outed the loudest singer, and perhaps wound up by throwing
the roomful of revellers out of doors. But he rose from the depths of
debauch and despair, and went on with the game. That was the main
point.

The terrible position to which loss of supplies had reduced the traders
of Kadiak when his own vessel {325} was wrecked at Oonalaska on the way
out, demonstrated to Baranof the need of more ships; so when orders
came from his company in 1793 to construct a sailing boat on the
timberless island of Kadiak without iron, without axes, without saw,
without tar, without canvas, he was eager to attempt the impossible.
Shields, an Englishman, in the employment of Russia, was to act as
shipbuilder; and Baranof sent the men assigned for the work up to
Sunday Harbor on the west side of Prince William Sound, where heavy
forests would supply timber and the tide-rush help to launch the vessel
from the skids. There were no saws in the settlement. Planks had to
be hewn out of logs. Iron, there was none. The rusty remnants of old
wrecks were gathered together for bolts and joints and axes. Spruce
gum mixed with blubber oil took the place of oakum and tar below the
water-line. Moss and clay were used as calking above water. For sail
cloth, there was nothing but shreds and rags and tatters of canvas
patched together so that each mast-arm looked like Joseph's coat of
many colors. Seventy-nine feet from stem to stern, the crazy craft
measured, of twenty-three feet beam, thirteen draught, one hundred
tons, two decks, and three masts. All the winter of 1792-1793, just a
year after Robert Gray, the American, had built his sloop down at Fort
Defence off Vancouver Island, the Russian shipbuilding went on. Then
in April, lest the poverty of the Russians should become known to
foreign traders, Baranof sent Shields, the English {326} shipbuilder,
off out of the way, on an otter-hunting venture. It was August of the
next summer before the clumsy craft slipped from the skids into the
rising tide. She was so badly ballasted that she bobbled like cork;
and her sails so frail they flew to tatters in the gentlest wind; but
Russia had accomplished her first ship in America. Bells were set
ringing when the _Phoenix_ was towed into the harbor of Kadiak; and
when she reached Okhotsk laden with furs to the water-line in April of
1794, enthusiasm knew no bounds. Salvos of artillery thundered over
her sails, and mass was chanted, and a polish o