The Ship, the Saint, and the Sailor, livre ebook

The true story about a shipwreck discovery, exciting explorations, broken alliances, and returning a lost piece of Alaskan history.
Since its sinking in 1860 while transporting a valuable cargo of ice, the Kad’yak ship had remained submerged underwater and faded in Alaska’s memory, covered by the legend of an experienced but perhaps rusty sailor and a broken promise to a saint. At the time the ship had been under command of the well-recognized Captain Illarion Arkhimandritov, who had sailed in Alaskan waters for years. It seemed a simple task when he was asked to placate superstitions and honor the late Father Herman, or Saint Herman, on his next visit to Kodiak Island. But Arkhimandritov failed to keep his promise, and shortly thereafter the Kad’yak met its demise in the very waters the captain should have been most familiar with—leaving just the mast above the water in the shape of the cross, right in front of the saint’s grave. Presumed gone or else destroyed, it wasn’t until 143 years later that the Kad’yak was found.
In this riveting memoir, scientist Bradley Stevens tells all about the incredible discovery and recovery of the ship—deciphering the sea captain’s muddled journal, digging through libraries and other scientists’ notes, boating over and around the wreck site in circles. Through careful documentation, interviews, underwater photography, and historical research, Stevens recounts the process of finding the Kad’yak, as well as the tumultuous aftermath of bringing the legendary ship’s story to the public—from the formed collaborations to torn partnerships to the legal battles.
An important part of Alaska’s history told from Stevens’s modern-day sea expedition, The Ship, the Saint, and the Sailor reveals one of the oldest known shipwreck sites in Alaska discovered and its continuing story today.

On a spring day in 1860, the Kad’yak set sail from Kodiak, Alaska, bound for San Francisco with a shipload of ice. Within a few miles from shore, it struck a rock, foundered, and was abandoned. But it didn’t sink. Now a wooden-hulled iceberg, it floated for four days before finally grounding on a reef in Icon Bay, on Spruce Island. That would have been the end of the story but for one detail. Captain Illarion Arkhimandritov, skipper of the Kad’yak, had promised to hold a service for Father Herman (now known as Saint Herman of the Russian Orthodox Church) before leaving Kodiak, but he did not keep his word. And the Kad’yak had somehow drifted through a maze of jagged reefs only to sink directly in front of Father Herman’s grave, with the top of the mast sticking out of the water, forming the Russian Orthodox cross—a public rebuke that would forever remind the captain of his perfidy and haunt the site for over a hundred years.

In 2003, after years of painstaking research, I led a team of volunteer divers to discover the wreck of the Kad’yak. This is the story about the amazing history of the Kad’yak and how it sank carrying Alaska’s most important export for two decades in the mid-nineteenth century—ice. Through painstaking research of historical Russian documents and deep analysis of the complicated and confusing log of the skipper who surveyed the wreck site, this is a story of the incredible discovery of a shipwreck over 140 years old, and how I had found it with “friends” who later tried to claim ownership of the shipwreck and credit for its discovery. It is a story about the personal, ethical, and legal struggles to keep the Kad’yak safely preserved for the Alaskan people and to illuminate its historical significance and linkage with Alaska Native knowledge.

A true tale of adventure in historical and modern-day Alaska told by a scientist who specializes in underwater research, the story ends with another tragic sinking of the Big Valley, the Bering Sea crab boat that served as dive tender and headquarters for the Kad’yak expedition, along with its captain and crew, in January 2005.

Come with me, if only briefly, to a faraway place and time. To the real Alaska that is not that different from the imaginary one that lurks in our collective subconscious. Wild, snow-covered in winter, and emerald green in summer, Kodiak Island is central to this story. Approaching it from the fog, Alaska’s Emerald Isle suddenly appears as the mists of time part to reveal verdant hillsides reaching up to snow-capped mountains.