The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai

Book Overview

In 1808 the Sv. Nikolai, owned by the Russian American Company, set sail from New Arkhangel (modern-day Sitka, Alaska) to explore and identify a site for a permanent Russian fur trading post on the mainland south of Vancouver Island. Heavy seas drove the ship aground in late December, forcing twenty-two crew members ashore, including Anna Petrovna Bulygin, the wife of ship captain Nikolai Isaakovich Bulygin. Over the next several months the shipwrecked crew clashed with Hohs, Quileutes, and Makahs, but with little knowledge of the country, the castaways soon found themselves owing their lives to the very tribes they had fought with upon arrival. The tribes captured and enslaved several of the crew members. In 1810 an American captain sailing for the Russian American Company ransomed the survivors. This volume combines two source accounts of the event. The first is the story of a Russian survivor, Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov, the expedition's leader after the shipwreck. The second is a Quileute account, preserved orally for nearly a century before being recorded in 1909. Combined, these wonderful accounts tell a tale of adventure with moments of high drama, heroism, a touch of comedy, and eventual tragedy. Kenneth N. Owens is a professor emeritus of history at California State University, Sacramento, and the editor of John Sutter and a Wider West (Nebraska 1994). Alton S. Donnelly is a professor emeritus of history at SUNY, Binghamton, and coeditor of History of the Russian-American Company.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803286155
• ISBN13: 9780803286153
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Bison
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Favorite Book on my Shelf

This is a truly remarkable story. Russian fur traders moving down the west coast in search of more Otter (only a few years after Lewis & Clark headed home from Oregon), their ship wrecked on the Olympic Peninsula. The sailors escaped the wreckage only to have their women, including the captains wife captured by local American Indians. By the time the ships captain and men come up with a plan to rescue the women, the women do not want to go back with the sailors! The story is historically accurate, and has been retold here from Russian ship logs and the Quinalt oral history of the event. It is a fun one to read.