Alaska: The Legend of the Sea Otter Rocks - 1896

[Old Bookaroo]

AFTER THE LOST SEA OTTER ROCKS.

Capt. Harry Ohlemutz After Wealth In The Westward.
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It is an old story in Juneau and yet it is always new. Every fall when the sealers come in from the westward the bronzed faced old deepwater salts gather around the stove at slim [sic] Jim’s or the Flag of All Nations and swap stories with the returning Yukoners. To all the stories of fabulous strikes tales of lost rockers and wonderful bars and lodge this story of the sea otter rocks of the westward is the stock foil. But once in a while there comes in from off the North Pacific a man who’s in earnest about the rocks and then there is serious talk of an expedition to find them. That happens perhaps once in five or six years. It happened this fall and the story has been vigorously revived.

Nobody knows who first saw the lost sea otter rocks but the story is as old as Baronoff or older. Somewhere away off to the westward from Sitka there lies a low long reef of jagged rocks whose tops just reach the surface at high tide. About these rocks the sea otter gather, as the seals did on the “beaches of Luckannon before the sealers came.” The man who finds them makes a fortune. The tradition is that about a hundred years ago an old Russian whaler found them and killed more than a hundred sea otter. When he had made his cargo he went in and told the story of his discovery. They organized an expedition then to go out to the rocks again but before it was ready to sail the old Captain died and the expedition had no other leader. If the Captain had made a chart of the rocks no one found it and not in all his papers could any man discover a memorandum of the latitude and longitude. But now Capt. Harry Ohlemutz of the whaling schooner Nellie Martin has found a record of the lost rocks. He rolled into Juneau not long ago and sang this song to one of his friends.

“You’ve heard of them ‘sea otter rocks’ way out in the ocean to the westward, them as were discovered by the earliest Russian navigators way back in the other century. Well, I’m going to find them or bust in the attempt. For nigh onto the last five years I’ve traded and sailed about to the westward and all this time I’ve hunted for signs of them low-reefed rocks where the sea otters breed and hang about in schools of hundreds. About a year ago I ran across an old Russian sea Captain at Kodiak, and he told me he had the records of an old Russian navigator who records finding them rocks. I entered into a contract with the Captain and promised to give him a third of the skins if he would divulge the location of them mysterious rocks. We made a bargain. The log book of the Russian navigator located the latitude and longitude and describes
them as a low reef of rocks which are about covered at the high stages of the tide. I’m off for them isles and came to Juneau to get provisions and supplies for a season’s cruise. If I find them I’m a rich man as good sea otter skins bring all the way from $100 to $300 apiece. Shake! I’m off for the paradise of the sea otter hunter and if I find the rocks and make a haul you’ll hear from me sure.”

The Sun. (New York [N.Y.]) 05 Jan. 1896. [Vol. LXIII. – NO. 127.]

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

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