Magazine Section

Pacific Islands Monthly

How The Russians Came To The South Pacific

Among the hundreds of islands that pepper the map of the >outh Pacific, there are two islands that stand out like beacons o anyone with a curious mind. These islands are Vostok, in the .ine Group north of Tahiti, and Suvarov (usually spelt Suwarrow >r Suvorov) in the Northern Cooks.

By Robert Langdon

Vostok and Suvarov are unique. They are the only islands i the South Pacific with Russian names.

IE Pacific Islands Year Book says that both these islands were ed after the ships of Russian gators in the early 19th century, ut the Year Book gives no clue he fascinating story behind the :arance of these Russians in the h Pacific. lat story goes back to the year when a tough, determined Dane, :. Vitus Bering, left the coast of ichatka, Siberia, in two ships to :h for an unknown land on If of the Russian Government. <. weeks after setting out, Bering’s made independent landfalls in is now Alaska. ie of them subsequently limped to Kamchatka; the other, the lip, was wrecked, after a night voyage, on an unknown island e Aleutians. e sick and dying crew landed le ice-covered shore before the broke up, and found shelter in

the dens of Arctic foxes. Some, including Bering, died.

The rest survived through the ensuing winter, thanks mainly to vast numbers of palatable and warm furred sea-otters which inhabited the island.

In August, 1742, the survivors got back to Kamchatka in a boat built from the wreckage of Bering’s flag ship.

The fine sea-otter skins they brought with them fired the imagina tion and roused the cupidity of the half-savage settlers of Kamchatka, known in Russian as “promyshleniki”.

Ruthless Within a few years, hundreds of “promyshleniki” (descendants of Cossack bandits and Siberian natives) were gathering sea-otter skins among the stormy islands of the Northern Pacific.

The “promyshleniki” forced the Stone Age islanders to hunt the sea otter for them in their frail, sealskin boats; and so ruthless were they that hundreds of thousands of skins were collected.

These skins, when taken to China by an overland route from Okhotsk, netted the “promyshleniki” millions of pounds.

For 30-odd years after the dis covery of the sea-otter, the fabulously profitable trade remained unknown to the merchants of Europe and America.

But in 1778, an unexpected visitor arrived in the Northern Pacific, who, quite by accident, broke the monopoly of the “promyshleniki”.

This visitor was Capt. Cook, who landed on Vancouver Island while sailing north in search of the North- West Passage, and—unaware of their value—obtained some sea-otter skins from the natives in exchange for trade goods.

Eighteen months later, when these skins were sold at Canton and Macao, they netted such huge sums that there was nearly a mutiny on board Cook’s ships—so eager were the sea men to go back to America to get some more.

During the next few years, trading vessels from England, France and the US joined in a rush to the Northern Pacific to “horn in” on the sea-otter trade.

Meanwhile, Russia, although it had extended its domains to the coast of Alaska, began to lag behind in the trade because it had no large ships on its Siberian coast.

An Eye for Business In 1797, however, a Russian naval officer called Adam Johann von Krusenstern arrived in Canton, where he saw a small English vessel sell a cargo of sea-otter skins for 60,000 piastres.

Krusenstern, who was a patriotic fellow with an eye for business, realised immediately that Russia

Suwarrow Island

This portrait of King Pomare II of Tahiti was "stealthily sketched" by a Mr. Mikhailov, a member of Bellingshausen's crew, when the king came aboard the Russian ship "Vostok" during Bellingshausen's visit to Tahiti in 1820.

would continue to lag in this trade if she kept on using the overland route from Okhotsk.

So when he returned to Russia, he suggested that the Government should send two ships to the Russian posts in Alaska to take a cargo of skins to China, and, incidentally, to cir cumnavigate the globe for the first time.

The Russian Government approved this plan, and gave Krusenstern the ships Nadeshda and Neva in which he sailed from Kronstadt in July, 1803.

The two ships doubled Cape Horn, called at the Marquesas and Hawaii, collected a cargo of skins at Alaska, and sold them in Macao for what was the huge sum of 190,000 piastres.

Krusenstern returned to Russia in August, 1806, via the Cape of Good Hope, and thus became the first Russian circumnavigator.

Further Voyages

The success of his mission prompted further Russian voyages to the North Pacific. On some of these, the Russians made a number of dis coveries in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.

The Neva undertook a second voyage in 1806; and in 1813, the Suvarov, under Lieut. Mikhail Lazarev, was sent from Kronstadt by the Russian-American Company, which had been established in Alaska since 1790.

After rounding the Horn, Lazarev got among the islands of Polynesia, and on September 17, 1814, he dis covered an uninhabited atoll north of Rarotonga, He named this Suvarov, after his ship.

In the following year, Capt. Otto von Kotzbue, who had been a cadet under Krusenstern, was sent to the Pacific in a ship called the Rurik.

Into the Marshalls Although he passed through the Tuamotu Archipelago, he made no new discoveries there. But later, when he got among the Marshall Islands, he came upon several islands that had not been seen before. Kotzbue gave Russian names to all these islands, but they have since reverted to their native names.

When Kotzbue returned to Russia in 1818, the Russian Government de cided that so much exploratory work had now been done at the Arctic end uf the Pacific that it was time to turn its attention to the Antarctic.

An expedition under Admiral Baron Thaddeus von Bellingshausen was organised, and two sloops, the Vostok and Mirni, were fitted out.

Bellingshausen took command of the Vostok, and the Mirni was placed under Mikhail Lazarev, formerly of the Suvarov.

The two ships sailed from Kron stadt in July, 1819. After calling at the Falkland and South Shetland Islands, they skirted part of the An tarctic ice pack, then sailed north to Sydney.

From there, they went to New Zea land and Rapa, and then north to the Tuamotu Archipelago. After touching at Hao atoll, they sailed for Tahiti.

The atolls of Takume and Faaite were discovered en route and were given Russian names.

Bellingshausen, who was the first Russian to visit Tahiti, was as thrilled by that place as most previous navi gators had been.

Russian Met Pomare “My pen,” he wrote, “is wholly un equal to the task of expressing a sailor’s pleasure on finding himself at anchor after a long, weary voyage in a spot which needs only to be seen to fire the imagination.”

In Tahiti, Bellingshausen met King Pomare and several of the English missionaries, and strangely enough,

he found a man there who could in terpret for him.

This was an American called Wil liams, who had worked for a tirm with the Russian-American Compan; in Alaska, had deserted from ai American ship in the Marquesas, ha< married a Marquesan girl, and ha< settled in Tahiti as a pilot.

After staying at Tahiti for sii days, Bellingshausen sailed north During the next few weeks, he dig covered Matahiva, the easternmog atoll of the Tuamotu group, which h called Lazarev, and an uninhabited atoll which he named Vostok Islam after his ship.

An American "First"

Turning westwards, he discovers Rakahanga in the Northern CookJ and then the Ono-i-lau archipelago c Fiji.

From Fiji, Bellingshausen returns to Sydney and then sailed again fo the Antarctic.

His hopes of being the first to s© the Antarctic land mass were sha'i tered when he met a small Americas fur trader, the Hope, under a Cape Palmer, who had discovered the lam a few days earlier.

(Continued on p. 95)

ellingshausen returned to Kron t via the Horn in August, 1821. xcept for Vostok Island, all the ids which he discovered in the th Pacific are now known by their ve names. □t there are several place names ie Antarctic which commemorate visits. Among them are Bellings en Sea, south of Cape Horn, r Ist Island, and Mirni, now the of a Russian scientific and her base. vo years after Bellingshausen’s n to Russia, Capt. Otto von bue was sent to the Pacific on a voyage in a ship called Pred ]e (Enterprise).

Unflattering Opinion

s mission was threefold: to carry scientific work, to take a cargo .amchatka, and to protect the an-American Company from the ghng of foreign traders.

March 2, 1824, after rounding Horn, Kotzbue discovered the of Fakahina in the Tuamotus, he named Predpriatie. i days later, he arrived in Tahiti he stayed sufficiently long to a very unflattering opinion of or c °f English missionaries.

March 26, Kotzbue discovered esternmost island of the Society >, which he called Bellings i island after his immediate n predecessor in those parts. 5 island, which is known to the 5 as Motu-one, is still marked ny maps with its Russian name as the last discovery by Russian tors in the South Pacific, there still remained a few un bred islands in the Caroline just north of the Equator

which, in 1828, a Russian navigator called Lutke had the honour of being the first to see.

Voyages Cease

By this time, the meek little sea otter, which had been the cause of Russian interest in the Pacific, had been hunted to virtual extinction in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

So the Russian voyages to the Paci fic ceased, and the Russian Govern ment lost interest in the colonies of the Russian-American Company that over the years, had spread along the

American coast from Alaska to Cali fornia.

In 1841, the company sold its Cali forma property for $30,000 to John A. Sutter, the man on whose land gold was found in 1848 to begin the great Californian gold rush. The whole of Alaska was sold to the US Government in 1867.

So ended a colourful chapter in Pacific history—a chapter which I would certainly never have known about had it not been for the names, Vostok and Suvarov, staring at me tantalisingly from the map.