Simpson and McIntyre
A Sailing ship in a bottle, from early 1900’s
So, this is a continuation of the last post, that is https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/mysterious-mcintyre/ It sure would be fun to crack this mystery and figure out who the man was who accompanied Sir George Simpson on his journey around the world in summer 1842. However, we have nothing but his last name and it is not in any way an uncommon Scottish name.
So to bring you back to the place where I ended the last post: Simpson and McIntyre are just approaching Fort Stikine in the Cowlitz (under tow by the Russian steamer), when Simpson notices that both the Russian flag, and that of the HBC, are flying at half mast above the fort:
while on landing about seven [p.m.], my worst fears were realized by hearing of the tragical end of Mr. John McLoughlin Jr., the gentleman recently in charge. On the night of the twentieth a dispute had arisen in the fort while some of the men, as I was grieved to hear, were in a state of intoxication; and several shots were fired, by one of which Mr. McLoughlin fell.
His story continues: “From the depositions of the men, I ascertained beyond a doubt, that a Canadian of the name of Urbain Heroux had discharged the fatal shot. How to bring the fellow to justice, that was the question. In my opinion, the jurisdiction of Canada, as established by 43 Geo. 3, ch. 138, and 1 & 2 Geo. 4, ch. 66, did not extend to Russian America; and on the other hand, I knew that the Russians had no court of criminal jurisdiction in American, while, at the same time, I was by no means certain, that even if they had such a tribunal, they would take any cognizance of a crime that did not concern them. Under these circumstances, I determined to take Heroux with me to Sitka, a step which, besides being…a lesser evil than letting him go free, appeared to offer the only chance of making the man atone, in some degree, for his offence.” Simpson placed Fort Stikine under the charge of Charles Dodd, chief mate of the Cowlitz, and said he “was a young man in whom I had much confidence, giving him, as assistant, one [George] Blenkinsop, who though merely a common sailor, was of regular habits, and possessed a good education.” Dodd was at this time 34 years old, and Blenkinsop only 19. Neither of them had any HBC experience at all: they were seamen!
The Cowlitz weighed anchor and departed Fort Stikine’s anchorage on Thursday, April 28, 1842, and sailed straight for Sitka. “During our voyage a good deal of snow fell; and the weather was altogether very disagreeable, with a heavy sea on.” The Cowlitz was being towed to Sitka by the Russian steamer, who on this occasion travelled at six or seven knots when she had the wind in her favour. (James Douglas said the Russian steamer that existed in 1840 did not travel as fast as the steamer Beaver, and the HBC steamer only made five miles an hour, if that!) The next thing I have to say is important to the story:
I shall hereafter adopt the Russian calendar, while the English reader can, of course, rectify any date merely by adding twelve days. We reached Sitka in the morning on Sunday, the eighteenth of April being, according to the reckoning of the Cowlitz, Saturday the thirtieth.
Got it? Add 12 days to the Russian dates (which are the dates that will be used for the next while) and you will get the English date. Simpson’s journey continues, and I am omitting a great deal of it. One month later, on Sunday, May 9, by the Russian calendar, Simpson boarded the ship, Alexander, and slept on board that night. At last the ship raised its anchor, and they departed on what seems to be May 10 [May 22], at one o’clock.
During the journey west, the ship sailed past the string of islands we call the Aleutian Islands. Simpson read Wrangell’s Siberian Voyages, which must somehow have been translated to English for him unless he read it with the help of a Russian interpreter. Interestingly, there actually seems to be a published book that could be what Simpson read: with author Ferdinand Petrovich Von Wrangell, titled: Indians of Upper California: Wrangell’s trip through the Russian River Valley, 1834. (You will remember that Simpson is going blind.) Anyway, it seems that in the summer of 1830, Wrangell made a long and difficult journey across Siberia accompanied by his wife and infant daughter. He crossed the North Pacific to New Archangel (Sitka); and made his way down the coast (by ship, perhaps?) to Fort Ross, a place that first appears on a French chart published in 1842 by Eugene Duflot de Mofras. Duflot de Mofras did visit the Columbia River and Fort Vancouver in 1842, before sailing south in an HBC ship to San Francisco Bay.
On Saturday, the twelfth of June [Russian calendar], we were at our nearest to Kamschatka.
It will be the 24th of June, by the British calendar, when they approached the Kamchatka Peninsula–the big broad point of land that points down from the easternmost section of Siberia, and divides the Bering Sea from the Sea of Okhotsk to the west. To reach that point, the Russian ship had sailed west from Sitka, across the massive Gulf of Alaska and then following the Aleutian Islands in their big swoop toward the west. This is not a simple sailing journey across a strait, from the western-most point of Alaska to the easternmost point of Siberia! This is a big sailing journey west, to the Kamshatka Peninsula and into the enclosed waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, both of which lie in a straight line north of Japan.
Simpson’s journal continues:
The preceding week had been productive of much variety in the shape of weather, every twelve hours, in fact, having had their own rule in this matter. Calms and winds of every name of of almost every degree of force were most curiously interwoven, even the strongest breezes not living long enough to raise a sea; and though the fog was pretty constant, yet observations were got almost every day.
On Sunday, the thirteenth of June [June 25, British calendar], having then been twenty-seven days out from New Archangel [Sitka], we entered the Sea of Ochotsk, passing through its breastwork of the Kurile Islands by a strait of about twenty miles in width. Though, at first sight, such a passage appears to be broad enough, more particularly as it is free from currents and rocks, yet its navigation is rendered dangerous by the almost constant fogs which are produced by the nearly direct collision between the warm flood, already mentioned, from the south, and the cold waters of the Sea of Ochotsk. These fogs are often so dense, as not only to render observations impracticable, but even to prevent one from seeing to the distance of a hundred yards. But, if the former evil be incurable, the latter, as we had an opportunity of perceiving, is not altogether without its remedy. An Aleutian on board, with the characteristic sharpness of vision of his race, discerned land at a distance of several miles through a mist as impervious to ordinary eyes, as a solid wall; and Captain Kadnikoff, by firing a gun now and then, and catching its echo, was able to ascertain within limits sufficiently accurate to be very useful, both the direction and the distance of the nearest shore.
Simpson described the Kurile Islands.”The Kuriles appear to be principally of volcanic origin; they are, moreover, so rugged and sterile as to look in all respects like a continuation of Kamschatka. Nor is the climate, as indeed one may expect from the perpetual fogs, superior to the soil. Here we were in the latitude of Paris and on the hot side of midsummer, while the high grounds were covered with snow, and even the low grounds exhibited scarcely a symptom of vegetation.” Simpson says that “In consequence of the thickness of the weather in this neighbourhood, vessels have occasionally been obliged, after beating about until they could beat about no longer, to return to Sitka without breaking bulk.” He describes the Sea of Okhotsk:
The Sea of Ochotsk is completely land-locked, being, in this respect as well as in size and general situation, not unlike Hudson’s Bay.The waters are shallow, not exceeding, about fifty miles from land, an equal number of fathoms, and rarely giving even in the centre, above four times the depth just mentioned. As the height of land nearly all round is at an inconsiderable distance, the only river of any magnitude that flows into this vast inlet, is the Amoor…
They are not sailing for the Amoor River, however, but for the rivers that flow through the town of Ochotsk, to the north. They are sailing in June: in BC at least June is not a good time to be sailing along the west coast because of the fogs from the warming land and the cold sea air. As you will see below, however, the timing of this sailing journey was necessary: they could not have successfully made it to Okhotsk if they had sailed earlier in the summer.
At length, on the seventeenth [June] [British calendar: June 29], about nine in the morning, our Aleutian friend, who had for several hours been looking from the masthead, raised the joyful shout of “land.” In about an hour and a half the outline of a range of hills became visible even to unpractised eyes; and though the prospect was dismal enough in the distance, I yet hailed with joy and thankfulness this first glimpse of Asia, which was, by comparison, to me the threshold of my home after all my doubling and turning on the Pacific to the extent of fully half the circumference of the globe.
In this last sentence he is speaking of his 1841 journeys from the Columbia River north to Sitka and return, then (in 1842) to San Francisco, to the Sandwich Islands and on to Sitka, then Fort Durham and Fort Stikine, back to Sitka, and on to Russia. It is quite a distance, but he may exaggerating the distance a little, as he almost always does.
As soon as we were certain that there was no mistake, all hands in the cabin proceeded with nervous haste to pack up clothes, books, and papers, and all kinds of odds and ends, to shave, dress, and civilize, and so forth, when we had the inexpressible mortification to find that the coast was still cased in its wintry barrier. About one in the afternoon, we entered the broken ice, forcing our way so boldly among the floating masses as to strike heavily and injure the copper [sheathing]; but when we were within twenty miles of Cape Mariean we were obliged, to our great chagrin, to beat a retreat, and to await in patience the removal of the insuperable obstacle. This consummation, so devoutly to be wished could only be effected, within any reasonable time, by a strong wind, for very little good could be expected from the ordinary process of thawing in an atmosphere which had just compelled us to mount cloaks and great-coats.
What a tantalizing situation was ours! If we could not get across the continent before the close of summer, we should be doomed to spend the broken weather of the fall at Irkutsk, or perhaps some far worse place, till the snow should again render the roads passable; and we, of course, did our best to persuade ourselves that our present delay was sure to make all the difference. If we had been advancing at any pace, we should not have despaired; but to lie like a log in the water, and to feel that we might continue to do so till the temperature, that made ourselves shiver, should melt the enemy, that was “the unkindest cut of all.” We became, I am afraid very bad company to each other; and, as if to overdraw our patience entirely, we were, at this unfortunate crisis, reduced from fresh provisions to salt junk.
So Simpson just realized he might not make it all the way across Russia in the short summer season. It also sounds as if Simpson and McIntyre were snapping at each other. At last, on the 23rd of June [British: July 5?], “after we had been imprisoned nearly a week, we stood in, according to daily custom, towards the anchorage. As we advanced, we were delighted to meet a much greater quantity of floating ice than usual; and by availing ourselves of every lane of open water, we succeeded, by half past eight in the evening, in reaching our port, having gradually reduced our soundings till for some distance our keel was ploughing up the mud from the bottom.”
Ochotsk, now that we had reached it, appeared to have but little to recommend it to our favor, standing on a shingly beach, so low and flat as not to be distinguishable at our distance from the adjacent waters. We saw nothing but a number of wretched buildings, which seemed to be in the sea just as much as ourselves, while from their irregularity, they looked as if actually afloat; and even of the miserable prospect one of the characteristic fogs of this part of the world begrudged us fully the half.
As soon as we were in sight, we were boarded by a pilot, while a boat from the Russian American Company’s establishment came off, bringing the latest news both indigenous and exotic….
Our voyage of forty-four days had been somewhat longer than the average, for of late years the runs had generally ranged between five weeks and six weeks and a half. In earlier times, people used to deem themselves fortunate, if they accomplished the distance from Sitka to Ochotsk in three months.
The town named Okhotsk, which they had finally reached, stood on the junction of the Okhota and the Kuktuy Rivers that flow into the Sea of Okhotsk. However unimpressive as the town may have been, it was still the most important Russian base on the Pacific coast, because of its location at the end of the Siberian River routes to the Sea of Okhotsk. The headquarters of the Russian-American Company was here at Okhotsk. But it was a poor site for a city, partly because of the difficult track inland, and the fact that most of their food had to be imported because of the short growing season. The town was built on a low point of land between the two rivers. The harbour was ice free from May to November, but the Sea of Okhotsk was not (as you have seen.) There was no pastureland for the horses; the town frequently flooded when the ice melted; the harbour inside the spit was so shallow it was often little more than a mud-bath. In 1845, three years after Simpson visited the place, Okhotsk itself would be relocated southward, and the harbour and old town abandoned.
But it is the old town that Simpson and McIntyre visited in 1842, and it was the old town from which they will begin their journey west across Russia.
When the next post in this Russian Journal is written, it will appear here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/whatever-i-call-it/
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2026. All rights reserved.