Perry Collins

Perry McDonough Collins was the visionary behind the Russian-American Telegraph of 1865–1867. The failed venture aimed to connect America to Europe by telegraph via the Bering Strait.

Born in Hyde Park, New York, in 1813, he was named after American naval heroes, Commodores Oliver Hazard Perry, Matthew Perry (naval officer) and Thomas MacDonough. Little is known of his early life, but in his early thirties he left his unrewarding law office job and routine east coast lifestyle. In 1846, he headed south to New Orleans. There he met manifest destiny evangelists William McKendree Gwin and Robert J Walker who fervently believed that America should dominate the North American continent. When news of the California gold rush reached New Orleans, Gwin went west with the aim of becoming California's first (Democrat) senator. Collins followed on deciding to mine not gold but the miners. He tried his hand as a lawyer in Sonora. Records reveal that he took part in seven cases, lost six and won the other by default. He turned to business and helped start the American Russian Commercial Company with Gwin. This started with the opportunistic aim of shipping ice from the Arctic to San Francisco.

When Gwin became one of California's first two senators, Collins had a direct line to Washington. He planned to use it to support new and exotic schemes looking beyond the Pacific and into Asia. At that time, Russia had expanded towards the Asian side of the Pacific. In 1847, the appointed Governor, Nikolai Muraviev, was determined to expand Russian trade and fixed on the Amur River, its boundary with China, as the key geostrategic location.

Gwin together with William Seward looked on this Russian eastern expansion and convinced themselves that it paralleled America's expansion westward. Financing a survey, Collins, already a fan of Ferdinand von Wrangel read it eagerly on his return. He later wrote "I had already fixed in my own mind upon the river Amoor as the destined channel by which American commercial enterprise was to penetrate the obscure depths of Northern Asia, and open a new world to trade and civilization."

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