Aunt Phil's Trunk
Capt. James Cook embarked on his voyage to explore Alaska as the Declaration of Independence was being signed in 1776.
While the First Continental Congress presented its Declaration of Rights and Grievances to King George III in 1774, the Spanish government ordered Juan José Pérez to explore the west coast of America to latitude 60 degrees, "but not to disturb the Russians."
The Russians were already in Alaska. Emilian Bassov, a sergeant of the military company of lower Kamchatka, and Andrei Serebrennikov, a merchant from Moscow, had formed a partnership in 1743 to hunt for sea otter along the Aleutian Chain. In 1745, more Russians landed at Agati and Attu. By 1758, the year before Maj. Gen. James Wolfe captured Quebec, a Turinsk merchant named Stepan Glottof had made it as far as Umnak and Unalaska in search of fur.
By 1763, the year that King George III prohibited colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, Glottof had reached Kodiak, running into stiff fighting from the fierce Koniags. And about the time the colonists were writhing under the Stamp and the Townsend acts levying duties on paper, glass, paint and tea, the Russian brigantine Chichagof was planning to explore Bering Straits.
The Boston Tea Party occurred the year before Pérez sailed. He managed to escape confrontation with the Russians, for his voyage was far to the south of theirs. In 1775, when the battle of Lexington and Concord started the Revolutionary War, Pérez discovered Mount Edgecumbe and Shelikof Bay.
As the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, another explorer headed north. Just eight days after the signing of the famous document, Capt. James Cook sailed from England on his epic voyage. And as Cook lay at anchor in Portsmouth harbor at the beginning of his adventure, three transports also prepared to sail, loaded with English and Hessian troops to suppress the American rebels. Cook's vessels, however, were exempt from capture by the enemy by special convention because of the international benefits expected from his expedition to discover the Northwest Passage.
English and other European explorers, as well as Russian fur traders, gathered knowledge of Alaska during the Revolutionary War years. While the Philadelphia Convention drew up the Constitution-later ratified by all 13 states -"Englishmen under the English flag, Englishmen under the Portuguese flag, Spanish and Russians were cruising around, often within a few miles of one another, taking possession for one nation or the other of all the lands in sight," according to Hubert Howe Bancroft in "History of Alaska, 1730-1885."
As the United States struggled to become a nation after throwing off the yoke of colonialism, Alaska, which later became its northernmost state, was being explored, exploited, and taken over by western nations. Its colonization began just about the time the colonization of the United States came to an end.
This column features tidbits found while researching Alaska's colorful past for Aunt Phil's Trunk, a five-book Alaska history series written by Laurel Downing Bill and her late aunt, Phyllis Downing Carlson. The books are available at bookstores and gift shops throughout Alaska, as well as online at http://www.auntphilstrunk.com.
