Kotzebue Sound

Kotzebue Sound is an arm of the Chukchi Sea in western Alaska, 66°40' North 163° West. It is on the north side of the Seward Peninsula and is bounded on its east side by the Baldwin Peninsula. It is 161 km (100 miles) long and 113 km (70 miles) wide.

Related Topics:
Chukchi Sea - Alaska - Seward Peninsula - Baldwin Peninsula

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The towns of Kotzebue, Kiwalik and Deering are on the shores of Kotzebue Sound.

Related Topics:
Kotzebue - Kiwalik - Deering

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Kotzebue Sound was explored and named in 1816 by Count Otto von Kotzebue while searching for the Northwest Passage in the service of Russia.

Related Topics:
1816 - Otto von Kotzebue - Northwest Passage - Russia

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Factually incorrect. Kotzebue Sound was named after Otto's father August von Kotzebue. It bore that name well before Count Otto showed up in the Rurik. Otto was an effete, listless and unadventurous "explorer" and enjoyed little or no respect from his crew of mercenaries, not to mention being lazy, poorly schooled (Otto behaved like a diplomatic dunce in his fumbled visit with the Spanish Consuls at San Pedro and Los Angeles, whose hospitality the crew enjoyed) and by the time they reached Alaska, patently out of his depth in his vanity role as Captain of the Rurik Expedition, according to Chamisso's Diary. After going through the motions of attempting to sail further North than the Sound of Kotzebue Senior's sterner expeditionary music, the insipid and sickly Otto half-heartedly turned back and, as on the outbound journey, did nothing to intervene against the abject wholesale vandalism which his befuddled crew wrought upon Alaskan soil and also that of the Marshall Islands, destroying significant portions of the samples Chamisso had painstakingly collected to document flora and fauna of the place he described as "the ultimate paradise on Earth". Ironically, this locale later became known as The Bikini Atoll, scene of even greater and more widespread vandalism by the Eduard Teller destruction society, worse than even the misanthrope Otto v.Kotzebue had been unable, or was ill-disposed to prevent from taking place. The Rurik expedition was, all in all, an abject failure.

Related Topics:
August von Kotzebue - Rurik - Los Angeles - Chamisso - Diary - Marshall Islands - Bikini Atoll - Eduard Teller

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