Medvezhy Island (russian: Медвежий остров, ''Medvezhy Ostrov'') is a long, narrow island in the northwestern
Sea of Okhotsk, the westernmost of the
Shantar Islands. It lies on the eastern side of
Uda Gulf. It is 12.9 km (8 mi) long.
[United States. (1918). ''Asiatic Pilot, Volume 1: East coast of Siberia, Sakhalin Island and Chosen''. Washington: Hydrographic Office.] It is separated from the mainland by Shevchenko Straight.
History
Between 1855 and 1874,
American whaleship
A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales.
Terminology
The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Japa ...
s anchored under Medvezhy to obtain shelter from storms and retrieve wood. They also used it as a staging point to send out smaller
whaleboat
A whaleboat is a type of open boat that was used for catching whales, or a boat of similar design that retained the name when used for a different purpose. Some whaleboats were used from whaling ships. Other whaleboats would operate from the sh ...
s to capture
bowhead whales in
Uda and
Tugur Bays. They called it Elbow Island.
On the night of 11 October 1858, the bark ''
Phoenix
Phoenix most often refers to:
* Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore
* Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States
Phoenix may also refer to:
Mythology
Greek mythological figures
* Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...
'' (323 tons), of
Nantucket, under Captain Bethuel Handy, of
Cotuit
Cotuit ( ) is one of the villages of the Town of Barnstable on Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. Located on a peninsula on the south side of Barnstable about midway between Falmouth and Hyannis, Cotuit is bounded by t ...
, was wrecked on the west side of the island during a gale. Captain Handy and about a dozen men later crossed the frozen Shevchenko Strait and traveled along the coast to Chumikan at the mouth of the Uda River where native hunters took them inland to the Russian military settlement of Udskoye, where they spent the winter;
while the first mate Charles Chester and the rest of the crew spent the winter in a hut of wood and sails they had built on Medvezhy. In June 1859, the men at Udskoye traveled to the mouth of the
Uda River Uda or UDA may refer to:
UDA
* UD Almería, a Spanish football club
* Unión Deportivo Ascensión, a Peruvian football club
* Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland
* Union des artistes, a Quebec act ...
, where they were rescued by the ship ''Java''; the rest of the crew on Medvezhy were saved by other ships.
[''Daily Alta California'' (Vol. 11, Nos. 332-335, Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 1859).]
References
Shantar Islands
Shipwrecks in the Sea of Okhotsk
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