Here Comes the Polly: A Biography of a Russian Built Gunboat (The Politkofsky)

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127 pp. "Politkofsky was a small Russian-built sidewheel gunboat that patrolled the Alaskan Panhandle in the 1860s. She was built of yellow cedar at New Archangel, or Sitka, and wa s 120 feet (37 m) in length and 152 tons displacement. Early copper boilers and a cross-head engine installed, and these came from an earlier ship Imperator Nicholas 1. When the Czar sold Russia to the US in 1867, the steamer was included in the deal. The paddler was then sold into civilian service as a tugboat. She worked the northwest coast, as the tug Polly, and went into Yukon River Gold Rush service, where she sank in the river in 1906." Includes black-and-white illustrations. Show more