Word: baranov
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Self-Made Russian. Shelekhov planted his settlement on Kodiak Island-in the lee of the peninsula that breaks into the bits and pieces of the Aleutians. To manage his new colony Shelekhov chose middle-aged Merchant Aleksandr Andrevich Baranov. Baranov was that rarest of Russians, a self-made man. He began as a small trader, worked his way to ownership of a Siberian glass factory. Baranov is the hero of Author Chevigny's impressive history of young Alaska...
...Baranov intended to stay five years in the Northwest, long enough to make money out of trading in sea otter furs. He stayed...
When he took over the settlement, Baranov was left without a sailing ship. He built his own. He mixed native moss with hot pitch for calking, used mountain ash for hardwood. He set Russians and natives digging for coal and iron, made waterproof paint from whale oil and red ocher. His ship had three masts, two decks. For sails Baranov commandeered tents, trousers, jackets, sewed them into great sheets with seal gut thread...
...Baranov made money for his company from the start. Hundreds of canoes, manned by Aleutian islanders, scoured the shores for sea otter, seals and foxes. At the cost of hundreds of lives, the precious skins found their way to Siberia, were traded to eager Chinese for copper goods, tea, cloth...
...Baranov's disciplinary rules were rigid. There was a parade before the flag every Sunday. Gambling was sternly forbidden. Baranov forbade prostitution, encouraged his men to live with the Aleutian girls. Men with venereal disease were banished to the woods to treat themselves with "mercurials dissolved in vodka." Moonshining was also banned, but Baranov himself kept "a vat of crab apples, rye meal, and cranberries fermenting with kvass-yeast. Any man off duty was welcome to as much of the stuff as he could hold." This brew supposedly prevented scurvy, certainly helped morale. Said Washington Irving: "He is continually...