.^v(1)

They then built two more small ships, the DEL’FIN (Dolphin) and the SV. OL’GA (St. Olga). These were smaller ships, about 40 feet long, the size of an average Sitka fishing boat today. Shields did some exploring along the coast in the DEL’FIN, and Baranov took the tiny OL’GA for his traveling among the company outposts. Both of these boats leaked, and the DEL’FIN had to be patched several times during Shields’ trip, because of inadequate nails and splitting wood.^vi(6)

Shields later disappeared with the PHOENIX when it went down in 1799 on the way to the colonies from Okhotsk with supplies and 85 men. The loss was a severe blow to the operations in Alaska.^vii(7) The OL’GA lasted until 1803, but it was in very poor condition by then. All the useful materials were taken off of her to build two more boats (41 and 51 feet) at Yakutat that winter,^viii(8) which must have involved a considerable amount of improvisation.

The Russian outpost at Old Sitka was destroyed in 1802. The two ships built at Yakutat were used by Baranof when he went to try to retake Sitka in 1804. Fortunately for him, he met at Sitka the armed Russian Navy ship NEVA, and after a battle with the Tlingit defenders they established their settlement at the present site of Sitka.^ix(8a)

In 1805 the first ships were actually built at Sitka. Nikolai Petrovich Rezanof, a director of the Russian American Company, visited Sitka on an inspection tour in 1805 and began the building of a slipway and the tender AVOS’ (“Maybe”) and another boat, both to his design. The AVOS’ was launched in 1806.

On his way to Sitka from Russia, Rezanof had gone to Japan as an ambassador, but had been rebuffed. The AVOS’ and the newly purchased American ship JUNO were used in an attack and raid on the northern Japanese islands, in 1806 and 1807, which had been ordered by Rezanof, with the idea of forcing the Japanese to trade with Russia.^x(9)

The winter of 1805-6 was a difficult one for the Russians at Sitka. There was near-starvation, scurvy, discontent, plots, and drinking.^xi(9a) Rezanof mentions the shipwrights, Koriukin and Popov, who had traveled with him from Kamchatka. There was a lot of drinking in Sitka that winter, he writes, but they were good workers, when sober. At one point Koriukin got into a knife fight with the young Russian commander of the JUNO, which had been purchased that winter. Rezanov also reports that the shipwright Koriukin was a very good draughtsman, who drew good sketches, surveys and maps.^xii(10)

The AVOS’ was lost in 1808 off Unalaska, carrying Company cargo and dispatches.^xiii(11)

Because of Koriukin’s and Popov’s drinking, in the fall of 1806 Baranov instead hired an American shipwright named Lincoln. Lincoln built the SITKHA, a brig, launched in 1807, which was lost that same year. He built the 300-ton brigantine OTKRYTKIE, in 1808, and laid the keel for the CHIRIKOV, a 120-ton schooner. These last two ships would have been about a hundred feet long. Apparently Lincoln’s ships were well built. They lasted into the 1820s, although by that time they were in poor condition.^xiv(12)

Sitka in 1805, from Captain Yuri Lisianski’s Voyage Around the World. The Russians had taken over the site of the Tlingit fort Noow Tlein in late 1804, with the assistance of Captain Lisianski in the armed Russian ship Neva.

After Lincoln left, the Company did not build more ships until 1817: the schooners PLATOV and BARANOV, which were about 50 feet long.^xv(13) Between 1817 and 1825 the company tried to move their shipbuilding operation to their settlement at Fort Ross, California, under a shipwright trained by Lincoln. They built four ships there, but the experiment was a disaster. The ships were all rotten and useless within a few years of being built, either because the wood was used unseasoned, when it was still wet, or because the species of oak they used was prone to rot.^xvi(14)

THE PEAK OF SHIPBUILDING

Between 1799 and 1821 the Russian American Company had built a total of 15 ships in Russian American outposts and at Okhotsk, in Siberia, and bought only 13. But the early Russian American Company had a terrible record of sinking ships: over the same period of time, they sank 16. After 1821, a smaller proportion of company vessels were built in the colonies, although they still added up to a good number.^xvii(15)

Only a few tree species commonly grow to any size around Sitka, and these include Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophyla) and Alaska yellow cedar (Chamaecyparus nootkatensis). Yellow cedar is very rot resistant and is often used for boats. Spruce and hemlock are not rot-resistant, but Sitka spruce has excellent strength for its weight, making it good for masts. Hemlock is more brittle but slightly denser.

Frederic Litke, who led a Russian round-the-world voyage which stopped in Sitka in the late 1820s, wrote that the ships built in Sitka did not last long, because of the type of wood used, or from not leaving it to dry. He says they used cypress for the frame, fir for the decks and bridge, and larch for the sheathing, and sometimes for the bridge.^xviii(16)

The trees we would call fir, larch and cypress do not grow here, but in the expedition report naturalist Friedrich Heinrich Baron von Kittlitz, who was with Litke, identifies a picture of a hemlock tree with what the Russians called fir and a spruce tree with what they called larch, in an engraving from a sketch he did of the forest on Mount Verstovia. He writes that both are very well suited for masts and the construction of ships, particularly the larch. He says the fir is less esteemed, being more subject to rot. He also identifies the Russians’ “perfumed wood” with a description of Alaska yellow cedar.^xix(17)

Litke also reported that at Sitka they had all the workshops and stores necessary for ship building and repair. In fact, ten more sailing ships were built at Sitka before 1842. Most of these were small schooners, for use within the colonies for local trading, replacing the baidarkas and rowboats they had been using.^xx(18)

Ferdinand Wrangell, during his administration of Alaska from 1830 to 1835, closed all the colonial shipyards except the one at Sitka. The yard at Sitka was then the only place on the entire northwest coast of America for Russians, or United States vessels, to get ship repair done and to get ship supplies.^xxi(19)

Wrangell writes that the shipbuilding was under the direction of a creole – what they called a person of mixed Russian and Native ancestry – named Osip Netsvetov, from St. Paul, Alaska, who had been sent to St. Petersburg (the capital of Russia) to learn his trade.^xxii(20) From the beginning of the Russian American Company the directors wanted to train the the children of the Russian employees and local Natives in various trades they could perform for the company in the colonies. In exchange for their training and education they were obliged to work for the company for a number of years.^xxiii(20a)

Chief Manager Wrangell also had a sawmill built at the Ozerskoi Redoubt at Redoubt Bay south of Sitka in 1833, which was only the second on the entire west coast. The first had been set up by the Hudson’s Bay Company.^xxiv(21) Before the sawmill they must have sawn out their lumber by hand.

They also built a cover for shipbuilding by spring of 1834; before that they worked out in the open.^xxv

Wrangell says they used yellow cedar for the ribs of their ships, and for row boats, which they did not use at Sitka, but sold to foreigners. He says they used larch for planking and pine for decks;^xxvi(22) these were probably Sitka spruce and western hemlock, respectively. This was the same pattern reported by Litke in the 1820s.

In 1835 the yard retimbered an American ship, renamed the LADY WRANGELL. The shipyard workshops included an instrument shop, a foundry, and a sail loft in 1842.^xxvii(23)

In 1838 machinist Edward Moore arrived in Sitka from Boston with an American-built steam engine. The shipwright Netsvetov built the paddle wheel steamship NIKOLAI, launched in the spring of 1839, and Moore helped install the engine. This may have been the first steamer built on the west coast. Unfortunately, the 130-foot NIKOLAI, as early as the summer of the launch, was recalled to Sitka because of leaks and other problems. That same fall they decided the new boat was unsuitable for use on the open ocean. In addition, the governor wrote that the building of the NIKOLAI had strained all the resources of Sitka, and besides, the larger ships built in the colonies and at Otkhosk were generally short-lived. He did believe it would still be practical to build smaller ships and boats.^xxviii

They built a sailing ship in the winter 1839-40, and in 1841, they built the MUR, whose major engine parts, except for the boilers, were fabricated at Sitka by Moore.^xxix(23b) The 8-horsepower MUR was used as a harbor tug. In 1846, in addition to repairs to company ships, two whalers, one German and one American, were repaired. The MUR was sold in California in 1847, and another steamer, the BARANOV, and a small schooner, the KLINKIT were built in 1848. The KLINKIT was also sold in California, in 1849.^xxx(23c)

By the time they built their last ships at Sitka, the Russians were using mainly yellow cedar, which is one of the most rot-resistant American woods, but much less common than spruce or hemlock in the woods around Sitka.

In 1845 the sawmill at Ozerskoi Redoubt was getting run down, and most of the timber near there had been cut, so a new water-powered sawmill and flour mill was built at Sawmill Creek.^xxxi(23d)

Between 1842 and 1863 the shipyard at Sitka built one more small sailing ship, rebuilt the NIKOLAI after it wrecked, and built two more side paddle wheel steamers out of yellow cedar: the 129-foot POLITKOFSKY, in 1863, and the smaller tug BARANOF, in 1860.^xxxii(25)

THE LAST ONES

Shipbuilding by the Russians came to an end permanently with the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. But two of the last ships built in Sitka, the side paddle wheel steamers POLITKOFSKY and BARANOF, were sold at the time of the purchase, and lasted long into the American era.

The British consul at Victoria bought the BARANOF, which was about 70 feet long, changed her name to ROSE, and took off the side paddle wheel and put in a propeller. He used her to trade for furs right after the transfer. Later she carried mail on Puget Sound, then traded again in Alaska for the Alaska Oil and Guano Company until 1877.^xxxiii(26)

This ROSE was perhaps the same steamer run by Amos Whitford, partner of future governor John Brady in the Sitka Trading Company in the 1880s. Before the partnership with ex-missionary Brady, Whitford used the ROSE for trading liquor, among other things. During the Sitka Trading Company days he used her for general trading for their Sitka store (operated out of the building called the Old Russian Trading Post in old photos) around southeast Alaska until they replaced her with the schooner LEO. The Russian-built ROSE lasted at least until 1897.^xxxiv(27)

The 129-foot POLITKOFSKY attracted more attention than the little ROSE. She looked funny even to contemporary Americans, and she was in use for some 40 years, presumably just looking more unusual as the years went by.

The Victoria Colonist, on the POLITKOFSKY’s arrival there in 1868, called her (tongue in cheek) “a magnificent example of homemade architecture.”^xxxv(28) Twenty years later, in 1887, Sitka’s newspaper, the Alaskan, quoted an article from the Tacoma Ledger: “The funniest looking old side wheel steamboat of these waters was at the wharf yesterday. It was the steamer POLITKOFSKY with a boom of piles….” They also said, however, that she looked like a “strong staunch craft.”^xxxvi(29)

The Alaska Commercial Company had bought the POLITKOFSKY at Sitka right after the transfer, taken her to San Francisco and sold her boilers (for more than they had paid for the ship), then sold the ship. For decades the POLITKOFSKY towed logs and sometimes carried the mail on Puget Sound.^xxxvii(30)

By 1901, however, she had been stripped down to a barge. On her last trip, she was towed to Nome during the gold rush there, loaded with coal. She was left there on the Nome sands, and finally broke up in a storm in 1915.^xxxviii(31)

AFTER THE AMERICAN PURCHASE – RESOURCEFUL ENTREPRENEURS

Most of the following information on ships built after the American purchase comes from early Sitka newspapers and from government records of documented vessels.

In 1867 the United States bought the territory of Alaska from Russia. At Sitka the purchase included the Russian shipbuilding ways (tracks for pulling ships out of the water) where Totem Square is now, which became part of the military reservation. The shipyard was equipped with several related workshops, including a shed for boiling pitch, a sawing shed, a smithy, and a steam kiln.

But only two years later, the ways were dismantled and destroyed.^xxxix How ever active ship building or repair had been in the years before the sale, afterwards it came almost to a halt. Shipbuilding was to be sporadic, and generally done by the prospective ship owners themselves. Many of the boats did not last long or were sold right away, reflecting the instability of Sitka’s economic life before the turn of the century.

In 1880 and 1890, according to the census in those years, Sitka’s population of around 1200 was over two thirds Tlingit. Of the rest, excluding the Army, in 1870 over half were born in Alaska, and probably mixed Russian, Siberian and Native Alaskan descent. The remaining population was mostly foreign-born, the majority from Europe. Of the over one thousand residents in Sitka in 1870, besides Army personnel only fifty residents were from the United States. In 1880, only half of the white population spoke English.

Economic activity in the first few decades after the transfer seems to have been just as diverse as the population. It consisted mainly of speculation in land and property immediately after the transfer, fur hunting, fishing, and mineral prospecting, as well as dealing in liquor, supplies, and services for the other ventures.

In 1870 eight men listed shipbuilding trades in the Army census. One was Irish, and one was a New York caulker who had come to Sitka with the Army and married a local woman. The other six were born in Alaska. Three of these Alaskan shipbuilders lived in a building with over 100 residents, so if they were working at all, it was probably only casually. ^xl(2)

Ten years later, in 1880, two different Alaska-born men on the census cited shipbuilding trades, one a boatbuilder. There were also the New Yorker, and H. L. Bahrt, a ship’s carpenter from Germany. He, too, married a local woman, and his descendants are still in Sitka.

While these men might have done boat repair, and possibly small boat building, there does not seem to have been an organized boatbuilding shop for some 40 years. Instead, boat and ship building in the decades after the transfer seems to have almost all been done by the boat owners themselves, for their own schemes and enterprises.

Probably the first ship built at Sitka after the transfer was the SITKA, documented in 1871. The SITKA was a 10-ton schooner, which would have been about 35 or 40 feet, the length of a medium sized fishing boat. In fall of that year her managing owner was A. T. Whitford.^xliUnfortunately she was wrecked in 1875, only a few years after being built, while carrying a load of cod.^xlii(3)

In early January 1872, the year after the SITKA was built, the EDWIN H. FRANCIS was built; her managing owner was also A. T. Whitford.^xliii The same year the NELLIE EDES was built by her owners, John Cook and William Phillipson, at Sitka. This enterprise may have been typical of the boats built in the ’70s and 80s. Both men had captained trading vessels out of Sitka by 1869, when Phillipson was only 25. Neither was born in the United States.

Phillipson was born in Spain, but also interpreted for the 1870 census, so he probably spoke Russian. He was Sitka’s postmaster from 1871, at one time ran the Navy coal depot, and also had his own store, dealing in everything from medicine to furs, by 1876. In addition he ran the NELLIE EDES himself in 1874, 1875, and part of 1877 around southeastern Alaska. He seems to have been a man for his time: he had come to Alaska from somewhere else, he was young and entrepreneurial, and he did a little of everything, from government work to running a trading boat.^xliv(4)

Unfortunately for him, Phillipson died fairly young. After his death the NELLIE was in Kodiak, and was sold at least six times between 1880 and 1883, and was used for trading and hunting out of Kodiak until she disappeared from the record in 1887.^xlv(5)

More than ten years passed after the NELLIE EDES before the next ship on record was built. The L AND H, a 48-foot sloop, was completed in 1884. This boat was registered out of San Francisco by the following year.^xlvi(6)

Then in 1888 the Sitka Trading Company, which included merchant and future Alaska governor John Brady, built a 52-foot lighter for carrying freight to and from ships in the harbor, for a fee of one dollar per ton. This same Sitka Trading Company had owned the ROSE, probably the boat built by the Russians in 1860, but in 1888 they were running the American-built schooner LEO with their trade goods around southeastern Alaska. The store owners often ran the ship themselves, like Phillipson had done with his small ship.^xlvii(7)

The following spring, 1889, Captain G. W. Fleming launched the 50-foot schooner SITKA. Fleming had launched a steamer at Kodiak shortly before, for the Alaska Commercial Company. When the SITKA was built it was intended for use in hunting and fishing, and possibly to service two canneries to be built at Sitka, according to the Sitka newspaper the Alaskan. Fleming sold out his interest a few weeks after the launch, to W. P. Mills and J. W. Johnson, competitors of the Sitka Trading Company. They used the boat for seal hunting and for carrying goods to Mills’ Yakutat store.^xlviii(8)

In 1898, only nine years after her building, the SITKA, under other owners, was wrecked at Cape Ommaney. A petition to the Collector of Customs in May of that year said that the crew of three had set out for Wrangell inexperienced and ill-provisioned, and that the canvas was rotten.^xlix(9)

In 1892, according to the Alaskan, four ambitious builders set out to build a 60-ton schooner, which is about 70 feet. They were still cutting wood but planned to have the boat built in only four months. The boat is not mentioned again and was probably never built.^l(10)

Besides the merchants building boats for seal hunting and carrying trade goods around Alaska, other individuals were probably building boats for themselves, which were overlooked or too small to have been documented (boats under five net tons, generally between 25 and 30 feet for sailing vessels, are not documented) for hunting, prospecting, and other activities.

In April of 1894 the Alaskan reported two men building a 20-foot yellow cedar boat, as an experiment, with the intention of building two more for other Sitkans.

Two former Coast Survey employees, Carl Jansen and A. B. Sandstrom, built a sloop on Apple Island in 1894 to use for prospecting. Jansen died from a gunshot, apparently while cleaning a gun, which might be the only reason the boat was recorded in the newspaper.^li(12) Perhaps there were other hopeful Alaskans, with more time and materials than cash, building boats to take advantage of economic opportunities they saw, in mining, hunting, logging, and so on.

Andrew Anderson, Charles Homberg, and L. P. Johnson built their 38-foot schooner NORTH STAR near John Brady’s sawmill (behind the present Thomsen Harbor) in 1895. They used spruce planking and yellow cedar timbers. Like the 1889 SITKA, she was for sale right after her launch, which was in late December. She lasted at least until 1911, working out of Sitka.^lii(13)

A few more boats were built before the end of the century: The 45-foot sloop HIGO was built in 1895, and the 48-foot schooner ROVER in 1896; neither was in documentation by 1911.^liii(14)

The 52-foot propeller steamer CAPELLA was built in 1899 for prospecting. The CAPELLA was, like the NORTH STAR, built at John Brady’s sawmill. Her builders had the help of a Juneau boatwright named John Nelson. The CAPELLA was still carrying freight in 1920, registered out of Wrangell.^liv(15)

The last boat mentioned by the Alaskan before the paper stopped publishing in 1907 is the PIONEER, built by the carpenter of the U.S. Revenue Cutter RUSH in 1901, for carrying water to the ship. Her launch was accompanied by a luncheon and three speeches, one by Governor Brady, to the assembled officials and officers and Sitka society. The governor’s daughter smashed a bottle of Indian River water over the bow. The Alaskan notes that boatbuilding had lately been neglected.^lv(16)

Boatbuilding was to increase within the next few decades, however, with the exponential growth of the fishing industry.

Endnotes

i Richard A. Pierce, Russian America: A Biographical Dictionary, Alaska History Series, no. 33 (Kingston, Ontario and Fairbanks, Alaska: The Limestone Press, 1990), p. 21 (Shields begins 1793); Petr Aleksandrovich Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian American Company, trans. and ed. Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donnelly (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978) p. 33 (building of); Pierce, Dictionary, p. 462 (difficulties); Petr Aleksandrovich Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian American Company, Volume II: Documents, ed. Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donelly, trans. Dmitri Krenov, Alaska History Series no. 13 (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1979), pp. 63, 65, 71, 76 (difficulties and fighting).

ii Pierce, Dictionary, p. 462 (building ship Okhotsk).

iii Tikhmenev, History, p. 59-60 (no more Okhotsk).

iv Tikhmenev, History, p. 53 (arrival of Phoenix, monopoly).

v Tikhmenev, History p. 44 (Sitka harbor trading place).

vi Pierce, Dictionary, pp. 22, 463 (Olga built); Tikhmenev, History, pp. 33 (Olga built), 42, 43 (Olga B’s boat, bad shape); Tikhmenev, History, Vol. II, pp. 96, 102, 105, 108 (Olga B’s boat); Tikhmenev, History, pp. 69 (Del’fin gone), 41 (Del’fin surveying S. E.); Tikhmenev, History, Vol. II, p. 65 (Del’fin surveying); Pierce, Dictionary, pp. 22 (Del’fin built), 463 (Del’fin built, survey, leaks).

vii Tikhmenev, History, p. 59 (great loss); Pierce, Dictionary, p. 463 (Shields sank).

viii Tikhmenev, History, pp. 74 (ships built from Olga), 69 (Olga decrepit 1804). Barratt p 147 (Between 1801 and 1804 no ships made it to the Alaska mainland from Okhotsk – frequent shipwrecks); Tikhmenev, History, p 63 (next ship overwintered, wrecked; next one took two winters, used up supplies they were carrying).

ix Tikhmenev, History, p. 74 (retaking Sitka), Glynn Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, 1715-1825 (Vancouver and London: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), pp 126-129

x Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangell, Russian America: Statistical and Ethnographic Information, With Additional Material by Karl Ernst Baer, trans. from German edition of 1839 by Mary Sadouski, ed. Richard A. Pierce, Alaska History Series no. 15 (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1980), p. 9 (launched 1806); Tikhmenev, History, pp. 95 (built, attack), 101 (attack); Pierce, Dictionary, p. 235 (attack); Barratt pp 144-146 (raid on Kurile Islands).

xi Barratt pp 130-132, 156-149 (winter of 1805-6).

xii Pierce, Dictionary, p. 310 (replaced by Lincoln); Tikhmenev, History, Vol. II, pp. 192 (good when not drunk), 196 (knife fight).

xiii Tikhmenev, History, p. 147 (lost).

xiv Pierce, Dictionary, p. 310 (Lincoln hired, ships built); Wrangell, Russian America, p. 9 (ships built); Tikhmenev, History, pp. 147 (Sitka built, lost), 148 (Otk, Chir built), 150 (Otkrytkie, Chirikov in 1820).

xv Tikhmenev, History, p. 150 (Plat, Bar built).

xvi Pierce, Dictionary, p. 181 (Ross ships lasted less than 5 years).

xvii Tikhmenev, History, pp. 151 (built 15 by 1821) 208-210 (ships by 1842), 360-364 (ships to 1862).

xviii Frederic Litke, A Voyage Around the World, 1826-1829: Volume I, To Russian America and Siberia, trans. from French edition by Renee Marshall, with a parallel account by E. H. Baron von Kittlitz, trans. from the German and with an introduction by Joan Moessner, ed. Richard Pierce, Alaska History Series no. 29 (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1987), pp. 46-47 (woods, shipyard).

xix Litke p. 210, 211 (i.d. of spruce & hemlock).

xx. Litke, pp. 46-47 (workshops); Tikhmenev, History, pp. 208-210 (boats built by 1842); Tikhmenev, History, pp 208-209 (built 5 1827-28 to replace baidarkas and rowboats).

xxi Tikhmenev, History, pp. 208-310 (shipbuilding by 1842), 472 (note 25, on shipbuilding); Pierce, Dictionary, p. 545 (closed yards, Sitka yard).

xxii Wrangell, pp. 9-10 (Creole building).

xxiii Tikhmenev, History, p. 33 (Shelikof: teach Natives), Svetlana G. Fedorova, The Russian Population in Alaska and California, Late 18th Century To 1867, Alaska History Series no. 4, trans. and ed. Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donnelly (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1973), p 245 (indenture)

xxiv Pierce, Dictionary, p. 545 (sawmill).

xxvKatherine L. Arndt and Richard A. Pierce, A Construction History of Sitka, Alaska, as Documented in the Records of the Russian-American Company, Sitka National Historical Park Historic Context Study under Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Second Edition (Sitka, Alaska: Sitka National Historical Park, 2003), p 77

xxvi Wrangell, pp. 9-10 (woods).

xxvii Tikhmenev, History, p. 472 (note 25 — Lady Wrangell); Fedorova, p. 223 (workshops at Sitka, 1842), from Bob DeArmond (source??) (Date of repair of Lady Wrangell).

xxviii Tikhmenev, History, pp. 208-210 (building by 1842).

xxix ??? (all of tug’s engine except boilers)

xxx Richard A. Pierce, Builders of Alaska, The Russian Governors, 1818-1867, Alaska History Series No. 28 (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1986), p 30 (Whalers repaired, Mur sold, Baranov built, Klinkit built, Klinkit sold).

xxxi Ibid. (sawmill at Sawmill Creek 1839)

xxxii Tikhmenev, History, pp. 360-364 (ships to 1862); E. W. Wright, ed., Lewis and Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Lewis & Dryden Printing Company, 1895; reprint ed., New York: Antiquarian Press, 1961), p. 156; United States Treasury Department, Bureau of Navigation, Twenty-ninth Annual List of Merchant Vessels of the United States, with the Official Numbers, etc., For the Year Ended June 30th, 1897 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897). The List of Merchant Vessels is an annual list of all the commercial vessels over five net tons. It gives for each vessel the official number, the rig or engine type, name, tonnage, register length, breadth and depth, the year and place built, and the home port. These lists are used often for the material which follows. Future references to the list will be abbreviated to Merchant Vessels and the year. The name of the Bureau and Department publishing the list, and the exact title of the list, vary through the years. The List of Merchant Vessels has not been published for several years.

xxxiii E. W. Wright, ed., Lewis and Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Lewis & Dryden Printing Company, 1895; reprint ed., New York: Antiquarian Press, 1961), p. 161 (Rose after purchase).

xxxiv Hinckley, Ted C., Alaskan John G. Brady: Missionary, Businessman, Judge, and Governor, 1878 – 1918 (Miami, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1982), pp. 54 (liquor), 61 (trading), 66 (replace by Leo); Merchant Vessels 1897; Merchant Vessels 1887 (only one Rose in documentation in 1887).

xxxv Lewis and Dryden, p. 156 (Homemade, quote).

xxxvi Alaskan (Sitka), 12 February 1887, p. 3 (Tacoma quote).

xxxvii Lewis and Dryden, p. 156 (Polly in WA).

xxxviii Gordon R. Newell, ed., The H. W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1966), p. 258 (end of Polly).

xxxix R. N. DeArmond, ed., Lady Franklin Visits Sitka, Alaska 1870: The Journal of Sophia Cracroft, Sir John Franklin’s Niece (Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Historical Society, 1981), pp. 72-92 (transfer map), Alaska Times 2 October 1869, p. 2 (destruction of ways).

xl Army Census, October 24, 1870, and 1867 building inventory, included in DeArmond, Lady Franklin, pp. 72-125.

xli DeArmond, Chronology p. 6 (Whitford managing owner, Sept. 27 1871)

xlii Andrews — Marine Disasters — Washington Historical Quarterly (Driven ashore, total loss); letter, I. D. Dennis, dep. to Collector, 24 September 1875, Customs Letters volume 13, recd #70 (where?) (cod, wreck).

xliii DeArmond, Chronology p.6 (Edwin H Francis built)

xliv Customs Letters 24 February 1874, #275 (built by Cook and Phillipson); Secy. Treasurer 22 April 1874, Customs Letters Vol. 10 No. 62 (both aliens); Richard A. Pierce, Alaskan Shipping, 1867-1878: Arrivals and Departures at the Port of Sitka (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1972), passim (Sitka boats & masters); DeArmond, Lady Franklin, p. 116 (Phillipson bio).

xlv Customs Letters, 11 July 1878, # 374; Customs Letters 1880; Customs Letters 1883, from deputy Collector at Kodiak (being sold); ????? (disappears in 1887).

xlvi Merchant Vessels 1885 (L and H).

xlvii Alaskan, 10 November 1888, p. 3 (lighter).

xlviii Alaskan, 15 December 1888; idem, 6 April 1889, p. 3; idem, 23 March 1889, p. 3; idem, 27 April 1889, p. 3 (building the Sitka).

xlix Alaskan, 30 July 1898, p. 3; idem, 4 June 1898, p. 3; idem, 28 May 1898, p. 2; idem, 21 May 1898, p. 3 (wreck).

l Alaskan, 22 January 1892, p. 2 (unbuilt boat).

li Alaskan, 10 February 1894 p. 3 (Apple Island sloop).

lii Alaskan, 1 December 1894, p. 3; idem, 5 January 1894, p. 3 (North Star), Merchant Vessels 1911 (still there).

liii Merchant Vessels 1897 (Higo, Rover).

liv Alaskan, 20 May 1899, p. 3; idem, 24 June 1899, p. 3 (Capella), Merchant Vessels 1921

lv Alaskan, 23 November 1901, p. 2 (launch for USRC Rush)