From gunboat to barge to wreck: The story of the Politkofsky in early American Alaska

Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

In old Alaska, ships were not allowed a single life. They were reborn and repurposed. If a hull was vaguely seaworthy, back onto the water it would go. On several occasions, overambitious companies pressed even decrepit hulls back into service, such was the value and relative rarity of boats. Repurposed ships also abound, like the former Cape Lynch that is now a home on the Homer Spit.

As the Seattle Times offered in 1939, “In the hulks of old ships ... which decades ago were proud passenger steamers, freighters, and towboats, can be read much of the history of Puget Sound and Alaska.” Few ships better illustrate the course of 19th-century Alaska history than the Politkofsky, the Russian gunboat turned into a Klondike gold rush-era barge.

The Politkofsky was a 129-foot-long sidewheel paddle steamer built by the Russian American Co., or RAC, at Sitka, the last ship built by the Russians during their occupancy of Alaska. Completed in 1865, the gunboat was primarily made of locally sourced materials, including hand-hewn planks of yellow cedar fastened together with large copper spikes. Its namesake was RAC board of directors chairman General-Lieutenant Vladimir Gavrilovich Politkovskii.

There is no known evidence of its use against Alaska Natives, particularly local Tlingit. Still, the armed steamer was surely an unwelcome and threatening presence. Its cannons were a reminder of past conflicts, as during the 1804 Battle of Sitka, and presaged American bombardments, at Kake, old Wrangell, and Angoon in 1869, 1869, and 1882, respectively.

The engine was salvaged from another ship and was, by the 1860s, more than 20 years old and outdated. The Politkofsky was, therefore, underpowered, slow, clumsy and unfit for open water. During her brief time under Russian control, she spent most of her time at Sitka, acting as a barge and tug. In this way, her boiler catastrophically failed while towing another ship out to sea in November 1866. A replacement boiler was ordered but had not yet arrived by the Oct. 18, 1867 ceremony in Sitka that transferred Alaska to the United States. Thus, the Politkofsky was perhaps on-site for the occasion though the documentation is uncertain.

Without Alaska, the RAC divested itself of as many of its assets as possible and at bargain prices. In January 1868, Americans Hayward Hutchinson and Abraham Hirsch bought the Politkofsky. The steamer was then sold to another Hutchinson firm that eventually became the Alaska Commercial Co. On April 10, 1868, the former gunboat departed Sitka for San Francisco, where it would be refitted for commercial use.

As the ship wound its way south down the coast, it stopped at Victoria, British Columbia. The ship clearly stood out among the other vessels in port. The local newspaper declared it “one of the most magnificent specimens of home-made marine architecture we have yet beheld,” except that they were being sarcastic. The anonymously authored article continued by noting the ship looked “as if she was thrown together after dark ... with stone tools.” They also said, “We hear she is to be rebuilt. She needs it.”

Her copper boilers were sold for more than the entire ship had cost Hutchinson and Hirsch. Repaired and partially rebuilt, the steamer entered service in the Puget Sound area by April 1869. For more than 25 years, the Polly, as she was known there, hauled freight and passengers in the Pacific Northwest. Her shallow draft allowed her to reach more lumber mills than most ships of her size. From a Russian gunboat, she was now a lumber hauler. Further indignities would follow.

The Politkofsky’s standout feature was its massive bronze whistle that was, according to popular legend, manufactured in China and the loudest on the West Coast. It weighed 117 pounds and measured 37 inches in length. While the bell was likely installed in the Puget Sound, and thus after its tenure as a Russian gunboat, a 1909 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about the 1867 transfer ceremony claimed the whistle was a notable participant. “Then, from the throat of the huge glistening whistle of dark Chinese bronze came a roaring bellow that drowned out the barking of the guns and echoed and reverberated through the hills behind the town,” declared the possibly apocryphal article. Still, the call of its whistle was a familiar sound in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1896, the end seemingly came for the battered, obsolete steamer. The owners stripped the cannons and engine; the ship was beached and abandoned. It would have been forgotten, just another rotting hulk, if not for the Klondike gold rush.

On July 14, 1897, the SS Excelsior landed at San Francisco with a cargo of prospectors heavily laden with gold from the Klondike. On July 17, 1897, the SS Portland reached Seattle with a similar story and load. Gold rush fever spread like lightning across the country, and the West Coast was inundated with fortune hunters impatient for their ride north, their chance at the goldfields. However, there were not enough ships to fill the transportation demands.

Up and down the coast, ships were converted from other uses or resurrected. The most notable reclamation product was the Eliza Anderson, another outdated, abandoned sidewheeler. At the beginning of 1897, the beached Eliza Anderson had been converted into a roadhouse, and it had been years since it last floated. Nothing is as seductive as money offered freely by fools, so the ship was quickly repainted and very lightly repaired. As the Dalles Daily Chronicle noted, “She was in the boneyard for a dozen years and lay at the bottoms of the Sound for a year or two, a sunken wreck; but she is good enough for the gold-seekers,” a definite insult toward fortune hunters.

But the Eliza Anderson would not sail for Alaska alone. Like a thief pulled back in for one more job, the Politkofsky returned to service after only one year in retirement. Still bereft of propulsion, the ship was converted into a coal barge, a supply ship for a doomed flotilla.

[The last voyage of the Eliza Anderson: A gold rush tale of the worst ship to ever sail to Alaska]

On Aug. 10, 1897, the Eliza Anderson, Politkofsky, and several other motley vessels left Seattle for St. Michael, where their passengers would board riverboats to travel up the Yukon River to the Klondike. A tug, the Richard Holyoke, towed the Politkofsky and two other underpowered ships.

The Eliza Anderson only made it as far as Dutch Harbor, where it was left to rot, abandoned by passengers and crew. The Politkofsky survived its return to Alaska but only barely. The former gunboat, now barge, was sold to the North American Transportation and Trading Co., or NAT&T, and briefly used to carry goods from larger ships to shore at St. Michael. Within a year, the ship had proven to be more trouble than it was worth, and the NAT&T left the ship derelict in 1898. It washed onto the shore, where scavengers gathered the copper spikes until a 1915 storm demolished the portions of the ship above water.

And yet, the story of the Politkofsky did not so much end as change, another evolution in the ship’s history. It became a legend. A Russian gunboat, made in Alaska, and serving in the gold rush had some romantic appeal, no matter how gritty the reality. Tales of “The Polly” circulated for decades, an easy way to mix very different eras of Alaska into one story.

Then there are the artifacts, polished into objects of desire by those same legends. Several of the ship’s cannons still exist, including one in the collection at the Alaska State Museum. The celebrated whistle also survived. It was used to inaugurate two world fairs, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, both in Seattle. Today, it is in the collection of the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. Many of the copper spikes are scattered in institutions across the country, including the Museum of the North in Fairbanks. Many more are in private hands and even show up on places like eBay, a Buy It Now button away from owning a piece of Alaska history.

Key sources:

Becker, Ethel Anderson. Here Comes the Polly: A Biography of a Russian Built Gunboat. Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1971.

Burwell, Michael. “The Steamer Politkofsky: The Chronicle of a Russian-American Tug.” The Sea Chest 32 (1999): 75-179.

“A Splendid Specimen.” [Victoria, BC] British Colonist, April 22, 1868, 3.

“Some Wild Day-Dreams.” Dalles Daily Chronicle, August 11, 1897, 2.