Alaska and Russian deal!?

[David Lockmiller]

(05-19-2016 04:23 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  \

I seem to recall there was also a deal with Russia made during the CW already for a trans-Pacific cable that had never realized/been finished, the trans-Atlantic did instead. But AFAIremember it was the prelude for the Alaska purchase.

Eva Elisabeth, thank you for this information. I was unaware of this alternative project to the trans-Atlantic cable. I followed the link which you provided. I have made a summary of the material as best I was able to do so, with an emphasis on the contribution to the project that was made by President Lincoln, the visonary.


The Russian–American Telegraph, also known as the Western Union Telegraph Expedition and the Collins Overland Telegraph, was a $3,000,000 (equivalent to $46.4 million in present day terms) undertaking by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1865–1867, to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco, California to Moscow, Russia.

Abandoned in 1867, the Russian–American Telegraph was considered an economic failure, but history now deems it a "successful failure" because of the many benefits the exploration brought to the regions that were traversed.

On July 1, 1864, the American president Abraham Lincoln granted the company a right of way from San Francisco to the British Columbia border and assigned the steamship Saginaw from the US Navy. The George S. Wright and the infamous Nightingale, a former slave ship, were also put into service, as well as a fleet of riverboats and schooners.

When that section of the line reached New Westminster, British Columbia in the spring of 1865, the first message it carried was of the April 15 assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The line passed Fort Fraser and reached the Skeena River, creating the settlement of Hazelton when it was learned that Cyrus West Field had successfully laid the transatlantic cable on July 27, 1866. In British Columbia, construction of the overland line was halted on February 27, 1867, as the whole project was now deemed obsolete.

The telegraph expedition, while an abject economic failure, may have precipitated the US purchase of Alaska by providing useful valuable data on the territory. The expedition was responsible for the first examination of the flora, fauna and geology of Russian America.



I hope that you found at least some humor in my previous posting.