Realizing that the captain was trapped and the first mate lost, Arkhimandritov assumed command and ordered the crew to turn the ship close-hauled into the wind. He then sent rescuers to save the captain, who was still yelling orders, but they could not reach him and soon his voice faded away. Only after righting the ship and pumping out the water was the crew finally able to enter the captain’s cabin. They found him and a Kolosh crewman dead under a pile of debris. Arkhimandritov ordered both to be buried at sea. After two more days of storm, the winds abated and the ship was finally put in order, with most of the destroyed cargo and provisions jettisoned. The ship arrived safely at New Arkhangelsk on October 5, and the RAC launched an investigation and recorded details of the disaster. As a result of his efforts to save the ship and its crew, Arkhimandritov was awarded a gold medal by Emperor Nicholas I, which was to be worn on the ribbon of the order of St. Anna.
Thus Arkhimandritov’s skills as a navigator and cartographer were widely recognized, and in 1846 he was tasked by Captain Tebenkov, then the manager of the RAC and de-facto governor of Russian America, with mapping the coastline of Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and Kodiak. In 1852, many of Arkhimandritov’s original charts were incorporated into the first consolidated set of navigation charts for Alaska, known as Mikhail Tebenkov’s Atlas of the Northwest Coasts of America, which was engraved in New Arkhangelsk.
For a few years Arkhimandritov commanded the steamer Aleksander II on its voyages to the Aleutians and Pribilof Islands. While stationed in New Arkhangelsk in 1852, Captain Arkhimandritov had a dispute with the local priest, which escalated into the priest banishing him from the church and prohibiting him from receiving Holy Communion for seven years. In Sitka, this was the equivalent of excommunication. Arkhimandritov could not participate in community activities or continue to work as a navigator. What he did during that period is unknown, but he did not sail again until at least 1859.
All that time ashore may have made his navigation skills a bit rusty. Arkhimandritov may not have been at the peak of his craft when he undertook the final voyage of the Kad’yak in 1860.
PRIOR TO HIS LAST TRIP to Kodiak, Captain Arkhimandritov had dined with Chief Administrator of the RAC Stepan Voyevodsky, the acting governor of Russian America, at his home in Sitka. Before leaving, Mrs. Voyevodsky had made a request of the captain. She was a religious woman, devoted to the Russian Orthodox Church, and especially fond of the departed Priest Father Herman. Would he please, she had asked, hold a Te Deum for Father Herman the next time he visited Kodiak? Such a mission would have required the captain to make a separate journey to the grave of Father Herman on Spruce Island, say a prayer for him, and leave a small donation for the church. Despite his previous treatment by the Church, or perhaps because of it, Arkhimandritov did not have the same level of religious fervor as she did. However, his devotion to the Company and the desire to keep in good favor with the manager had convinced him to agree to her request. He would visit the holy man’s grave, he had promised, and make the offering. But time and work took its toll. Upon arriving in Kodiak, he found himself too busy and soon forgot about his promise.
At that time, Kodiak was mostly treeless, having been swept clean of all vegetation by glaciers thousands of years previously. In order to obtain wood for building and cooking, the Russians had to visit the wooded island, Lesnoi, or the pine island 10 miles from Kodiak island. The trees there were actually Sitka Spruce, and it became known as Ostrov Elovoi, or Spruce Island. But neither Lesnoi nor Ostrov Elovoi had a good harbor; only the village of Kodiak, with its deep channel next to the rocky shoreline, was deep enough to bring a tall ship in close to shore. Regular trips to collect wood were a necessity then, and the place they went most often was the pine island.
Leaving the channel, the Kad’yak passed south of Mys Elovoi, or Spruce Cape, at the northeast point of Kodiak Island. As they did so, Captain Arkhimandritov looked northwest to the island of pines. There on the southeast tip of Spruce Island lay Father Herman’s remains, buried under a small chapel in the woods. As he watched the island glide by from a distance, Arkhimandritov suddenly remembered his promise. Oh well, he thought, maybe next time. He had more important work to do, captaining a ship for the Company, than making frivolous trips to satisfy some doting matron’s superstitious whims.
He turned away from the sight and checked the sails and seas once more. His eyes doted on the twist of sails, the slight corkscrew formed as each sail was angled slightly more than the one below it; it was as pleasing a geometry as known to man. Satisfied with the weather and the ship’s progress, he ordered the raising of the royals to flesh out the rigging, then turned control over to the chief mate and went below into his cabin. It was the chief mate’s job to supervise the actual sailing of the ship. He had not only to carry out the captain’s orders but to anticipate them as well. If the captain had to tell him what to do, it was a personal rebuke. It also helped that the crew was a good one. The chief and the second and third mates were all Russians, as was the cook. The rest of the crew were Natives of the Koniag tribe. Only Arkhimandritov was a Creole—but he was a legend in Alaska, and the crew trusted him.
Below decks the captain sat at his desk and recorded in the ship’s log the exact time of their departure, the time they passed Mys Elovoi, and their course. Then he examined his charts to determine where they ought to be at the next change of watch. He marked it on the chart so that he could check their progress against it that evening. As he worked, he could hear the splashing of water against the hull as the ship coursed along and the clumping about of men on deck, working and shouting to each other. They were sounds so familiar to him, so comforting, that he could tune them out completely yet still hear even the faintest variation that would signal something unusual. As the ship gently surged over the sea surface, he settled into the rhythm of the sea and felt at peace. If anyplace was home to him, it was here, aboard ship, in the Gulf of Alaska.
The next sound he heard was one that he would never forget. It may have lasted no more than seconds but must have felt like minutes to him. It would live in his memory as the loudest, most excruciating, and most horrible thing he ever heard. First he felt it as a bump, then a scrape, then a loud tearing and crunching before it erupted into an explosive cracking sound. He knew instantly what it was, though his brain tried to deny it for a second. The shock jolted him out of his seat. He burst out of his cabin and ran up to the deck, praying silently that it wasn’t what he thought. But it was.
The Kad’yak had hit a rock. Sailing at a full clip of about 4 knots with all sails unfurled on a broad starboard reach, the ship had run into an uncharted reef just below the surface, not more than a few miles offshore of Ostrov Dolgoi, the long island. Immediately the ship began to list. The wind still filling the sails dragged the ship over even further. Boards continued to groan and crack as the ship twisted sideways, dragging itself across the rock. Men clung to the ship with panic in their eyes. Cargo and supplies stored on deck strained against their ropes, then broke free and fell into the water. In a moment it was over—the ship slipped off the reef, righted itself, and became silent once more.
The captain shouted orders to furl the sails, hoping to keep the ship upright. The sailors woke from their frozen stances and climbed up into the spars to reef in the sails, doing their jobs professionally in spite of whatever worries they may have had about their predicament. Slowly, the ship leveled out and began to drift, bobbing lethargically in the swells. Arkhimandritov shouted more orders, sending men down below to check the damage. Just as quickly, they came back up. The hold was filled with water, and it was getting