{"id":1606,"date":"2018-09-12T01:25:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T05:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/pr\/?p=1606"},"modified":"2026-07-13T22:34:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T02:34:49","slug":"umes-marine-scientist-moonlights-as-an-archaeologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/umes-marine-scientist-moonlights-as-an-archaeologist\/","title":{"rendered":"UMES marine scientist moonlights as an archaeologist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Marine scientist Dr. Bradley Stevens in his YouTube video<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Bradley Stevens’ new book is about discovering a sunken 19th century Russian ship<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday, September 12, 2018<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Dr. Bradley G. Stevens<\/strong> joined the University of Maryland Eastern Shore faculty in 2009 as a marine scientist, he conducted research on the biology and reproduction of king crabs for 22 years in Kodiak, Alaska.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 21st<\/sup> century, Stevens added successful underwater archaeologist to his list of accomplishments.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stevens and fellow scientists donned wet suits and discovered a mid-19th<\/sup> century shipwreck at the bottom of Icon Bay off the coast of Alaska’s Spruce Island.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kad’yak \u201cwas a Russian three-masted sailing ship carrying ice from Kodiak to San Francisco,\u201d Stevens said in a YouTube video<\/a><\/strong>. \u201cIn 1860, it set forth from Kodiak and after sailing only three miles, ran into a rock and (eventually) sank.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat would have been the end of the story – except for one fascinating detail,\u201d Stevens said, describing what inspired his upcoming new book, “The Ship, the Saint, and the Sailor: the Long Search for the Legendary Kad’yak.”<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe (ship’s) captain had given a solemn vow to hold a religious service over the grave of Father Herman,\u201d a 19th<\/sup> century Russian Orthodox Church missionary living in the Alaska territory, he said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor some reason (the ship’s captain) didn’t do it,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cAnd after his (disabled) ship \u2026 drifted for four days – because it (was) full of ice – it finally sank right in front of Father Herman’s grave\u201d on April 2, 1860.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kad’yak’s wheel hub image by Stefan Quinth<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Herman was a \u201crevered saint \u2026 the first North American saint in the Russian Orthodox Church who had lived and died on remote Spruce Island,\u201d Stevens says in a video he filmed aboard a boat to promote his book.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, (some) 140 years later, after painstaking research into historical documents, I found the ship\u201d in 2003, he said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver the next year,\u201d Stevens and fellow explorers \u201cbattled with other divers over who actually owned the rights\u201d to the wreck.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The divers confirmed the wreck’s identity when they found the hub of the ship’s wheel displaying the name \u201cKad’yak\u201d in Cyrillic.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the work of Stevens and fellow explorers, the Kad’yak site is on the U.S. Department of Interior’s National Register of Historical Places \u201cfor the significant role it played in Alaska’s history,\u201d according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steven said he set out to tell \u201cthe story of the Kad’yak, Father Herman and Captain (Illarion) Arkhimandritov in the context of the Alaskan ice trade, the history of Alaska and the archaeological expedition that uncovered the ship\u201d by taking readers \u201cinto the deep dark waters of time and \u2026 to bring the Kad’yak from mystery to history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

 Stevens’ book is published by Alaska Northwest Books, an imprint of Graphic Arts Books; October, 2018<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Bradley Stevens’ new book is about discovering a sunken 19th century Russian ship Wednesday, September 12, 2018 Before Dr. Bradley G. Stevens joined the University of Maryland Eastern Shore faculty in 2009 as a marine scientist, he conducted research on the biology and reproduction of king crabs for 22 years in Kodiak, Alaska.   In the…Read more UMES marine scientist moonlights as an archaeologist<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}