Оуэн Мэтьюз - Glorious Misadventures - Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America

The deep, lustrous fur of sea otters is the thickest and warmest of any mammal. In 1780 a single five-foot-long sea otter pelt was worth more than an ordinary seaman’s annual salary in the markets of Canton, a discovery which triggered a fur-rush to the North Pacific.

The Empress Catherine the Great shared Peter the Great’s ambitions to expand Russia’s Empire into America – but was wary of ruthless merchants like Shelikhov.

Born into a humble merchant family in Rylsk, Grigory Shelikhov became the millionaire master of Russia’s greatest fur-trading empire as well as one of the boldest explorers of his age. He founded a colony on Kodiak, but his reputation was forever tainted as a butcher of natives. His daughter’s marriage to Rezanov was Shelikhov’s bid for respectability – and for influence at court.

The Bronze Horseman – or the Copper Horseman in Russian – was Catherine the Great’s monument to Peter the Great. The casting took French sculptor Etienne Falconet twelve years and was the talk of St Petersburg as Rezanov grew up; it was finally unveiled ( below ) in 1782. The Horseman through Japanese eyes ( right ): a sketch by the sailor Kankai Ibun who accompanied Rezanov to Japan in 1806.

The Courtiers. Gavriil Derzhavin ( above left ), poet and politician and family friend of the Rezanovs, was Nikolai’s unfailing patron. Count Nikolai Rumiantsev ( right ) was one of Russia’s great magnates, a cousin of Tsar Alexander I, who ran the powerful Ministry of Commerce. He recognised the political and commercial potential of a Russian round-the-world expedition.

Prince Platon Zubov was Catherine the Great’s last, and most cynical, lover-favourite. When they met, the Empress was sixty; he was twenty-two. She showered him with money and titles. Zubov’s morning receptions ‘resembled the levées of a French Royal mistress’ and his private court was a carousel of bribery and favour. Rezanov became one of Zubov’s secretaries in 1793.

Tsar Paul sent Russian armies deep into Europe and planned a joint Russo-French land and naval assault on British India with Napoleon. Above , an army of 20,000 Cossacks was en-route to India when Paul was assassinated in 1801; Below , General Alexander Suvorov is greeted by cheering crowds as Russian troops occupy Milan in April 1799.

Modelled on Britain’s East India Company, the Russian American Company would, Rezanov believed, make the Pacific a Russian sea. The Company had the power to issue money and have its own armed forces, and its Royal Charters – from both Paul I and Alexander I – allowed the Company to fly a flag almost identical to Russia’s own.

Catherine the Great’s dwarfish, paranoid son Paul hated his mother and when he finally succeeded her in 1796 set about undoing many of her reforms. His disastrous reign lasted just four years, four months and four days before he was murdered by discontented aristocrats.

Happily for Russia, Tsar Paul’s son Alexander took after his grandmother, Catherine the Great. He began his reign as an enthusiastic reformer and backed Rezanov’s grand plans for pushing Russia’s empire into southern Alaska and beyond. He made Rezanov’s son a royal page.

Adam Johann von Krusenstern ( left ) conceived the idea of a Russian round-the-world voyage while serving with the British Royal Navy in the Pacific. The expedition was approved by the Tsar in 1803 – but with the addition of Rezanov as Ambassador to Japan. Both men believed they were in charge of the voyage, with fateful results. Krusenstern recruited his old friend from Royal Navy days, Yury Lisiansky ( right ), to buy two ships.

Hermann Ludwig von Löwenstern ( left ), scion of a German Baltic family in Russian service, was the Nadezhda ’s fourth lieutenant and cartographer. He wrote an uncensored diary of the voyage, dedicated in large part to denunciations of Rezanov’s arrogance. Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff ( right ) was a medical doctor, naturalist and anthropologist who attached himself to the expedition in Copenhagen by agreeing to serve as Rezanov’s personal physician. He followed his chief all the way to San Francisco.

Langsdorff, with his cultivated eye, found the tattooed natives ‘handsome and well-made … a model for the Apollo of Belvedere’.

The Nadezhda reached the Pacific island of Nukakhiva in April 1804. Natives swam out to the ship; to the delight of officers and men the Nuhakhivan women were happy to dispense sexual favours in exchange for iron trinkets, which they held in their mouths as they swam home.

Count Fyodor Tolstoy, ‘The American’, ‘a dangerous madcap’ whose drunken pranks almost got him clapped in irons. At Nukakhiva he had himself tattooed; in later life he killed thirteen men in duels.

The French renegade Jean Cabri deserted a merchant ship and married into the Nukakhivan royal family. He abandoned his native wife and children when a squall swept the Nadezhda out to sea with him on board.