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North to Alaska In the summer of 2000, as the world enters the new millennium, Smith will embark on an historically important environmental and cultural project. Through the collaboration of the Alumnae Association of Smith College (AASC) and the Clark Science Center's Environmental Science and Policy Program, a voyage will begin in Seattle to initiate this special project, "The 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced: A Century of Change." It was 100 years ago, in late May 1899,
as the Victorian Age and the 19th century were drawing to a close,
that railroad tycoon Edward Harriman, his family, some friends
and a cadre of scientists and artists assembled on a Seattle
wharf ready to embark on a two-month steamship exploration of
9,000 miles of Alaska's coastline. The trip originally had been
organized by Harriman as a family vacation, a recreational cruise.
But by the time the ship pushed off into the cold northern waters,
this voyage, which was also providing an opportu-nity for Harriman
to Expedition members included 25 of the nation's most eminent intellects, including naturalist and mountaineer John Muir, nature writer John Burroughs and photographer Edward Curtis. Harriman had given them a mission: to study Alaska's landscape, geology, wildlife and botany, and observe the impact of human activity on natural resources such as gold, fur seals, salmon fisheries and forests. Scientist George Bird Grinnell and photographer Curtis galvanized their interests in accurately interpreting the native cultures they encountered. And when the steamship puffed back into the Seattle harbor in July 1899 its hold carried not only the Harriman family's souvenirs but also some 100 trunks of specimens, field notes and over 5000 photographs and colored illustrations of birds, mammals, fossils and plants. Ten years later, scientists had compiled the data and filled 12 published volumes with their reports. Now Smith College plans to make its own contribution to the scientific world by retracing Harriman's expedition. A century ago, science was a gentleman's occupation and a woman's college could not have dreamed of undertaking such a voyage. (In 1899, the only women passengers on board Harriman's chartered ship were spouses, daughters, cousins and young friends. None was a scientist.) One hundred years later it seems only appropriate that Smith College, one of the top-ranked colleges in the country for educating women in the sciences, take a leadership role in organizing this expedition. As Tom Litwin, director of Smith's Clark Science Center, says, "This is a national historic event for which we now have a stewardship responsibility." So after a year and a half of planning, Smith is in the final stages of organizing--and leading--an expeditionary voyage that will retrace the route of the 1899 Harriman expedition. Litwin has teamed up the AASC Travel Program, Werner Zehnder, president of Zegrahm Expeditions, and Lawrence Hott, producer/director of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, to create a voyage true to its historical counterpart. A critical turning point for the project came when Phoebe A. Wood '75, vice president for finance and planning, ARCO Alaska, agreed to be the Anchorage host for project planning. "For me," says Phoebe Wood in an e-mail post from Alaska, "this project is a very satisfying coming-together of my Smith heritage, my residency in Alaska and my professional background in the resource industry. It is a natural project for me to be enthusiastic about." She continues: "To those on the trip, the voyage will open up Alaska as more than a remote land of great beauty, which it unquestionably is, but also as a place of passionate men and women who love Alaska greatly and have participated in shaping and reshaping its future. The film and education outreach portion of the project has the potential to share this throughout the country." The itinerary for the trip, which leaves
Seattle on July 10, 2000, is ambitious. Its mission: to survey
the Alaskan landscape and the ecological and social changes that
have occurred over the last 100 years. "In many ways, the Harriman expedition's records are a precious time capsule, a legacy of data and images for us to examine, left by the scientists and artists who participated in 1899," he notes. "The new expedition allows us to open that capsule and not only compare its contents with what we see on the Alaskan coast today, but also contrast how the old expedition viewed and understood the Alaska of its time with how we see it in ours." For its own expedition, Smith is assembling a team of scholarly experts from 10 interdisciplinary areas including wildlife and marine conservation biology, geology, anthropology and natural-history writing and photography. Each participant is being selected based on his or her scholarly or artistic accomplishments relevant to Alaskan science, art or culture and will be asked to provide onboard lectures, participate in a documentary film about the voyage and contribute written essays to a companion book. "Make no mistake about this," says Carrie Cadwell, executive director of the Smith Alumnae Association. "This is an expedition, not a cruise." She says Smith has booked the World Discoverer, a 126-passenger vessel and one of only four passenger ships in the world capable of remote expeditionary cruising. The one-month trip will be divided into two-week segments and will follow a route through the Inside Passage, along the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands, north through the Pribilof Islands, across the Arctic Circle to the Bering Strait. While in the Bering Sea the ship will stop in Provideniya, Russia, and then continue along Siberia's Chukchi Peninsula. According to Werner Zehnder, the World Discoverer is built for such expeditions. "It has a shallow draft that makes it able to go into very small bays and has the highest hull-ice rating possible, giving it the capability to make shoreline and glacial exploration possible," he notes. The boat also carries its own fleet of Zodiacs, the small, inflatable landing craft developed by Jacques Cousteau. For the 2000 expedition, Smith has set aside 96 berths for Smith alumnae, their families and members of the Alaskan community, reserved on a first-come, first-served basis through the AASC. Three other bunks are reserved for top Smith students selected from the class of 2001 who will participate in an onboard special studies project. The rest of the berths will go to the 18 invited experts, naturalists and dignitaries. Fund-raising efforts are currently under way to cover the voyage fares of the Smith students and resident scientific experts. The Smith expedition will be a national multifaceted education project. When the boat returns to Seattle, one phase of the project will have been accomplished-the journey itself, retracing the unique 1899 voyage. The second phase-the educational component-will establish an interpretive framework for examining human activity in relation to environmental and cultural change. Litwin will edit a book of essays, photographs and illustrations contributed by the expert expedition members. The book will be a companion piece to a PBS-quality, feature-length documentary film on both expeditions, produced by the award-winning Florentine Films/Hott Productions. Costs for both the film and the book will be covered by grants and contributions. Project collaborators include not only Florentine Films, the AASC and the Smith Environmental Science and Policy Program, but also the nationally recognized School for Field Studies, renowned for its undergraduate programming and contributions to environmental studies pedagogy and problem solving. Financial support for the expedition's overall development was provided by the Andreas Foundation, the Charles D. Webster Trust, the Town Creek Foundation, Smith College and ARCO Alaska. |
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