Providence Bay, Siberia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Emma Harbor, Plover Bay, and Ureliki redirect here
Providence Bay is a fjord

Fjord

Geologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:A fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Glacial melting is accompanied by rebound of Earth's crust as the ice...

in the southern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula

Chukchi Peninsula

The Chukchi Peninsula, Chukotka Peninsula or Chukotski Peninsula , at about 66° N 172° W, is the northeastern extremity of Asia. Its eastern end is at Cape Dezhnev near the village of Uelen. It is bordered by the Chukchi Sea to the north, the Bering Sea to the south, and the Bering Strait to the...

of northeastern Siberia. It was a popular rendezvous, wintering spot, and provisioning spot for whalers and traders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emma Harbor (now Komsomolskaya Bay) is a large sheltered bay in the eastern shore of Providence Bay. Provideniya

Provideniya

Provideniya , is an urban-type settlement situated on Komsomolskaya Bay, part of Provideniya Bay in the northeastern part of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is located across the Bering Strait from Alaska, and is very close to the International Date Line. The town is served by Provideniya...

and Ureliki settlements and Provideniya Bay Airport

Provideniya Bay Airport

Provideniya Bay Airport is a small airport in Chukotka, Russia located 3 km southwest of Provideniya. It services primarily small transport aircraft. A concrete apron contains four parking spaces...

stand on the Komsomolskaya Bay. Plover Bay in English sources sometimes refers specifically to the anchorage behind Napkum Spit within Providence Bay (also called Port Providence) but was commonly used as a synonym for Providence Bay; Russian 19th century sources used the term for an anchorage within Providence Bay.

Plover Bay takes its name from HMS Plover, a British ship which overwintered in Emma Harbor in 1848-1849. HMS Plover with captain Thomas E. L. Moore left Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...

in January 1848 for the Bering Sea

Bering Sea

The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves....

to find the lost Franklin Expedition

Franklin's lost expedition

Franklin's lost expedition was a doomed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845. A Royal Navy officer and experienced explorer, Franklin had served on three previous Arctic expeditions, the latter two as commanding officer...

. On October 17, 1848 Moore anchored his ship in a safe harbor; he is given credit for the name Providence Bay and for the first successful wintering of a ship in Bering Sea region. Lieutenant William Hulme Hooper

William Hulme Hooper

Lt. William Hulme Hooper served on the HMS Plover under Commander T.E.L. Moore, which sailed out of Plymouth, England in 1848 on a mission to find the lost remains of John Franklin's Northwest Passage Expedition of 1845...

of the Plover attributes the name Port Emma (or Emma's Harbor) to Captain Moore but provides no explanation of the choice of name.

Geography

The entrance to Providence bay is delineated by Mys Lysaya Golova (East Head, Baldhead Point) on the east and by Mys Lesovskogo on the west. Mys Lysaya Golova is about 7 miles (11.3 km) west-northwest of Cape Chukotski. Providence Bay is about 8 km wide at its mouth and 34 km long (measured along the midline). It is about 4 km wide through much of its length below Emma Harbor, and about 2.5 km wide just above the juncture. The lower part of the bay runs roughly northeast, while the upper part (above the branch shown as Ked Bay) dog-legs north and is about 2 km wide. Depth soundings (USCGS 1928) show 19 fathoms (34.7 m) at the entrance and a maximum depth of 82 fathoms (150 m). A more recent chart (USCS 2000) shows depths of 10 to 11 fathom (18.3 to 20.1 m) at the entrance.

Emma Harbor has been described as "the best harbor on the Asiatic coast north of Petropavlosk...." and is currently the only important harbor on Providence Bay. It is a fjord in its own right, about 14 km from the mouth of Providence Bay and about 1.5 x 6 km in extent with depths shown from 6 to 15 fathom (11 to 27.4 m). Besides Emma Harbor there are three or four other sheltered anchorages within Providence Bay that are named by early writers: Port Providence, Cache Bay (also Ked Bay or Cash Cove), Telegraph Harbor, and Snug Harbor. Port Providence (now Buhkta Slavyanka or Reid Plover) is the anchorage behind Plover Spit, which provides a natural breakwater. It currently serves as the quarantine and hazardous cargo anchorage for Provideniya. Plover Spit is called Napkum Spit in a 1869 account; it projects into the bay from the eastern shore about 8 km from the mouth of the fjord. It has its origin in the moraine left by the glacier that carved the fjord. The tip of the spit is Mys Gaydamak. Cache bay is the cove in the eastern shore of the fjord, north of Emma Harbor. Snug Harbor is located near the head of the bay, behind Whale Island. Telegraph Harbor is named for the Western Union Telegraph Expedition of 1866-1867 which wintered there (remains of Western Union cabin were reportedly still standing in 1960). It may be the same as Snug Harbor. The US Coast Survey chart shows the entire upper portion of the fjord as Vsadnik Bay. The Asiatic Pilot of 1909 refers to Vladimir Bay and Cache Bay, separated by Popov point, and notes that the bays are shallower above this point.

Plover Spit is site of an abandoned Eskimo village with characteristic semi-underground houses, a more recent village of yaranga

Yaranga

A Yaranga is a tent-like traditional mobile home of some nomadic Northern indigenous peoples of Russia, such as Chukchi and Siberian Yupik.A Yaranga is a cone-shaped or rounded reindeer-hide tent. It is built of a light wooden frame covered with reindeer skins or canvas sewn together.The word...

s, and one of the 1869 eclipse observatories (see below). The US Coast Survey charts show the village at the base of the spit as Rirak, and starting in 1928 show a village Uredlak on the south shore of Emma Harbor The Soviet-era village of Plover was probably located on the mainland near the spit; it was damaged by a landslide and the inhabitants (including some relocated from Ureliki) were relocated to Provideniya. Nasskatulok, a Yupik village at the head of Plover Bay was reported by Aurel Krause

Aurel Krause

Aurel Krause was a German geographer known today for his early ethnography of the Tlingit Indians of southeast Alaska, published in 1885....

(observed 1881) but not mentioned by Waldemar Bogoras (ca. 1898) There were also villages on the coast. Aiwan (Avan), a Yupik

Siberian Yupik

Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits, are indigenous people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far northeast of the Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Central Siberian Yupik , a Yupik language of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages.They were also...

village, lay east of the bay between the sea and a freshwater lake (Lake Istikhed, from English "East Head"; called Lake Moore in some English-language sources ). It was reportedly abandoned in 1942 due to concern it could be hit by Soviet Navy shells; another source has it evacuated in 1941 to make way for coast-defense artillery; yet another source has it occupied into the 1950s. The USCGS chart shows a village Akatlak just west of the mouth of the bay.

History

Providence Bay and Emma Harbor do not appear on maps before 1850; it is thought they were visited by whalers in the period 1845-48 just prior to the Plover's visit. Providence Bay was probably visited by Russian explorer Kurbat Ivanov

Kurbat Ivanov

Kurbat Afanasyevich Ivanov was among the greatest Cossack explorers of Siberia. He was the first Russian to discover Lake Baikal, and to create the first map of the Russian Far East...

in 1660 but his explorations of the Gulf of Anadyr

Gulf of Anadyr

The Gulf of Anadyr, or Anadyr Bay , is a large bay on the Bering Sea in far northeast Siberia.-Location:The bay is roughly rectangular and opens to the southeast. The corners are Cape Navarin , Anadyr Estuary, Kresta Bay and Cape Chukotsky on the Chukchi Peninsula...

were not widely reported. Golden Gate, a ship of the Russian–American Telegraph Expedition, visited Plover Bay in September 1865, having just missed encounter with "the famed and dreaded" CSS Shenandoah

CSS Shenandoah

CSS Shenandoah, formerly Sea King, was an iron-framed, teak-planked, full rigged ship, with auxiliary steam power, captained by Commander James Waddell, Confederate States Navy, a North Carolinian with twenty years' service in the United States Navy.During 12½ months of 1864–1865 the ship...

. Frederick Whymper

Frederick Whymper

Frederick Whymper was a British artist and explorer.Whymper was born in London in 1838, the eldest son of Elizabeth Whitworth Claridge and Josiah Wood Whymper, a celebrated wood-engraver and artist...

, member of this expedition, reported that by this time "it was no uncommon thing to find several whaling

Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

vessels lying inside in summer". Whymper (and later John Muir

John Muir

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...

) described the mountains around Plover Bay as "composed of an infinite number of fragments split up by action of frost... innumerable and many-coloured lichen

Lichen

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

s and moss

Moss

Mosses are small, soft plants that are typically 1–10 cm tall, though some species are much larger. They commonly grow close together in clumps or mats in damp or shady locations. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems...

es are the only vegetation to be seen, except on a patch of open green country near Emma Harbour, where domesticated reindeer

Reindeer

The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...

graze."

The area around Providence Bay provided good whaling in the early days, particularly in the fall; this may account for some of its popularity as a wintering spot. In 1860, the Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled in favor of eight seamen of the whaling brig Wailua of Honolulu which wintered in PLover Bay 1858-9 after staying too late into the fall. Captain Lass maintained he had become icebound unintentionally having entered the bay to take on water and remained because of the good whaling. The whaling in this instance was done from boats operating from the harbor, where the ship remained moored. The crew members alleged that Lass had planned on overwintering, subjecting them to hardship and extending their service in violation of their contract. The court ruled for the seamen, holding that although intention was not proved, Captain Lass's actions amounted to recklessness. Whymper describes witnessing the pursuit and processing of whales within the bay in 1866. In 1871, the whaling bark Oriole, damaged by ice, limped or was towed into Plover Bay to attempt repairs. According to John Spears colorful account, Captain Hayes had taken his ship through the ice to reach open water off the Siberian coast, hoping to have the large schools of whales near Plover Bay to himself, but the ship hit a large ice floe. The Oriole was subsequently abandoned in the bay; in Spears account, she was tipped on her side for repairs when a hatch gave way, flooding and sinking the ship in minutes. By 1880, a visitor on the schooner Yukon found the village on the spit much reduced; whales were no longer abundant and many residents had moved west in search of better hunting. The village dogs had all died due to lack of food.

In 1875 Russian clipper

Clipper

A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century that had three or more masts and a square rig. They were generally narrow for their length, could carry limited bulk freight, small by later 19th century standards, and had a large total sail area...

Gaydamak under command of Sergey Tyrtov anchored in Providence Bay. Tyrtov, ordered to enforce state monopoly on coastal trading, distributed to local Chukchis printed leaflets addressed to foreign merchants. He then headed north to Saint Lawrence Bay where he intercepted Timandra, an American merchant boat involved in trading walrus ivory

Walrus ivory

Walrus tusk ivory comes from two modified upper canines. The tusks of a Pacific walrus may attain a length of one meter. Walrus teeth are also commercially carved and traded. The average walrus tooth has a rounded, irregular peg shape and is approximately 5cm in length.The tip of a walrus tusk has...

for alcohol. In 1876 the mission was continued by captain Novosilsky on board of Vsadnik. Vsadnik anchored in Plover Bay July 5, 1876, performed hydrographic survey

Hydrographic survey

Hydrographic survey is the science of measurement and description of features which affect maritime navigation, marine construction, dredging, offshore oil exploration/drilling and related disciplines. Strong emphasis is placed on soundings, shorelines, tides, currents, sea floor and submerged...

of the area and then headed north; she passed Bering Strait

Bering Strait

The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...

, turned west, reaching Cape Shmidt (then Cape Severny, or North Cape in English usage) and safely returned to base. Vsadnik did not meet any merchant boats, but found evidence of recent trading with America (including unfinished vodka

Vodka

Vodka , is a distilled beverage. It is composed primarily of water and ethanol with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits....

barrels) in Chukchi huts.

In 1881 Russian Strelok anchored in Providence Bay. Strelok, apart from surveys and border control, was tasked with rescuing crews of two missing American whaling

Whaling

boats, however, soon the crew of American schooner

Schooner

A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....

Handy told Russians that one of the missing boats sank with no survivors; the other crew was already safe in San Francisco. Instead, Strelok found and resupplied the German scientific expedition of Aurel Krause

Aurel Krause

Aurel Krause was a German geographer known today for his early ethnography of the Tlingit Indians of southeast Alaska, published in 1885....

. At Saint Lawrence Bay Strelok met USS Rodgers

USS Rodgers (1879)

USS Rodgers was a steamship in the United States Navy acquired to search for Jeannette in 1881.On 3 March 1881, Congress, besieged by constituents as well as government agencies, appropriated $175,000 "to enable the Secretary of the Navy to charter, or purchase, equip, and supply a vessel for the...

; both ships headed north to Bering Strait but soon separated. Strelok reached Cape Dezhnev

Cape Dezhnev

Cape Dezhnyov or Cape Dezhnev is a cape that forms the eastmost mainland point of Eurasia. It is located on the Chukchi Peninsula in the very thinly populated Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of Russia. This cape is located between the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea, across from Cape Prince of Wales in...

(then Cape Vostochny) and turned back while Rodgers reached Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. Wrangel Island lies astride the 180° meridian. The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island as well as the Chukchi Peninsula on the Russian mainland...

. In the same year, the U.S. revenue cutter Corwin
USRC Thomas Corwin (1876)
The Thomas Corwin was a United States Revenue Cutter and subsequently a merchant vessel. These two very different roles both centered on Alaska and the Bering Sea...

, also searching for the lost whalers and for the missing US exploration vessel USS Jeannette
USS Jeannette (1878)
The first USS Jeannette was originally HMS Pandora, a Philomel-class gunvessel of the Royal Navy, and was purchased in 1875 by Sir Allen Young for his arctic voyages in 1875-1876. The ship was purchased in 1878 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald; and renamed Jeannette...

took on coal at Plover Bay. This was Russian government coal, piled on the bank; there is no indication the coaling station had any resident staff. John Muir, aboard the Corwin as naturalist, took advantage of these stops to make geological observations in the mountains east of the fjord

An article from 1879 quotes a letter from William Healey Dall, referring in passing to "the white men's trading station at Plover Bay". It is not clear whether Dall meant an established trading post, or simply a rendezvous. As late as 1880, the only settlement mentioned by an anonymous visitor on the USC&GS

U.S. National Geodetic Survey

National Geodetic Survey, formerly called the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey , is a United States federal agency that defines and manages a national coordinate system, providing the foundation for transportation and communication; mapping and charting; and a large number of applications of science...

schooner Yukon

USC&GS Yukon (1873)

USC&GS Yukon was a schooner that served as a survey ship in the United States Coast Survey from 1873 to 1878 and in its successor agency the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1878 to 1894...

was a native village. The Northeastern Siberian Company had a trading station, called Vladimir, on Plover Bay from at latest 1903 until about 1910. In 1908 the steamer Corwin unloaded cargo at Vladimir Station; this was the former revenue cutter that carried Muir in 1881. By 1913 Emma Harbor was the home of baron Kleist, the Russian administrator for Kamchatka uezd, of a district judge, and of an Estonian trader, Bally Thompson, who maintained a store there. Baron Kleist's house, built of squared logs with curlicue trim cut from planks, stood on the eastern shore of the bay between two outbuildings. It was put up about 1909 at a cost of about $15,000, with materials brought up from Vladivostok.
Emma Harbor and Providence Bay were favored sites for scientific observers. These included investigators from the US Naval Observatory attempting to observe the 1869 solar eclipse, several ornithological collectors, geologists, and the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (geomagnetic observations) in 1921. The Harriman Alaska Expedition

Harriman Alaska Expedition

In 1899, wealthy railroad magnate Edward Harriman arranged for a maritime expedition to Alaska. Harriman brought with him an elite community of scientists, artists, photographers, and naturalists to explore and document the Alaskan coast...

visited there in July 1899 and produced many good photographs illustrating topography and native life. John Muir noted that by 1899 there were around fifty Chukchis living in a dozen huts covered with walrus hide, already "spoiled by the contact with civilization of the whaler seamen". John Burroughs

John Burroughs

John Burroughs was an American naturalist and essayist important in the evolution of the U.S. conservation movement. According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress,...

noted that "they were not shy of our cameras and freely admitted us to the greasy and smoky interiors of their dwellings" and "some of the natives showed a strain of European blood."

In 1921, there were reported efforts by Japan to assert control of the area, and the strategic importance of the bay was noted by an American writer . Two Soviet-era settlements, Provideniya

Provideniya

and Ureliki, were built on Komsomolskaya Bay in the 20th century, and the bay was used as a naval harbor. It was the major supply point for the Chukotka

Chukotka Autonomous Okrug

Chukotka Autonomous Okrug , or Chukotka , is a federal subject of Russia located in the Russian Far East.Chukotka has a population of 53,824 according to the 2002 Census, and a surface area of . The principal town and the administrative center is Anadyr...

region during WWII. After the breakup of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

five border patrol boats stationed in Provideniya stayed idle at the port for three years due to lack of fuel. Ureliki, a military city, is reportedly now abandoned, but the adjacent Provideniya Bay Airport

Provideniya Bay Airport

Provideniya Bay Airport is a small airport in Chukotka, Russia located 3 km southwest of Provideniya. It services primarily small transport aircraft. A concrete apron contains four parking spaces...

remains.

External links

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Geography

History

See also

External links