FIRST WATCH 12 A. M. SEXT
STELLER’S SEA COW – 1768 – Hydrodamalis gigas
Georg Wilhelm Steller – 1741
Journal of a Voyage with Bering from Kamchatka to America
Their capture was affected by a large iron hook, the point of which resembled the fluke of an anchor, the other end being fastened by means of an iron ring to a very long stout rope, held by thirty men on shore. A strong sailor took this hook and with five other men stepped into the boat, and one of them taking the rudder, the other four rowing, quietly hurried towards the herd. The harpooner stood in the bow of the boat with the hook in his hand and struck as soon as he was near enough to do so, whereupon the men on shore, grasping the other end of the rope, pulled the desperately resisting animal laboriously toward them. Those in the boat, however, made the animal fast by means of another rope and wore it out by continuous blows, until tired and completely motionless, it was attacked with bayonets, knives and other weapons and pulled up on the land. Immense slices were cut from the still living animal, but all it did was shake its tail furiously and make such resistance with its forelimbs that big strips of cuticle were torn off. In addition it breathed heavily, as if sighing. From the wounds in the back the blood spurted upward like a fountain.
Georg Wilhelm Steller was the only trained naturalist ever to see this animal alive. And Steller’s accounts were of the first-ever encounter in the very brief bloody history of human-sea cow relations, as the animal became extinct just twenty-six years later. The only species of its genera and family, the Steller Sea Cow was distantly related to the two other surviving (but endangered) Sirendae: the Dugongs and the Manatees. With a maximum weight of over seven tons, it was 14 times the size of a Manatee: the marine equivalent of a full-size African Elephant. Indeed, “Sea Elephant” would have been a far more appropriate name, as both the Elephant and the Sea Cow were descended from a common prehistoric land-dwelling ancestor.
Steller was the ship’s naturalist on the famous expedition of the Danish explorer Vitus Bering. During the summer of 1741, Bering sailed eastward from Kamchatka to Alaska. On the return voyage, they were shipwrecked on the desolate island that now carries Bering’s name.
Georg Wilhelm Steller – 1741
Journal of a Voyage with Bering from Kamchatka to America
When an animal was caught with the hook, those nearest in the herd began to stir also and feel the urge to bring succour. To this end some tried to upset the boat with their backs, while others pressed down the rope and endeavoured to break it, or strove to remove the hook from the wound by blows of their tail, in which they actually succeeded several times… . It is most remarkable proof of their conjugal affection, that the male, after having tried with all his might, although in vain, to free the female caught by the hook, and in spite of the beating we gave him, nevertheless followed her to the shore, and that several times, even after she was dead, he shot unexpectedly up to her like a speeding arrow. Early the next morning, when we came to cut up the meat and bring it in the dugout, we found the male again standing by the female, and the same I observed once more on the third day when I went there by myself for the sole purpose of examining the intestines.
The Bering Expedition ship, the St. Peter, ran aground and was wrecked while attempting to find safe anchorage on Bering Island. A total of 32 crewmen did not survive the winter, including Vitus Bering himself. Georg Wilhelm Steller was the only officer healthy enough to take command and assumed leadership over the ten crew members not crippled by illness. Steller doctored the rest and oversaw the building of shelters and the rebuilding of the wrecked St. Peter. Somehow, he also managed time to record the amazing assortment of wildlife on the island that had never before been seen by man.
Among the many species discovered by Bering was this massive sea mammal which proved to be the primary food source for the survivors of the St. Peter. As Steller observed, the Sea Cow was their salvation: “This great beast is 28 to 35 feet long and 22 feet thick about midsection… . Each Sea Cow provided more than seven thousand pounds of meat and fat, and the red flesh tasted much like good beef… . All of us who had partaken of it, soon found out what a salutary food it was, as we soon felt a marked improvement in strength and health.”
Georg Wilhelm Steller – 1741
Journal of a Voyage with Bering from Kamchatka to America
These animals love shallow and sandy places along the seashore, but they spend their time more particularly about the mouths of the gullies and brooks, the rushing fresh water of which always attracts them in herds. They keep the half-grown and young in front of them when pasturing, and are very careful to guard them in the rear and on the sides when travelling, always keeping them in the middle of the herd… . In the spring they mate like human beings, particularly towards evening when the sea is calm. Before they come together many amorous preludes take place. The female, constantly followed by the male swims leisurely to and fro eluding him with many gyrations and meanderings, until, impatient of further delay, she turns on her back as if exhausted and coerced, whereupon the male, rushing violently upon her, pays tribute of his passion, and both give themselves over in mutual embrace.
Despite the hardships of survival on the island, Steller took time to closely observe the nature and habits of the Sea Cows and many other species. After eight months wintering on Bering Island, Steller and his crew built a new craft from the wrecked St. Peter and in August 1742 sailed back to Kamchatka with news of their discovery. This rapidly resulted in Russian exploitation and monopoly of the whole Northwest Pacific coast of Alaska – especially in the enormously lucrative trade in fur-bearing sea mammals – for over a century.
However, instead of being rewarded for his heroic efforts in bringing the survivors of the St. Peter safely home, and bringing the momentous news of the discovery of Alaska, Steller found himself embroiled in disputes with the petty jealousies of corrupt Russian officials and bureaucrats in Kamchatka for the next four years. Worn out by a series of arrests, trials and imprisonments, in November 1756, Steller died of fever at age 37. His Journals and his De Bestiis Marinis (On the Beasts of the Sea) were published posthumously in St. Petersburg, establishing him as one of the greatest naturalists of his time.
Besides Steller’s Sea Cow, five other species carry the name of this extraordinary naturalist: Steller’s Sea Lion (Eumetopius jubatus), the largest species of sea lion; Steller’s Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus), the world’s heaviest eagle; Steller’s Eider (Polysticta sterlleri), the smallest form of Sea Duck; the Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri); and the Steller’s Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus), a large flightless bird that sadly suffered the same fate as Steller’s Sea Cow and became extinct in 1850.
Petr Yakovlev – 1764
Chancellery Report,
Bering Island, Kamchatka
From 1743 until 1763, hardly a winter passed without one or more parties spending eight or nine months hunting fur animals on Bering Island, during which time the crews lived almost exclusively on the meat of the sea cow. But that was not all, for more than half of the expeditions which wintered there did so for the express purpose of laying in stores of sea cow meat for the further journey, which usually lasted two to three years more. From 1763 the visits to Bering Island seem to grow scarcer, probably due to the very fact that sea cows had now become so nearly exterminated that the few left were insufficient to maintain any wintering and foraging expeditions.
The Russian mining engineer Petr Yakovlev wintered on Bering Island in 1754-1755. Displaying an unusually astute awareness of the severe environmental damage being inflicted on this newly discovered island, Yakovlev prophetically anticipated the extinction of the Sea Cow if over-exploitation of the species was allowed to continue. As he recorded, because of the animal’s sheer size, it was estimated that four animals were critically wounded and abandoned for every one that was successfully beached and killed for food. Petr Yakovlev unsuccessfully petitioned Kamchatkan authorities and requested a ukase or edict from the Bol’sheretsk Chancellery prohibiting – or at least limiting – the wholesale slaughter of this species. This appeal fell upon deaf ears and the last Sea Cow was killed around 1768 on Bering Island.
SIREN SONG
Steller’s Sea Cow – 1768
Some still nights
On the shores of Bering’s sea
You may imagine them
Huge as the hull
Of an overturned ship
Moaning in the rolling surf
Fountain of hot blood pulsing
Furnace of the deep heart
Wave-worn giants, idle lovers
On the swell of the sea
Bigger than elephants
Skin like the bark of an ancient oak
Snorting like horses
Pawing the kelp meadows
With their tough hooves
Like bulls in pasture
Tide riders, storm biders
Slow to lust as elephants
Passionate as whales
Beauty here in a thing not itself beautiful
As delight in the play of light
On a mountain or a great rock
Yet something vastly alive
As these once were alive
Some still nights
On the shores of Bering’s sea
You may imagine them
The great breath-song
Through the sighing night