Teaser Trailer:
This image from the US Geological Survey shows Deadmans Island, sitting about half a mile from the Wrangell Airport runway.
Deadmans Island sits a short distance from the north end of Wrangell Island and is easily visible from the Wrangell Airport. The island is wild, uninhabited, and contains a rich layer of growth beneath the trees.
This illustration from the June 8, 1924 San Francisco Chronicle accompanied an outlandish sea story by “Cappy Ricks” about Chinese bodies preserved in barrels. Stories like this were meant to entertain, more than to inform — but their cultural impact was felt regardless.
Two months after the wreck of the Star of Bengal, Patrick Loftus testified to seeing the bodies of the dead cannery workers buried on Coronation Island. Unlike the stories about Chinese bodies on Deadmans Island, these statements are corroborated by other witnesses and newspaper accounts from the time.
“Mr. Shadesty’s Tombstone”
Around 1905, this image of a bear statue carved from marble appeared in newspapers around the country. The accompanying newspaper article attributed it to a late, wealthy Tlingit man named Shadesty. In 1905, the Seattle Daily Times wrote:
A stone carving of a grizzly bear in the attitude of defending her cubs has been carved by Andrew Chester Thompson of Seattle and will be immediately shipped to Alaska to be placed over the grave of R. Shadesty, one of the most prominent Indians in the North when alive. He died December 17, 1903, leaving $600 to defray the cost of the monument. The big piece of stone carving, weighing 3,600 pounds, will be shipped from Seattle to Wrangell and from that point will be carried about 150 miles overland to the home of the Bear family Indians. Mr. Thompson has been carving images for Alaska Indians for the past twenty-five years, but this is the largest monument he has shipped to Alaska, carved from a single piece of marble… the work done for Shadesty is novel in conception.
Here’s some of the photos I took at Deadmans Island back in August 2007.