Beschreibung:

Letter by a Massachusetts shipping magnate about his sale of a ship to the Russian American Company at "New Archangel" (Sitka), Alaska Author: Kimball, Elbridge G. Place: Salem, Mass. Publisher: Date: Oct. 17, 1848 Description: Autograph Letter Signed. 1pg. To Baring Brothers & Co., bankers [London]. Shipping magnate Kimball writes about payments to him of 20,000 “Spanish Dollars” by the Russian American Company of St. Petersburg, Russia, for the purchase of his ship, the Bark “Angola”, drawn by the Governor of the Company – then Admiral Mikhail Tebenkov, pioneering surveyor of the Alaskan coast – at “New Archangel”, Russian America, the present-day city of Sitka, Alaska. For a half century, the Russian American Company had held monopoly rights, granted by Czarist imperial charter, to administer and exploit Russian colonial possessions in northwest America, fox, beaver and sea otter furs were gathered and shipped to China in exchange for tea . As profits from the fur trade began to decline, challenged by British competition and American settlements in Oregon; Admiral Tebenkov sought profitable new enterprises, such as mining and whaling, so the acquisition of a ship from the Kimball fleet of vessels seemed opportune. The Bark Angola, which had carried American goods to Spanish California, Mexico and the Hawaiian Islands, was docked at Honolulu in March 1848, when this sale was concluded and the Russian Imperial flag hoisted aboard the vessel. We could find no record of the ship thereafter; it may have sailed on to China or returned to Sitka to carry mining surveyors on mineral prospecting expeditions of Alaska, which would remain in Russian hands until “Seward’s Folly” in 1868. Lot Amendments Condition: Very good. Item number: 287837