Coastal Pacific has long been Alaska's lifeline

One of the things we take for granted in Alaska is our dependence on the Pacific Ocean. There are the fisheries, and the influence it has on the weather.

But more important is the coastal transportation corridor. Without it, the life we lead in all but the Native villages dependent on subsistence harvest for their economy would be impossible. Seventy percent of Alaska's population is urban, and the people living in Alaska's towns and cities have access to virtually all the material amenities of modern American culture, from clothing and tires to jewelry and tools, from dry goods to automobiles and school lunchboxes to furniture, and it all comes by sea.

Personal histories and data from the mid-1980s suggests without ready access to all of it, most non-Natives and increasingly many Natives, would not live here.  It's jobs that provide the wherewithal to purchase those goods, and everything depends on those jobs (most provided by absentee corporate investors and by federal and state government), but what we purchase with the income wouldn't get here without the Pacific. It's too expensive and cumbersome to drive it up the highway, and to bring it in by air. We're beholden to King Neptune.

We are even dependent on the Pacific for there being an American Alaska in the first place. During the summer of 1867, after William Seward had negotiated the Alaska purchase treaty and sent it to the Senate, the question of whether or not Alaska was a good buy, not to mention whether or not the U.S. could support a noncontiguous colony, was for a time very much up in the air. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and all depended on his support, or nonsupport, of the treaty, which had to be ratified by a two-thirds Senate majority to become real. Talking to his colleagues, Sumner realized more information about Alaska was going to be needed. In public remarks, he suggested the government speedily authorize a naval and scientific reconnaissance expedition to the Alaska coast.

The national press, papers both favoring (the vast majority) and opposing the purchase, quickly took up the cry, urging – in the words of the New York Herald – that a "wide-awake, little corps of proper men, untrammeled by red-tape restrictions," be dispatched forthwith.

[MORE HISTORY: 1926 aerial survey of Alaska improbably but successful]

And so they were. Under the direction of George Davidson, an accomplished scientist, the U.S. Coast Survey commissioned the Revenue Cutter Lincoln to carry the proper men, all experts in their chosen fields, first to Alaska and then along the coast as far as they could reach, to bring back "live information" on resources, Natives, rivers of commerce, and all other items pertinent to evaluating Alaska's worth to the U.S. Smithsonian Institution personnel wrote most of the detailed scientific instructions.

The expedition left San Francisco on July 21 and on Aug. 12 called on Russian-American governor Maksutov at Sitka. Subsequently they sailed north to Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet, and then along the Alaska Peninsula, narrowly avoiding crashing on the rocks in heavy seas and fog at Sanak Reef before calling at Unalaska.

The voyage lasted 100 days. After returning to Sitka, the Lincoln sailed up Lynn Canal to Chilkat before returning south to San Francisco. The "proper men" on board collected weather data, new charting of ocean currents, information about potential fisheries (in some river mouths the ship had trouble making headway against all the returning salmon), coal in Cook Inlet, 270 species of flora, and a comparison of potatoes grown in Southeast (small and watery) and Unalaska (large and tasty). They speculated on the potential of mineral development, and on fur, ice and ivory industries. They also found that smuggling of liquor would be a serious problem, as indeed it turned out to be. Natives in several villages were unwilling to talk, or sell goods, unless they received liquor in exchange.

[Seward and the Tlingit nation: A great diplomat's last treaty]

As it happened, the effort almost needn't have been undertaken. The Senate handily passed the Alaska purchase treaty, 37-2, while the expedition was underway. But Davidson's report did much to persuade the U.S. House the next summer to appropriate the $7.2 million purchase price. The new knowledge that the Pacific, and Alaska, could be managed played an important role.

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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