The Mysterious Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov

by Carl Douglass

  Thus refreshed, the Vladivostok crews set sail for the Chagos Archipelago island of Diego Garcia. There was a brief storm lasting two days which poured several feet of water onto the ship, but rather than being a problem, it provided a cleansing for the ship, replenishment of the drinking water, and a respite from the humidity and heat for the next four days. When they sailed to a point where the islands could be seen by the naked eye, they noted that the archipelago consisted of seven atolls and over sixty islands. The largest of them was Diego Garcia.

  All the islands were very sparsely populated, and Diego Garcia was the most populous and active of all the islands. It was covered with coconut plantations and was a lush green against the background of the deep blue of the surrounding ocean. They replenished food, water, and coal–for cooking and heating–and took on additional cargo of sugar, live sea cucumbers for sale in Shanghai, coconuts, and dried coconut fiber for cordage. They purchased a small amount of textiles for future sale in the Irkutsk oblast. Boris permitted a two-day visit for the crew after he learned that Great Britain had abolished slavery in 1834.

  Diego Garcia had a most diverse and exotic population owing to its rich history. The natives there were Chagossian islanders of mixed African, South Indian, Portuguese, English, French, and Malay descent, and marooned lepers. They lived simple, spartan, lives in their isolated archipelago working in the coconut and sugar plantations, or in the fishing and small textile industries.

  From Diego Garcia, the Vladivostok Cargo Liner set a course for Colombo for a brief stop for fresh vegetables, then sailed uneventfully across the southern end of the Bay of Bengal, through the Strait of Malacca and into the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean with stops in Manilla in the Philippine Islands, Taiwan, Okinawa in the Japanese Ryukyu Islands, Pusan on the southern tip of the Chosŏn peninsula, and into the Sea of Japan where they hugged the east China coast. A squall—a harbinger of the hard winter to come–greeted them as they neared the entrance into Golden Horn harbor making them wait two extra and frustrating days before they could make berth in Vladivostok. It was the fifteenth of November, 1879

  The five-month voyage was a very lucrative venture for Boris and the Tarasova-Yusupov Trading Company. Boris was now the wealthiest he had ever been from his own efforts, which was a good thing for him because he could expect nothing from the Yusupov family except for his remaining trust funds. The voyage was also a turning point in Boris’s life because of his brush with the world-wide slave trade. He dreaded the conversation he expected with Alexandra.

  Indian Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, on board the Far East Transporter, July 30, 1879

  Alexandra was flushed with the excitement that came from having made such a major profit on the first leg of her triangular commercial voyage. She and her ships’ officers worked diligently for two weeks to prepare the ships for the arduous trans-pacific voyage. All three ships were fitted out with the best equipment money could buy: Ramsden Sextant, Bond Chronometer, Dutch Nautical Charts, James Imray and Son of London blueback North Pacific Nautical Chart, marine chronometer. They now had a traverse board used to approximate the course run by a ship during a watch, a Walker’s Harpoon mechanical ship’s log to measure distance traveled, Brown’s Nautical Almanac which described the positions of a selection of celestial bodies to enable the navigators to use celestial navigation to determine the position of their ship while at sea, a Brown’s Almanac which informed the navigator for each whole hour of the year the position on the earth’s surface at which the sun, moon, planets and first point of Aries was directly overhead.

  She had bargained with Colombo Chinese merchants for a Chip log and sand glass which served to measure the ship’s speed through the water, Davis backstaff, dry magnetic compass, Sciothericum telescopicum –a sundial invented in the 17th century that used a telescopic sight to determine the time of noon to within 15 seconds. Alexandra had to pay full price for ship’s pumps to remove water from leaks, lumber, and carpenters’ tools, large rounds of sail cloth, rigging line, pulleys, extra masts, cheek block, hackle, headstays, jiggers, baggy wrinkles, bee-block, cam cleats, cross-blocks, Jacob’s ladders, and the hundreds of other small devices which could not be found or made while at sea—because of the omnipotent law of supply-and-demand.

  Alexandra gave in to a bit of morbid feminine whimsy by having a brass plate placed on her stateroom clock which was engraved with a memento mori: “Nunc est bibendum [Eng. now is the time to drink] “Memores sumus omnes ad mortem” [Eng. Remember, we all have to die.”]

  She put the past part of the voyage behind her and first concentrated on navigating back through the Strait of Malacca and into the South China Sea. She ordered her navigator to set a course for Sitka in Southeastern Russian Alaska some 4,000 miles away across the largely uncharted Pacific with one of her cargo holds still filled with drugs to ease the difficulties of Aleuts and dragooned Chinese peasants laboring as slaves in the fur industry—as she liked to tell herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  UNCHARTED WATERS, UNSURE FUTURE

  “My course is set for an uncharted sea.”

  —Dante Alighieri

  We cannot control the wind, but we can direct the sail.

  —Mystic Seaport Museum

  On board the Far East Transporter, mid-Pacific Ocean July-September, 1879

  Alexandra occasionally gave thought to how her husband, Boris, was doing on his voyage for the company. She found herself not thinking of him as often or as seriously as she had before her voyage began. She wrote that off to the hectic busy nature of her commercial enterprise and of her captaincy of an ocean going sailing vessel. A thought nagged at her brain that she should be feeling more companionless at the separation; but, in fact, she was actually feeling more of an estrangement and was not especially troubled by that. Alexandra was more troubled and felt guilty about not keeping her small twin boys more in the front of her mind. Some days, she had difficulty even bringing their faces to mind.

  The voyage out into the notoriously wild Pacific Ocean—despite its misguiding name—was more boring than anxiety producing. Her navigator was a professional, and the navigating equipment was working well. The ship was moving swiftly and on course. Their stocks were well-planned, and the bulk of the supplies were untouched. They had used up most of the perishables–those foods that spoiled the quickest. All the citrus fruits—on board to prevent the dreaded scurvy—were totally depleted. The preserved foods were still plentiful; they had dried, salted, smoked, and pickled meat and fish. There were no cans or suitable jars; so, the ship’s sailors packed the preserved food in wood barrels or crates. The long-term non-food supplies–water, clothing, extra sail and wood to repair the ship, medicine, weapons for defense, tools, valuables for trade with whatever locals they run into and the guns, rifles, shields, swords, and pistols were in good condition and dry.

  Because of the need to replenish their supplies of fresh vegetables and fruits—especially lemons, limes, and oranges–the Far East Transporter made its first stop at the island of Taipan which was made up of two separate islands. They made mooring in the capital city of Taikyo on the western island, Pyondu. The natives and the many Englishmen in that section of Taipan were industrious and excellent commercial businessmen. It took less than a day to refill the larders with the fresh food. This time, Alexandra ordered four times as much as she had used on this short first leg.

  The sun was unbearably hot when they set sail the following day. One day after that, they encountered the doldrums and the humid hot air gave the men the impression that they were in a bake oven. The ship was becalmed and did not move forward—did not budge a hooter–for the next three days with the crew becoming gradually more disheartened by the day. Then, a minor storm blew up which was more wind than precipitation and that was a blessing, for which the crew gave thanks.

  Sixteen days later, tired, bored, but otherwise not much worse for the wear, the Far East Transporter sailed briskly into Kulolia, port of H
onolulu, Kingdom of Hawai’i, and tied up at the busy wharf by warping in against a fairly stiff wind. The native wharf hand attached a heavy hemp line to an iron stanchion, and the second mate attached a line to a bollard on the deck of the Far East Transporter which brought the ship tight up against the quayside. The wharf was studded with cannons pointed seaward.

  Kulolia was as busy as the Shanghai Harbor. Tall ships lined the wharf for miles, and an equal number dotted the harbor at anchor. Kulolia—originally Mamala Bay–was the chief port of call for the trans-Pacific sandalwood, fur, and whaling industries. Immigrants on their way to America and to the Kingdom of Hawai’i filled uncomfortable cargo ships having paid exorbitant fees to brokers. They came in waves and by their thousands. 1879 was the start of a mass emigration that—over the next fifty years—would see in excess of twenty-seven million enter America, most to find work, many to escape persecution and poverty; and some who came as businessmen and professionals seeking a better environment to pursue their professions. The ships came into Kulolia both going and coming from the United States with a significant number finding disappointment in the new country and electing to return to the old one.

  In addition to the tall sailing ships, the harbor was beginning to fill up with long distance passenger steamers holding thousands of people. For the past thirteen years, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company established a passenger line from Hong Kong to San Francisco to carry American merchants, missionaries, and government officials to Asia and back. The company profited most by transporting poor and ignorant Chinese laborers to and from the United States, many bound for places like Sitka, Alaska where they would live as virtual or actual slaves. The few European and American Caucasians were divided from the Asians by rules related to rank and race.

  Alexandra monitored her crew as they disembarked for a two-day rest and recuperation stay in Honolulu. She promised them the best dinner of their lives if they would behave themselves and be sober by five that afternoon. They were all to meet on the lawn of the Iolani Palace. When the officers and crew had all departed, Alexandra took a few minutes to study the fascinating area. The harbor was a forest of masts flying the colors of several dozen nations including more than a few flying the Royal Standard of King Kalākaua with its eight alternating white, red, and black stripes, and its center showing the Hawai’ian coat of arms.

  The New England whaling fleet was abundantly evident, since the old whaling towns and their fabulously rich sea captains and merchants used Hawai’i as their Pacific port. There could easily have been fourteen or fifteen whalers in the harbor. In fact, she learned later, the most important commerce flourishing in the kingdom was dependent on American Whalers. Many other American company ships were present in the harbor especially after the California gold rush and subsequent statehood brought Hawai’i and the United States much closer as regular commercial partners with improved communication being carried by the ships moving to and from the kingdom’s harbors. The most important part of that commerce for Hawai’ians was that the kingdom exported huge quantities of a variety of goods to California.

  She decided that this was a place that would factor greatly in her future shipping business; so, she and her personal body guard, Stenka Mazepa, walked down the gangway and into the teeming throng of humanity moving busily along the wharf. She saw remarkable contrasts: A group of young Honolulu debutantes on Nuuanu Street dressed in immaculate long white dresses; many of the women wore the new San Francisco style modified bustles. They were in juxtaposition to Chinese, Korean, and Japanese coolies, black men and women, and indentured white workers loading sugar onto ships, sweat pouring from their half-naked muscular bodies, and peddlers selling vile looking purple poi from buckets. Alexandra tried some and decided that it tasted as bad as it looked.

  She and Stenka moved further into the city, and Alexandra was surprised at how small the city of Honolulu was. Although it was the capital city of the string of seven islands, it was a small town, with no buildings over three stories tall surrounded by sugar and banana plantations. Many of the buildings on the outskirts were little more than mud and thatch huts. There was not a single paved street in the city, and most of the streets were of rutted mud emanating a stench of animal manure.

  Alexandra needed to send mail back to her parents in Vladivostok, to Hou Eadric in Millionka, to the taipan in Shanghai, Sir Edwin and Lady were rutted Margaret Appleby, and to her partners in Colombo. She asked a nattily dressed young man where the post office was located, and he directed her to Merchant Street.

  “The Kamehameha V Post Office is on the corner, Madam,” he said with exaggerated courtesy.

  It was easy enough to find their way in the small, city-within-a-city; in Chinatown the street signs were red framed and written in both English and Chinese characters. There were horses everywhere in the city; horses with single riders were the main mode of transportation, especially since walking on the mud and excreta filled ruts of the streets meant ruination to a decent pair of boots. Even the barefoot workers did all they could not to step in the muck and drag the remains into their thatched mud huts—called hale pili by the natives. Knowing that she might one day need to do business in Honolulu’s Chinatown like she was doing on this commercial visit, Alexandra obtained directions from a woman who spoke pidgin English which took Alexandra several tries to understand.

  She and Stenka walked to the border of Chinatown, the Nuuanu Stream. The stream was in its more or less natural state, and no efforts had been made to disguise its function. The stream was the city’s sewer system. Rivulets trickled down from better built homes on the hillsides maintaining a steady flow of raw sewage. Outhouses lined the main stream’s banks making it effectively the city’s principle toilet. They hurried on into the main streets of the Chinese center.

  In contrast to the diminutive character of Honolulu city proper, the Chinatown District was a thriving area with an eclectic blend of Southeast Asian cultures including Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Japanese, Thai, Filipino, and Korean peoples as well as Native Hawai’ians, Negroes, and Caucasians. During the 19th century laborers were imported from China to work on sugar plantations in Hawai’i, and many of them became prosperous merchants in Chinatown after their contracts expired.

  In 1879, Chinatown was a thriving, hectic commercial district serving its own non-Caucasian population as well as the diverse larger Honolulu community. Because Chinatown was close to the harbor, many newly arriving immigrants from all over the world used the stores and restaurants in the district as gathering places to find friends and relatives, establish contacts, and so where to find jobs, and to make business deals. The businesses in Chinatown had become the second-largest employer of Chinese immigrants after the sugar plantations.

  Alexandra asked several Chinese people what their name for Honolulu was–speaking Mandarin–but she could not make herself understood with the predominately Cantonese speaking expatriates from Hong Kong. Eventually she did find an older lady who spoke her language; and she told Alexandra and Stenka that the traditional and still commonly used term as known to the Chinese was Tánxiāngshān, which Alexandra was able to translate to “Sandalwood Mountain”.

  There were the usual opium dens, fireworks sellers, street peddlers and food vendors, but there was not much in the way of valuable items that Alexandra thought would make good commercial products worth transporting. She did buy a few trinkets and toys for her two boys: elaborate gaily colored festival hats, hats in the shape of different kinds of fish, embroidered tiger hats, shuttlecocks, yo-yos, diabolos, parallel jumping ropes, knucklebones, live crickets in small bamboo cages, lacquered boxes, and twin cages for cricket battles. Stenka patiently carried her small treasures back towards the ship.

  They took short diversions to see the Kaumakapili Church and a few of the remaining ancient fish farm ponds. They headed towards Waikiki, a disappointingly smelly and marshy place—essentially a lagoon. Five o’clock was fast approaching; so, Alexandra and Stenka hurried towa
rds the Iolani Palace; and Alexandra was pleased that the officers and crew had already assembled on the grounds and looked entirely presentable.

  The eyes of the assembled crew turned deferentially towards Alexandra as she walked properly across the expansive lawn. She took her place at the front of the small crowd along with the ships’ officers and waited for the arrival of the king and queen.

  A spit-and-polish, very obviously pure native Hawai’ian man, handsome, poised, and haughty, marched in his royal livery uniform directly up to Alexandra.

  He said, “I am Jonah Kawānanakoa, the king’s aide-de-camp. It is my honor to present David Laʻamea Kamananakapu Mahinulani Naloiaehuokalani Lumialani Kalākaua Kalākaua, Aliʻi o ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻAina–Monarch of the Hawai’ian Islands–and his wife, Esther Kapiʻolani Napelakapuokakaʻe, Queen Consort of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.”

  The king and queen were regal in all respects: their sturdy brown frames, perfectly fitting uniforms, badges and sashes of office, and–most important–in their deportment.

  “We welcome you to our kingdom, Ladies and Gentlemen and dignitaries,” King Kalākaua said.

  “And, I also welcome each of you,” Queen Kapiʻolani said, making it apparent that the king used the European affectation of referring to himself in the plural.

  “Please call us King David and Queen Esther,” the king said as he and Esther mingled among the assembled crowd.

  Queen Esther sought out Alexandra and smiled.

  “I am happy to meet a very successful woman, and one who is so young at that. We have been made aware of you and your family and of your exploits as a ships’ captain and a leader in the business world. It would appear that times are changing, and we women are beginning to take our rightful places in the world.”