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Abstract
This article analyses the development of steamship construction and the operation of steamships in the former Russian colonies in Alaska in 1838–67. This aspect of the economy of Russian America proceeded with the active co-operation of representatives of the United States and their technical support. The first steamship Nikolai I was completed in 1839 at Novo-Arkhangel’sk. The shipyard established an expertise in building and repairing steamships, supplying the majority of vessels in the Russian–American Company fleet. Steamships in the Russian–American Company were always in the minority compared to sailing ships, but their number gradually increased. At the end of existence of Russian America in 1867 they amounted to more than a third of all ships of the company and about half of the overall colonial flotilla, contributing to the technical and economic development of the most distant corners of the Russian empire. The first steamship Nikolai I was built in 1838–1839 at Novo-Arkhangel’sk.
Notes
1 See Grinëv, ‘The Problem of Classification of Vessels’, 45–65.
2 National Archives and Record Service, Records of the Russian-American Company (hereafter NARS, RRAC), RG 261, roll 5, 105–105v.
3 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 38, 171–171v.
4 For detail on the names of ships see Grinëv, ‘Russian Ship Names’, 200–12.
5 Bolkhovitinov (ed.), Rossiisko-Amerikanskaya kompaniya, 361, 371, 384.
6 Ibid., 360–1.
7 Ibid., 384.
8 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 42, 438v., 445, 446.
9 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 45, 267v.
10 This assessment is based on the second Nikolai I, which was built to the same model. ‘Vedomost’ o kolonial’nykh sudakh k 1 iyulya 1860 goda’ [The register of Colonial Ships for 1 July 1860], Prilozheniya k dokladu Komiteta ob ustroistve russkikh amerikanskikh kolonii [Appendices to the Report of the Committee on the Organization of the Russian American Colonies] (St Petersburg, 1863), table IX.
11 Grinëv, The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 178
12 Ibid., 210–11.
13 Otchet Rossiisko-Amerikanskoi kompanii Glavnogo pravleniya za dva goda, po 1-e genvarya 1842 goda [Report of the Russian-American Company Board of Directors for Two Years, on 1 January 1842] (hereafter ORAKGP) (St Petersburg, 1842), 46.
14 ORAKGP for 1844, 24.
15 Anichtchenko, ‘The Fleet of the Russian-American Company, 42.
16 ORAKGP for 1848, 28.
17 Anichtchenko, ‘The Fleet of the Russian-American Company’, 43.
18 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 19, 26; ORAKGP for 1848, 28, 33.
19 Nautical Magazine, 1849, 310.
20 ORAKGP for 1848, 26.
21 ORAKGP for 1850, 21.
22 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 50, 302v.; ORAKGP for 1852, 21; ORAKGP for 1853, 23.
23 For more detail see Grinëv, Alaska pod krylom, 435–42.
24 ORAKGP for 1854 and 1855, 60.
25 ORAKGP for 1856, 22–3.
26 ORAKGP for 1859, 28; Golovin, ‘Obzor russkikh kolonii’, 347.
27 ‘Dvizhenie sudov Rossiisko-Amerikanskoi kompanii’, 109.
28 ORAKGP for 1859, 82–3.
29 ‘Vedomost’ o kolonial’nykh sudakh k 1 iyulya 1860 goda’, table IX.
30 Grinëv, ‘Dnevnik S. O. Makarova’, 5.
31 ORAKGP for 1859, 27.
32 Tikhmenev, Istoricheskoe obozrenie, 222.
33 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 63, 69.
34 Tikhmenev, Istoricheskoe obozrenie, 227.
35 For more detail about shipwrecks in Russian America see Grinëv, ‘Russian Maritime Catastrophes’, 178–94.
36 ORAKGP for 1861, 31.
37 ORAKGP for 1860, 51–2.
38 Petrov (ed.), Rossiisko-Amerikanskaya, 374.
39 NARS, RRAC, RG 261, roll 65, 5; ORAKGP for 1862, 41; ORAKGP for 1863, 33.
40 Anichtchenko, ‘The Fleet of the Russian-American Company’, 43.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrei V. Grinëv
Andrei Val’terovich Grinëv graduated from the history department at the Altai State University in 1983 and completed graduate work at the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences, USSR from 1984–6. He defended his candidacy in 1987 and his doctoral dissertation in 2000. He works as a professor in the history department at St Petersburg State Polytechnic University. He is a specialist on the history and ethnography of Russian America and the author of several monographs and about 130 scholarly articles, including ones translated and published in the United States, Europe, Japan and China.