On May 25, 1936, 22-year-old Clark Maxwell Runyan of Seattle, Washington, started a diary with the following entry. "For the past two weeks, I have been working standby aboard the schooner C.S. Holmes preparatory to sailing as supercargo, donkeyman, on her annual trip to Point Barrow, Alaska."
Like most people in the United States at the time, Runyan was affected by the Great Depression's economic woes. He was not an experienced boatman when he left his job at the Seattle Hardware Company for the increased income the C.S. Holmes would provide. While voyaging to the Far North as a crew member on the renowned ship’s supply run, Runyan shared in a grand sailing adventure and came in contact with unique and changing cultures.
Photo: Clark Runyan in Arctic garb. Clark Runyan Photo Album
A sailboat built in the Puget Sound
In 1893, Hall Brothers Shipyards at Port Blakely on Bainbridge Island built the schooner C.S. Holmes, a four-masted, 162.8-foot, windjammer. According to maritime historian Gary M. White, vessels constructed by Isaac, Winslow, and Henry Hall were admired for their “exceptional workmanship, exquisite hull lines, long sharp bows, graceful sterns, great speed, large capacity, and ease of sailing.”
The C.S. Holmes was the pride and joy of a Seattle-based father-and-son duo with the surname Backland. Captain John Backland Sr. was born in Sweden in 1870. He later moved to England to become a naturalized British subject. Backland began seafaring at an early age and was a master of English merchant ships between London and the South Pacific. He emigrated to the Pacific Northwest in 1906 with his wife and two young children. The captain was a religious man who became a prominent elder in Seattle's First Presbyterian Church.
Captain Backland aquired an 87-foot schooner called the Volante, soon after arriving in the U.S. The purchase of this ship was consistent with his preference for piloting vessels without auxiliary power. He used the Volante to establish the Midnight Sun Trading Company that delivered goods to hospitals, churches, schools, reindeer herders, and trading posts in northwestern Alaska. The reputable captain did not deliver alcohol.
In 1908, Captain Backland bought the Transit, a 165-foot, four-masted schooner, with higher cargo capacity. During the 1913 summer sailing season, the Transit was crushed by Arctic Ocean ice near Barrow, the northernmost settlement in the United States. Undaunted by the loss, he then purchased the schooner C.S. Holmes. The senior Backland began grooming his successor by taking 14-year-old son John Jr. on an expedition to New Zealand.
Photo: The C. S. Holmes. Courtesy Bainbridge Island Historical Museum.
The son takes over
John Backland Jr. made his first trip to the Arctic when he was 19. He later earned degrees in English and philosophy from the University of Washington and obtained his captain's license. In 1928, the 26-year-old John Backland Jr. took over the helm after his father became terminally ill.
Captain John Backland Jr. was 34 years old in 1936, yet, he had fifteen years of experience working the C.S. Holmes through the Arctic's icy labyrinths. It was a pivotal spring for the Midnight Sun Trading Company. On April 17, 1936, Captain Backland received a disheartening letter from Lewis B. Schwellenbach, one of Washington's Unites States Senators, concerning one of the captain’s most important freighting contracts. The government would be taking over the Presbyterian hospital in Barrow, and despite Schwellenbach's expressed concerns, would be using its vessel, the Bureau of Indian Affairs motor ship the North Star, to deliver supplies to all government divisions of northwestern Alaska.
There was a certain irony in this situation. The vessel that could be putting Captain Backland out of business was the ship that saved him in 1933 when the C.S. Holmes was trapped by ice for 21 days near Wainwright, 90 miles southwest of Barrow. During that ominous experience, the crew was unsuccessful in using dynamite to clear a path to open water, and it took a pull from the North Star's towlines to free their ship.
For three decades, the Backlands supplemented their company's income by acquiring fur through trading posts established in many of the villages. But now, operations were put in further jeopardy by low fur prices and a dramatic fall in the number of foxes captured. To make matters even worse, the Seattle maritime strike made it hard to recruit crew members.
Headed North
On May 11, Clark Runyan and the rest of the 10-man crew began loading the ship at Pier 5 (now Pier 56) on Seattle’s waterfront for a four-month voyage. Runyan's May 26 diary entry said, "there was quite a crowd when we left." Family, friends, and curious spectators crossed the newly constructed Alaska Way Seawall to witness a remnant of the Golden Age of Sail. The C.S. Holmes was the last commercial sailing vessel traveling to the Arctic.
The Seattle Times had this to say about the skipper's winter expoits in New York and London after the C.S. Holmes raised her canvas. "Captain Backland underwent his annual transformation yesterday. For six months, he has led the life of a dilettante, enjoying all the social adulation that a young, handsome, cultured and well-to-do bachelor can expect… Captain Backland, a sailor of the vanishing school, went below to take off his well-pressed suit and slipped into dungarees."
Photos: Captain John Backland Jr. changes his clothing for the trip north. Backland Family Collection
The C.S. Holmes was towed out of Elliott Bay and across Puget Sound by the Martha Foss. She was leaving Seattle, "The Gateway to Alaska," and its bustling modern port that had evolved since Captain Backland arrived there as a young boy. The Seattle Tower and the Smith Tower dominated a growing skyline. The latter, at 38 stories, was the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.
Captain Backland was transporting his crew to a different world. Before outside contact, the Arctic's indigenous inhabitants thrived for thousands of years in one of Earth's most physically demanding environments. In 1936, Natives still obtained much of their needed subsistence items from local resources, but the 1930s was a transitional period for people of the Far North. Airplanes would become a more efficient postal service delivery system than dog teams, who could only bring mail two or three times during eight months of winter. Wooden structures were replacing semi-subterranean homes, and a foreign education and religion had become compulsory.
By June 12, the C.S. Holmes had nearly crossed the North Pacific and the Gulf of Alaska. The Aleutian Island volcano, Mount Shishaldin, was the first landmass sighted in many days. On June 15, the ship tacked a dozen times through Unimak Pass and then entered the Bering Sea.
Photo: Captian John Backland Jr. fishes for cod before entering Unimak Pass.
Clark Runyan Photo Album
First Village Visit
The C.S. Holmes was still over 100 miles from its first Native village visit on Saint Lawrence Island on June 20. It was Runyan's 23rd birthday. The following day was the first day of summer and the weather was awful. "Heavy seas broke over the bow and side," wrote Runyan. "The ship rises and falls on waves about 30-40 feet high and about a ship's length apart, so that one moment you're standing on your head and the next sliding down a precipice."
After the storm, Captain Backland nervously paced the deck in the dense fog near the island, which sits 40 miles off the Russian coast. The officers took soundings every half-hour.
Natives from this part of Alaska all the way to Barrow had gone virtually undisturbed until whaling captain Thomas Roys sailed north of the Bering Strait in 1848. Commercial whaling produced life-altering consequences in all of the Far North. Arctic historian John Bockstoce estimates that over 7000 whales were killed in the first five years. When commercial whaling ended around 1914, over 18,000 whales, and nearly 150,000 walruses had been taken.
The number of inhabitants on Saint Lawrence Island had increased since the famine of 1878-1880 when 90% of the population died. Speculative causes for the deaths included lack of food resources, variable weather conditions, alcohol consumption, and infectious diseases.
The C.S. Holmes arrived at the Yupik speaking village of Gambell on June 24. "At 9:00 a.m., the Eskimos flocked out to the ship in droves with their bags of ivory and fur," reported Runyan. "They are an agreeable sort, and very honest." The scene was similar in each village the C.S. Holmes visited. A flotilla of umiaks made of driftwood and animal skins brought residents out to trade with the captain, who bartered using the Native languages of those he served.
Photo: Gambell resident traders on the C. S. Holmes. Clark Runyan Photo Album
The C.S. Holmes, with its 556 net ton cargo capacity, was a floating department store. Trade articles stowed in Captain Backland's cargo bays included medicine, guns, ammunition, clothing, groceries, trapping supplies, outboard motors, bolts of cloth, needles and thread, lumber, radios, and lots and lots of coal.
After delivering Gambell's Presbyterian mission orders, the C.S. Holmes sailed 60 miles east along the northern coastline of Saint Lawrence Island to Savoonga. Runyan stated, "we are not in a very big hurry as the skipper received word yesterday that there is lots of ice on the (Alaska) mainland." Captain Backland thought it would be a long and formidable season from meeting ice so soon.
The C.S. Holmes kept two 24-foot, Norwegian-style, gas-powered motorboats built by George Kneass of San Francisco, hung in davits. They were first lowered in Savoonga to help replenish the water supply. On many of the ship's journeys, these boats used towlines to guide the vessel through treacherous ice.
Photo: Gas-powered motor tug. Clark Runyan Photo Album
Crossing the Bering Strait and Arctic Circle
On July 1, the ship approached Wales. The Inupiaq speaking village sits at the westernmost tip of mainland North America, which defines the Bering Strait's eastern boundary. In 1885, the United States Secretary of the Interior appointed Sheldon Jackson to be the General Agent for Education in Alaska. In 1890, Jackson sent William Thomas (W.T.) Lopp to Wales to start the first school and church in northwestern Alaska.
Jackson's educational plan revolved around the establishment of village reindeer herds. Herding would he be a vehicle to bring English language instruction and western religion to the Native people of the Far North. In theory, it would also help create stable food supplies and provide a future economy. Captain Michael Healy of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear delivered Russian reindeer to the region in 1892.
Lopp supported Native reindeer stewardship throughout his life. In 1936, the 72-year-old advocate booked passage aboard the North Star, which would cross paths with the C.S. Holmes later in her voyage. Lopp, a Seattle resident, was concerned the Loman Corporation of Nome was driving Natives out of business, so he headed north to gather information to present to Congress. Every site supplied by the C.S. Holmes had reindeer, and the status of Native herding was a hot topic of conversation in Inupiaq villages from Wales to Barrow.
On the afternoon of July 2, Wales reindeer herders and school teachers came out to the C.S. Holmes. After filling trade orders, the ship headed north and crossed the Arctic Circle. On July 6, due to shallow water, she dropped the hook about 10 miles off Kotzebue. Here, the crew would have its most extended stay as it waited for the ice to clear up north.
Kotzebue lies on the tip of the Baldwin Peninsula. Sisualik, the site of the world's largest annual pre-contact gathering of Eskimos, sits across the bay. Natives once traveled hundreds of miles to trade there under established truces. By 1936, Kotzebue had become the regional trading hub. Captain John Backland Sr. once operated a salmon cannery in the bustling village.
Runyan was unable to go ashore until July 11 due to inclement weather. He stayed at a bed-and-breakfast run by George Ito, a Japanese immigrant. Runyan received a letter from home and was able to send a few out as well. The next day his diary stated, "Walked down the beach this morning, and took in the sights, tents, shanties, dogs, drying racks…the dogs make lots of noise, and the church bells ring most of the time."
Back on May 26, the Seattle Times reported that Captain Backland could expect "no country club dances where he is going." Kotzebue locals, instead, honored him with Native dancing after unloading all freight.
Photo: Lightering freight in Kotzebue. Clark Runyan Photo Album
On July 25, Captain Backland told the crew that Barrow was still "frozen in solid." The next day the C.S. Holmes made a trip south to Shishmaref to deliver cargo. She then headed north and encountered "mosquitoes like airplanes" in Kivalina. The ship arrived in Point Hope on July 29.
The village of Point Hope is located at one of Alaska's most productive year-round marine mammal hunting spots. It is the oldest continuously-inhabited site in North America. In 1936, many Point Hope residents lived in semi-subterranian houses, and the village featured a burial ground lined with an enormous whale bone fence.
In the 1880s, commercial whalers began overwintering in the Arctic. They noticed the abundance of bowhead whales passing Point Hope. In 1887, A shore-based whaling station called Jabbertown was created four miles east of the village. The name came from the mix of language between white and black Americans, Germans, Japanese, Hawaiians, Portuguese, Irish, Cape Verdeans, and Inupiaq. This year-round outside influence was the introduction to a cash-based economy in northwestern Alaska.
Wainwright and Barrow
On August 6, after unloading cargo in Point Hope and Point Lay, the C.S. Holmes anchored off Wainwright. Captain Backland brought freight for one of his many trading posts, and he delivered a "knock-down" Presbyterian Church. Midnight Sun Trading Company store manager Dick Hall led the construction. Lay minister Percy Ipalook, who rented a house from the company, acted as overseer.
Ipalook had been in the first wave of Natives to seek education outside of Alaska. He became the first ordained Inupiaq minister and later was the first Inupiaq elected as an Alaskan legislator.
The summer ice conditions in 1936 rivaled those of 1933. The memory of icy entrapment was undoubtedly on Captain Backland's mind when he hired two Native Wainwright ice pilots to guide him north.
Photo: One of the Wainwright ice pilots. Clark Runyan Photo Album
The ice pack was still visible on August 8, when the ship arrived in Barrow. The next day, crew members were granted shore leave, and Runyan met Dr. Henry Greist, who was also the Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Molly, who was the head nurse. The pair had been in Barrow since 1921 but were leaving due to the Federal government takeover of the hospital.
Captain Backland agreed to deliver the Greist's belongings to Seattle free of charge. He did this despite a public disagreement with Dr. Greist over his recent Federal emergency food request. "The so-called relief effort hurts everyone in the Arctic," said Captain Backland in a Seattle Times news article, "Eskimos get used to white man's grub, and it kills their self-reliance."
Photo: The school and church in Barrow. Clark Runyan Photo Album
While in Barrow, the C.S. Holmes helped out in the aftermath of an American tragedy. In the fall of 1935, aviation pioneer Wiley Post, the first person to fly solo around the world, was scouting a future mail route between Alaska and Russia. His passenger was Will Rogers, syndicated columnist, movie star, and one of the most famous people in the country. Sadly, the pair died when their plane crashed after taking off from Walukpa Lagoon west of Barrow. Airplane engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney asked Captain Backland to transport parts of the aircraft. Before heading south on August 11, the crew loaded the engine, propeller, and instrumentation.
Photo: C. S. Holmes crew members near the Post/Rogers wreckage. Clark Runyan Photo Album
Headed Home
Captain Backland and his crew traveled south without incident. On August 28, both the C.S. Holmes and the North Star anchored off Kotzebue. Working aboard the government boat was Howard Rock of Point Hope. Rock was enrolled in the University of Washington art program for the upcoming fall session. One day he would play a vital role in the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act.
In Kotzebue, the crew would surely have been informed of the University of Washington's gold medal in rowing at Hitler's Olympics in Berlin, Germany, and of the labor strike that shut down the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
As the C.S. Holmes reentered the Puget Sound on September 15, Runyan wrote, “It has been a long, hard trip, but I’m not sorry I made it, for it has been a real and rare experience.” His daily notes indicate that he gained knowledge of sailing by the end of the voyage. Runyan later made good on his diary pledge to “attend the U of W the following fall,” and became a successful banker and businessman.
The new financial climate made continued travel to the Arctic economically unfeasible for Captain Backland. The C.S. Holmes made its last trip to the Arctic in 1937. That same year, Lopp's efforts proved successful, and Congress passed the Reindeer Act, giving Natives sole ownership of Alaska’s herds.
Both the captain and his ship were called to duty in World War II. Captain Backland’s Arctic navigation expertise was put to good use. He became Commander Backland of the United States Navy, and chief ice pilot for strategic northern supply destinations, including Barrow.
The C.S. Holmes had a less noteworthy second career. The distinguished Arctic sailing vessel from the Puget Sound was requisitioned by the Army. She ignominiously had her masts shorn, and served as a barge in the war effort.
Photo: The C. S. Holmes. Backland family collection
