Maritime Monday: 227 Doukhobors Arrive in Canada in 1912

SS Californian on the morning after Titanic sank

In the spring of 1912, four separate ships brought more exiled Russian Doukhobors to a new life in Canada.

These journeys might have been unremarkable except for the following events:

• The Ultonia lost one life when a male infant child (Ivan Rybalkin) died at sea. [5]

• The Canada had to quarantine two Doukhobor families (Esaulov and Kolesnikov) on its arrival. [6]

• The Californian “observed distress signals sent up by the nearby sinking Titanic but ignored them”. [7]

Sources:

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, Californian.jpg

1. Steve Lapshinoff & Jonathan Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928 (Crescent Valley: self-published, 2001), 138; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # T-4692. Note: There is some controversy whether or not there were passengers aboard the Californian during this April voyage. For anecdotal evidence that a six-member family travelled on that ship, see “Polly (Harelkin) Verigin: Recalling the Titanic”, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Harelkin.html : accessed 10 April 2016).

2. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 139; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # C-4784.

3. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 140-143; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # T-4744.

4. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 144-146; citing National Archives of Canada, Microfilm Reel # T-4787.

5. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 143.

6. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 144-145.

7. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 138.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.