The Mysterious Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov

by Carl Douglass

  Alexandra gave Queen Esther a radiant smile and a short bow.

  “I am flattered that you have heard of me. That tells me that you are well read and informed, and that you have an interest in what goes on in the world. The world is coming to you, and you are meeting the visitors on a more than an equal basis.”

  “Thank you, My Dear, but I have to admit that most of what I learn about the world outside our islands comes from naughty whalers and our new newspapers, the Sandwich Island Gazette and the Journal of Commerce.”

  “Then it appears that I will have to obtain copies of those papers to keep myself prepared to do business in such a sophisticated realm.”

  “And you must return one day as just a tourist. Our tourism industry is beginning to burgeon. In fact, just today, there are three tour steamers in the harbor from America full of vacationers. We will show them a good time.”

  “Sounds like fun, Queen Esther.”

  “Indeed. And speaking of enjoyment, it is time for you and your crew to join King David and me in the palace dining room for a genuine Hawai’ian pāʻina or lu’au feast.”

  And a feast it was. The food included he’he poke—a raw octopus, and soy sauce, sea salt, green onions, and Maui onions salad appetizer; the purple and nearly tasteless taro root paste called “one-finger” poi, indicating it’s density; Kalua pig slow cooked in a pit and covered with banana leaves; Lomilomi salmon–fresh tomato, cucumber, red hot chili, and salmon salad which Queen Esther learned about from visiting whalers; laulau—slow pit-cooked ono fish wrapped in luau leaves; opihi alinalina (yellow foot) shellfish—called “the fish of death” because so many divers were killed trying to harvest the stubbornly limpet-like molluscs from sharp tide pool rooks. It was to be eaten raw out of its shell with sea salt and limu–seaweed; and Hawai’ian sweet potato. For dessert, haupia–diluted coconut milk, sugar, and salt, was mixed with arrowroot and heated until thickened and smooth, then poured into a rectangular pan and chilled, then cut into small blocks and served on squares of ti leaf. Alexandra thought it was very much like blancmange, one of her favorite European desserts.

  The marvelous food was accompanied by entertainment: lithe dancers, naked above the waist and wearing grass skirts moving with sensuous hip motions, with folkloric dances from Hawaii, New Zealand, and Tahiti; fire dancers and flame swallowers; and music played on ancient Hawai’ian instruments–keke`eke, bamboo pipes of varying lengths which was played by holding it vertically and tapping it on the ground, or a mat kuolokani—a large ancient timbrel drum; and a nî `au kani–a harp made of thin coconut midrib called nîau. The full stomachs, lilting and soothing music, and a little (perhaps a little too much) Okolehao–an ancient Hawaiian alcoholic drink made from ti root created a soothing post-prandial lassitude and sedation. English seamen taught eager Hawai’ian brewers and consumers the art of distillation that changed Okolehao into a very strong alcoholic spirit—which produced additional happy somnolence in Alexandra and her crew and great satisfaction on the part of the king and his consort.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MORE EVIDENCE

  National Archives of Australia, Victorian Archives Centre, 99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, February 24, 2014

  The missionaries arrived at work Monday morning after a late-night—ten p.m.—party at the Durrell’s feeling rather logy. The day seemed long and tedious; so, the elders and sisters felt that they had to keep reminding themselves and each other that they were doing the work of the Lord. After lunch, postprandial lassitude spread like an epidemic among the usually vivacious and Pollyannaish missionaries; and several excused themselves to take naps.

  Sister Taylor refused to give in to her bodily inadequacies. She took a quick-step outside in the oppressive heat of the Australian summer, waving her arms, and taking hyperpneic breaths to clear the cobwebs out of her head. As she walked along at a near-trot, her mind cleared—and more importantly—she came up with an idea which caused her to make an about-face and to move at a running walk back into the archives.

  She was out of breath and perturbed at herself for being out of shape. She hurried to interrupt her husband, Elder Taylor, from his nap.

  “Neal,” she said, and shook his shoulder gently.

  Neal slowly came out of his dream and looked around dazed for several seconds.

  “This better be an emergency, Lisa,” he managed out of his fog.

  “Not an emergency, Neal, more like a revelation. I think the Spirit has spoken to me about our mysterious Alexandra.”

  “What did He say?” Neal Taylor asked, seriously now, because one did not question personal revelation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  It was better to listen and learn.

  “The thought came into mind as I was walking that I should look into the school files for Irkutsk and maybe even the rest of Siberia to see what we can learn about Alexandra’s two boys. Also, I am impressed to look into the 1879 records of the several ports where Alexandra might have stopped on her ship that year. There is nothing about her being involved in any activities where her children were present for that whole year; maybe, she left them to get back to sailing. What do you think?”

  “It is a new area, and I think you are on the right track. Let me know what I can do to help.”

  “I don’t think the Holy Spirit would be happy with me if I was selfish. I’ll get the other sisters to help. I can’t help but think that we are on to something.”

  The elders were not much interested, but their wives needed something to stimulate themselves; and a breakthrough would do them all wonders; so, they agreed to divide up the work.

  Barely a week went by before Sister Clyde discovered the name of a German woman who advertised in the Vladivostok newspaper seeking employment. The next week’s issue announced that Gertrude Himmelmann had taken a position as nanny and German language tutor for the Yusupov family residing at Tarasova House, No. 71 Pekinskaya Street, Vladivostok. Sister Clyde looked at school records six years and twelve years later in Vladivostok, then Irkutsk and found no record of the boys in the entire oblast. Since 1891 would have had to be the last year of the Yusupov boys’ grammar and high school careers, Sister Taylor decided to look further abroad.

  “Why not Novonikolaevsk?” she reasoned to herself.

  Her hunch or, rather, bit of personal revelation, led to finding the names of two boys whose surnames were Yusupov, and only two. They were Nikita and Oral Borisovich, and their superior performances were duly noted in the Novonikolaevsk Military Academy School for Boys.

  “Call it serendipity, or coincidence, or dumb luck if you want, Neal; but I know it was a personal revelation; and I feel that we are being helped.”

  Neal was somewhat more of a pragmatist or scientist in his thinking, not really comfortable with the frequently expressed idea of “knowing” as opposed to “believing”; but he had to admit that this must have been the work of the Holy Spirit; and he was glad to have the help.

  Marianne Smith chose to riffle through the ports-of-call records of the Jardine-Matheson-Tarasova and Yusupov commercial activities from 1876 to 1896. It was tedious work, but not particularly difficult because record keeping in Asia, Europe, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas, were quite well preserved and in surprisingly good order. Her work paid off, and she was able to find port calls in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Colombo, Taipan, Honolulu, San Francisco, and Sitka once in 1879, twice in 1882, and twice in 1885—all identifying Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov as captain of the Far East Transporter and giving clear manifests of her cargoes, including large shipments of raw opium.

  She found only one mention of Boris Yusupov as a shipping merchant, that in Shanghai in 1881. Leah Clyde decided—based on that information—to look into records of Balagansk Prison from 1879 forward. Boris was regularly listed as the commandant until 1891 and never thereafter. He seemed to have disappeared, but she found no death notice or obituary.

  Good came out of Li
sa Taylor’s personal revelation: the main thing was that her personal testimony of the Lord and her church became unshakable; and also, the information documented more about the mysterious Alexandra than they had had before. But it also raised more questions and inspired a greater determination to search out other possible sources.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ON TO SITKA

  Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.

  —Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

  Baranof Castle, American Port of Sitka, Alaska, October, 1879

  The three ships in Alexandra’s commercial shipping group landed at the deep draft port adjacent to Vancouver Barracks, Washington safely after a month-long voyage from Honolulu. The barracks and its fort were located on the north side of the Columbia River–about two-thousand yards from the river itself–near its confluence with Oregon’s Willamette River. It took Alexandra and her officers and crew several minutes to be able to walk steadily on dry land after the long voyage. A contingent of trappers, Indians, farmers, and stevedores, waited for them on the dock and gave the seafarers rides to the barracks where they could sit down to a small breakfast meal and a drink and talk business.

  The trappers and Indians had brought in a huge load of beaver and sea otter pelts pressed into bales; the farmers had a supply of fresh vegetables and fruits sufficient for the trip up the coast to the Inside Passage to Sitka; and the stevedores were ready and waiting to off-load the Far East Transporter’s cargo of Hawai’ian and Chinese products, staples such as coffee, tea, and sugar; wilderness necessities like guns, ammunition, axes, hatchets, snares and traps, good steel knives; and useful and decorative items including things such as brightly painted bone buttons, vivid blankets, calico cloth, and mirrors, and to on-load the skins and vegetables. Most of the crew engaged in races to take the kinks out of their legs while the off and on-loading were taking place.

  Having gotten that out of their systems, they went on an impromptu and self-guided short tour of the barracks. Since its inception, the army had maintained a guard house on the barracks grounds, now mainly to house the native Chinooks who were forcefully imprisoned there awaiting relocation to less hospitable country than the one they were being forced to leave to make room for the rapid influx of Europeans and Americans moving in to take their land. For hundreds of years before Western explorers arrived, the Chinook Indians had lived along the banks of the “Wimahl,” or “Big River”—later named by the Europeans, the Columbia.

  The issue of relocation was by now largely moot. It was estimated that in the early 1800s, there were nearly twenty-thousand Chinooks in the region. By 1879 when Alexandra arrived, there were barely thirty souls left owing to the white man’s predation and diseases. Once the Indians had been effectively removed, Vancouver Barracks and its environs became an attractive destination for early settlers, offering safety, security, and reliable supplies.

  The harbor was very busy. Several types of mills—lumber, grist, brick, breweries, and sugar—produced thousands of boxes which were loaded onto commercial vessels for shipments to cities all over the Pacific Rim. The seamen reported that Vancouver had five sawmills, two sash and door factories, a box factory, three brickyards, and the breweries. Plums were dried—then called prunes–and packaged in private plants for shipment to the East via Cape Hoorn into the Atlantic and across the Pacific to islands and Asia.

  They encountered a diversity of peoples, but the diversity was largely limited to Caucasians from different parts of the country and Europe. There were many Irish people, who—unlike their reception in the East of the country—were welcomed, worked hard, prospered, and established themselves as valuable members of the community. Not long after arriving the Irish ceased to call themselves “Irish” or “Irish-Americans” and became just, “Americans”.

  One businessman they met said that “the Irish looked upon past traditions, wounds, hardships—even of the Great Potato famine that brought them to Vancouver–and memories of the ‘Old Sod’ as irrelevant and in time just ‘remote.’ Their mobility and transformation from Irish immigrants to Washingtonians also influenced their religious affiliation and identification; many have become Protestants to assimilate or had stopped identifying themselves by religion at all, which had caused so much of “The Troubles” back in the old country,” and he added, “I am proud to be an American.”

  It was apparent that Vancouver was growing rapidly, perhaps too rapidly, since housing was not keeping up with demand. The Irish were known as “go-getters” and had been snatching up land as fast as they could. Despite growing as they did and prospering so well, the Irish were not nearly so populous as the Chinese, Germans, and Scandinavians—all of whom came to Vancouver for the same reasons as the Irish. Apparently, success for a culture in Vancouver was largely based on fertility. A culture of tolerance had grown apace with the diversity of the population moving in. Many of these people were hired by the railroads which were rapidly approaching the coast. Unemployment was unheard of.

  Alexandra was impressed with the academy built by the Sisters of Providence for the children of the region, including orphans. It was the largest brick building north of San Francisco. They also founded Saint Joseph’s Hospital, a highly respected medical facility. Alexandra felt that her Far Eastern Russia had something to learn from these industrious new Americans.

  Georgina, the wife of the barracks commander, General Thomas Anderson, met Alexandra and was impressed with her, especially because of her fluency with several languages and her poised good manners. She invited the captain, officers, and crew, to an impromptu lunch at her home. The general was away on one of many skirmishes with the remaining Indians in the region. The impressive commander’s quarters were an Italianate architecture Victorian home built in 1878. Soldiers were obviously used to the general’s quarters being the site of many a grand party, even impromptu ones; and they swung into action to produce a fine American meal.

  They were served Pike Place Chowder, Spud Fish, salmon on a cedar plank, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and celery, huge brown-skinned potatoes smothered in butter, bacon, salt, pepper, and onions, and pitchers of hard cider. Alexandra sent a seaman back to the ship to fetch a two-yard piece of elegant flower design Chinese silk. She gave it to Georgina as thanks, then conveyed her regrets that her ships had to set sail for Sitka before the late evening low tides stranded them.

  Her seamen groaned and griped—as all seamen throughout the ages have done—when it was time to board the ships again. Alexandra and her officers were pleased at the obviously good morale and good health demonstrated by her griping seamen. They set sail at the end of the first dog watch—1800 hours. Four bells rang from the three ships, and the Far East Transporter and her security ships wheeled down-stream into the flow of the mighty Columbia to carry them into the pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean.

  A week later, Alexander and her ships entered the Alaska Inside Passage en route to Sitka. Along the way they passed a town called Metlakatia; and, for interest, they stopped briefly at Ketchikan, self-styled “Salmon Capitol of the World”. The men were more interested in the brothels on Creek Street than they were in seeing the salmon run. Next they made a short run to Wrangell, and, after talking to locals, made a diversionary voyage sail up the Stikine River to see black and brown bears, hundreds of migratory birds, majestic bald and golden eagles, harbor seals, killer whales, humpbacks, and small white beluga whales. They did not stop in Petersburg, because Alexandra was anxious to get to Sitka and get her business over with. She was beginning to feel some pangs of homesickness.

  They spent a day and a night in Juneau and took a guided tour by a local resident to see the Juneau Icefield and Mendenhall Glacier. The city was surrounded by great ice capped mountains and dark blue icy waters. The sailors were excited to see Tlingit totem poles which reminded them of the totems so prevalent on Taiwan where they had stopped several times on voyages to the waters ea
st of China. From Ketchikan, they traveled north in the Inside Passage to Gustavus watching the antics of whales, sea lions, and sea otters lying on their backs holding oysters. Evidence of Russian influence was everywhere.

  The local Tlingit Indians advised them to turn back south on a calm passage to the west of the better known Inside Passage and on down to the east of the large Chichagof Island in the Alexander Archipelago to its terminus where the passages opened into the icy Pacific. It was a short voyage along the coast through the west (coastal) side of Baranof Island where Sitka [originally known as Novo-Arkhangelsk and Old Sitka in Russian America], was located.

  Sitka harbor was a beehive of activity, but there were adequate numbers of mooring sites. Alexandra’s Far East Transporter, and her security ships–Igor’s Guards, and the Lady of Tarasova—were led by the harbor pilot boat to a wide berth between the U. S. Revenue Marine ship, the Richard Rush, and the U.S. Navy’s warship, the USS Jamestown. As busy and diverse as the Shanghai and Hong Kong harbors and as different from the harbors of Europe as they could be, the ships and boats of the Sitka Harbor were unique. There were: an old Russian steamship, the Ancon; large fishing boats built by the boat makers of the Russian American Company decades earlier and still functional and boat builders from Europe and Scandinavia since the Americans annexed Alaska; native trollers, salmon seiners, and longliners serving the Sitka cannery; large heavy canoes made from red cedar trunks; and a boat hand made by Aleuts [also known as the Unangan People], called a baidarka [Russian for sea kayak] or Aleutian kayak.

  The Aleut/Unangan people—for time immemorial–were surrounded by the violent and treacherous waters of the Northern Pacific and had to develop ways to cope because their sacred lands of choice required water transportation and a hunting vessel. Trees were nonexistent in the Aleutians; so, naturally occurring wood was scarce. The people had to rely on Baranof Island driftwood—in a make-do-or-do-without level of necessity–to create the frameworks of their baidarkas–which were then covered with the skins of sea mammals. Unungan women prepared sea lion skins which they sewed onto the frames with bone needles, using a waterproof stitch. Again–bowing to necessity–two types of baidarkas evolved, one with a covered deck that was used as a hunting kayak, and another that was open and capable of carrying goods and people from one island to another. The inventive Russians introduced new concepts: a one-hole and three-hole style so light that a young child could easily carry them. Baidarkas had prominent ascetic and functional features, including an attention getting bifurcated bow.