Editor’s note: Stories of Kauai is a column submitted by the Kauai Historical Society that will be published every other Saturday in The Garden Island.
Russian intrigue, trade with China, Alaskan visitors in danger. No, these aren’t headlines from today’s issue of The Garden Island but 200-year-old factors that brought to life an incredible incident in Kauai’s history.
All revolve around Fort Elisabeth, the red-dirt coated, rock-wall remains of a Hawaiian-Russian American Company complex located on the Makaweli side of the mouth of the Waimea River. The 200th anniversary of the building by Native Hawaiians of the star-shaped fort is coming up in 2016.
Next month the heritage of Fort Elisabeth is begin recalled at the dedication of a memorial to another Russian American Company fort. This one is located on the Pacific Coast of the Olympic Peninsula in faraway Washington state. The shipwreck in November 1808 of the schooner Sv. (Saint) Nikolai is being recalled there, along the Hoh River.
The Sv. Nikolai, about 45-feet long, was originally named Tamana and built on O‘ahu for Kamehameha’s never-launched, armed invasion of Kauai in 1804.
A Russian Promyshlennik (mountain man-type expert fur hunter) became a hero in protecting surviving members of the schooner’s crew who faced enslavement and other hardships following the shipwreck. His name was Timothei Tarakanov.
In 1815 the Russian American Company ship Bering, carrying a cargo of valuable furs bound for Sitka, washed up on the beach at Waimea. The seal furs were carefully stored by Kauai king Kaumualii. Prussian physician Greorg Scheffer was sent to recover the furs.
Scheffer was on a covert mission aimed at possibly establishing a Russian colony in Hawaii. He arrived at Waimea in 1816, along with Tarakanov.
Scheffer’s ruse caught up with him months later and he was forced to flee Waimea where Native Hawaiians working for King Kaumualii built a fort along Russian lines. In late June 1817 Scheffer and party anchored off the fort at Honolulu. For days their ship, the Kad’iak, was forced to stand off the fort, on the verge of sinking. Finally permission was given to land the decaying ship. It just happened to be the Fourth of July and barrages of American red rockets greeted the ship.
Scheffer headed out for Canton, leaving Tarakanov behind and responsible for the lives of a large party of Russians and Aleuts. He carried the day, cutting a deal with an American sea captain to use his crew to hunt sea otter hunter along the California coast. Tarakanov and his people made it home safely to Sitka.
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Chris Cook is a resident of Kauai and volunteer with the Kauai Historical Society.
