Medvezhy Island

Medvezhy Island Остров Медвежий
Island
Map of the Shantar Islands. Medvezhy is the long, narrow island in the far left corner.
Medvezhy Island
Coordinates: 54°38′N 136°20′E / 54.633°N 136.333°E / 54.633; 136.333
Country	Russian Federation
Federal subject	Far Eastern Federal District
Krai	Khabarovsk Krai
Elevation	174 m (571 ft)

Medvezhy Island (Russian: Медвежий остров Ostrov Medvezhy) is a long, narrow island in the northwestern Sea of Okhotsk, the westernmost of the Shantar Islands. It is 12.9 km (8 mi) long. It is separated from the mainland by Shevchenko Straight.

Between 1855 and 1874, American whaleships anchored under Medvezhy to obtain shelter from storms and retrieve wood. They also used it as a staging point to send out smaller whaleboats to capture bowhead whales in Uda and Tugur Bays. They called it Elbow Island. Two ships were wrecked on the island, both during a gale in October 1858. They were the bark Ocean Wave (380 tons), of New Bedford, and the bark Phoenix (323-325 tons), of Nantucket. The entire crew of the former vessel were lost, while six of the wrecked crew of the latter one, including the captain, were retrieved by whaleboats from the ship Florida, of Fairhaven, on 13 June 1859. They had been living at a nearby settlement; seventeen other crewmembers had spent the winter on Medvezhy.