RUSSIAN EXPLORER GERASIM IZMAILOV REACHES ALASKA

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Gerasim Grigoryevich Izmaylov, the Russian Empire navigator, who reached Alaska on a day like today in 1788.

Gerasim Grigoryevich Izmaylov, in Russian Герасим Григорьевич Измайлов; circa 1745-after 1795) was a Russian Empire navigator involved in the Russian colonization of the Americas and in the establishment of the colonies of Russian America in Alaska. 

He was responsible for the first detailed maps of the Aleutian Islands. A native of Yakutsk, Izmaylov attended a navigation school in Okhotsk with Dmitry Bocharov, who became his lifelong business companion.

In 1771, both were caught up in the Benyovszky mutiny at Bolsheretsk on Kamchatka. Izmaylov attempted to break away from the mutineers but, after being flogged, was marooned on the isle of Simushir, one of the uninhabited Kuril Islands. For a year he subsisted on scallops, grass, and roots before being rescued by yasak gatherers. He was investigated in Irkutsk on account of his association with Benyovszky, but was eventually cleared of all charges in 1774.

In 1775, Izmaylov assumed command of the boat St. Paul and set to work mapping the shores of the Aleutian Islands.

In October 1778, while visiting Unalaska, he made the acquaintance of Captain James Cook who presented him with an octant in exchange for a letter of introduction to the Kamchatka authorities. Cook also handed over to Izmaylov a recently drawn map of the western coast of North America, which was to be delivered by the Russians to the British Admiralty.

In 1783-1785, Izmaylov and Grigory Shelikhov made their historic voyage from Okhotsk to Kodiak Island, where they founded the first Russian settlement in America.

In 1789, Izmaylov became the first to explore and map the Kenai Peninsula. Three years later, he took up employment under Alexander Baranov, helping him withstand a sea attack by the Tlingit.

Having wintered in Unalaska, Izmaylov visited Saint Paul Island, where he discovered the crew of a Russian ship that had been missing since 1791. He brought them back to Okhotsk in June 1794. He is mentioned for the last time in 1795, when he accompanied to Alaska a group of Orthodox missionaries under Father Joasaph.

More information: National Park Service

Alaska is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. It is in the Western United States region and is considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost (the Aleutian Islands cross the antimeridian into the eastern hemisphere) state in the United States. To the east, it borders Canada (the Yukon territory and the province of British Columbia). It shares a western maritime border, in the Bering Strait, with Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south. Technically a semi-exclave of the U.S., it is the largest exclave in the world.

Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states of Texas, California and Montana combined, and is the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and most sparsely populated U.S. state, but is, with a population of 736,081 as of 2020, the continent's most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. The state contains the four largest cities in the United States by area, including the state capital of Juneau. The state's most populous city is Anchorage and approximately half of Alaska's residents live within its metropolitan area.

Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state, and promoted and maintained a native Alaskan Creole population.

The expense and logistical difficulty of maintaining this distant possession prompted its sale to the U.S. in 1867 for US$7.2 million (equivalent to $157 million in 2023). The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.

More information: History Central

The soul of Alaska lies in its wilderness
-the vast stretches of mountain peaks,
endless forests, wide rivers, and deep blue ocean
harboring a tremendous diversity of wildlife.

Gary Snyder

EXXON VALDEZ, THE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER OF ALASKA

Today, The Grandma has been reading about one of the latest and greatest disasters of the last century, the Exxon Valdez, the oil tanker that ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil, impacting miles of Alaska’s coastline and killing millions of animals, on a day like today in 1989.

Oriental Nicety, formerly Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, and Dong Fang Ocean, was an oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil in Alaska.

On March 24, 1989, while owned by the former Exxon Shipping Company, and captained by Joseph Hazelwood and First Mate James Kunkel bound for Long Beach, California, the vessel ran aground on the Bligh Reef resulting in the second largest oil spill in United States history. The size of the spill is estimated to have been 40,900 to 120,000 m3.

The tanker was 301 meters long, 51 meters wide, and 26 meters deep, with a deadweight of 214,861 long tons and a full-load displacement of 240,291 long tons. The ship was able to transport up to 235,000 m³ at a sustained speed of 30 km/h. Her hull design was of the single-hull type, constructed by National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego, California. She was a relatively new tanker at the time of the spill, having been delivered to Exxon on December 16, 1986.

More information: National Ocean Service

At the time of the spill, Exxon Valdez was employed to transport crude oil from the Alyeska consortium's pipeline terminal in Valdez, Alaska, to the lower 48 states of the United States. At the time it ran aground, the vessel was carrying about 201,000 m³ of oil. After the spill, the vessel was towed to San Diego, arriving on June 10, 1989, and repairs were started on June 30, 1989. Approximately 1,600 tons of steel were removed and replaced that July, totaling US$30 million of repairs to the tanker. Its single-hull design remained unaltered.

The Exxon Valdez spill occurred under President George H. W. Bush, whose EPA Administrator William K. Reilly played a significant role in mobilizing presidential support for action to contain and clean up the spill.

Litigation was filed on behalf of 38,000 litigants. In 1994, a jury awarded plaintiffs US$287 million in compensatory damages and US$5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon appealed and the Ninth Circuit Court reduced the punitive damages to US$2.5 billion. Exxon then appealed the punitive damages to the Supreme Court which capped the damages to US$507.5 million in June 2008. On August 27, 2008, Exxon Mobil agreed to pay 75% of the US$507.5 million damages ruling to settle the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska.

In June 2009, a federal ruling ordered Exxon to pay an additional US$480 million in interest on their delayed punitive damage awards.

After repairs, Exxon Valdez was renamed Exxon Mediterranean, then SeaRiver Mediterranean in the early 1990s, when Exxon transferred its shipping business to a new subsidiary company, River Maritime Inc. The name was later shortened to S/R Mediterranean, then to simply Mediterranean in 2005. Although Exxon tried briefly to return the ship to its North American fleet, it was prohibited by law from returning to Prince William Sound. It then served in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In 2002, the ship was again removed from service.

More information: Marine Insight

In 2005, it began operating under the Marshall Islands flag of convenience. Since then, European Union regulations have also prevented vessels with single-hull designs such as the Valdez from entering European ports.

In early 2008, SeaRiver Maritime, an ExxonMobil subsidiary, sold Mediterranean to the Hong Kong-based shipping company, Hong Kong Bloom Shipping Ltd., which renamed the ship, once again, to Dong Fang Ocean, under Panama registry. In 2008, she was refitted and converted from an oil tanker to an ore carrier. Hong Kong Bloom Shipping, is a subsidiary of Chinese Government owned company China Ocean Shipping (Group) Corporation (COSCO).

On November 29, 2010, Dong Fang Ocean collided in the South China Sea with the Malta-flagged cargo ship, Aali. Both vessels were severely damaged in the incident, and Aali was towed to Weihai and Dong Fang Ocean was towed to Longyan Port in Shandong.

In March 2012, Dong Fang Ocean was purchased by Global Marketing Systems, Inc. for scrap at an estimated US$16 million and sailed under her own power to a ship breaker in Singapore. She changed hands again among scrap merchants, a common occurrence, and was eventually routed to Alang, India, under the ownership of Priya Blue Industries and at some point renamed Oriental Nicety.

Before being beached, some tried to halt the action, arguing that the vessel was in breach of the Basel Convention.

On 30 July 2012, the Supreme Court of India granted permission for the owners of Oriental Nicety to beach her at Gujarat coast to be dismantled. She was then beached at Alang on 2 August 2012.

More information: DW

I went down on the beach and looked around,
and the mussels had all died.
I’d touch them, and they’d fall off the rocks.

Elenore McMullen

A VIOLENT ERUPTION FORMED NOVARUPTA IN ALASKA

Novarupta eruption

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to search more information about Novarupta volcano in Alaska. The Grandma loves volcanoes and she is interested in this volcano because it is considered the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.

Novarupta erupted on a day like today in 1912 and today is an excellent moment to remember that event.

Novarupta, meaning newly erupted in Latin, is a volcano that was formed in 1912, located on the Alaska Peninsula in Katmai National Park and Preserve, about 470 km southwest of Anchorage.

Formed during the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, Novarupta released 30 times the volume of magma of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

The 1912 eruption that formed Novarupta was the largest to occur during the 20th century. It began on June 6, 1912, and culminated in a series of violent eruptions. Rated a 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the 60-hour-long eruption expelled 13 to 15 km3 of ash, thirty times as much as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

The erupted magma of rhyolite, dacite, and andesite resulted in more than 17 km3 of air fall tuff and approximately 11 km3 of pyroclastic ash-flow tuff. During the 20th century, only the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines and the 1902 eruption of Santa María in Guatemala were of comparable magnitude; Pinatubo ejected 11 km3, and Santa María just slightly less.

Novarupta eruption

At least two larger eruptions occurred in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, during the 19th century: the 1815 eruption of Tambora 150 km3 of tephra and the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa 20 km3 of tephra.

The Novarupta eruption occurred about 4.0 km from the peak of Mount Katmai Volcano and 1,200 m below the post-eruption Mount Katmai summit. During the eruption a large quantity of magma erupted from beneath the Mount Katmai area, resulting in the formation of a 2 km wide, funnel-shaped vent and the collapse of Mount Katmai's summit, creating a 600 m deep, 3 by 4 km caldera.

The eruption ended with the extrusion of a lava dome of rhyolite that plugged the vent. The 90 m high and 360 m wide dome it created forms what is now referred to as Novarupta.

More information: Geology

Despite the magnitude of the eruption, no deaths directly resulted. Eye witness accounts from people located downwind in the path of a thick ash cloud describe the gradual lowering of visibility to next to nothing. Ash threatened to contaminate drinking water and decimate food resources, but the native Alaskans were aided in their survival by traditional knowledge passed down through generations from previous eruptions. However, the native villages experiencing the heaviest ash falls were abandoned and the inhabitants relocated. The eruption is said to have had an effect on the level of the Nile.

Pyroclastic ash flow from the eruption formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, named by botanist Robert F. Griggs, who explored the volcano's aftermath for the National Geographic Society in 1916.

The eruption that formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is one of the few in recorded history to have produced welded tuff, producing numerous fumaroles that persisted for 15 years.

Established as a National Park & Preserve in 1980, Katmai is located on the Alaska Peninsula, across from Kodiak Island, with headquarters in nearby King Salmon, about 470 km southwest of Anchorage.

The area was originally designated a National Monument in 1918 to protect the area around the 1912 eruption of Novarupta and the 104 km2, 30 to 210 m deep, pyroclastic flow of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

More information: Wired

The thing that struck me most about the Mount St. Helens

project was not the devastation of the eruption,

but the logging industry -the earth 

transformed on that scale by humans.

David Maisel