Monks Lagoon is located on Icon Bay, a bight approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) wide, on the southeastern shore of Spruce Island, about 6.6 miles (10.6 km) north of Kodiak and 5.7 miles (9 km) south-southeast of Ouzinkie, Alaska. Spruce Island lies northeast of Kodiak Island, across the Narrow Strait. The name “Ostrov Yelovoi” or “Pine Island” was recorded in 1805 by Yuri Lysianskyi, an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy and the commanding officer of the Russian-American Company‘s merchant sloop Neva. This vessel participated in the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth. From 1808 to 1818, Spruce Island served as the hermitage of Herman of Alaska, who was later canonized as a saint and is regarded as the patron saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Americas. Icon Bay is also the location of the  shipwrecked Kad’yak, a merchant vessel of the Russian-American Company.

Herman was born in 1756 in the Voronezh Governorate, Russia, to a prosperous peasant or merchant family. In 1782, a young military clerk named Egor Ivanovich Popov from the same region was tonsured with the name “Herman” at Valaam Monastery on Valaam Island in Lake Ladoga. In 1793, he joined the first Orthodox mission to Russian America, traveling with eight other monks to preach the Gospel to the Alaska Native Aleuts and Yupʼik in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula. He frequently defended them against injustices and exploitation by Russian traders. Known to the natives as “Apa,” meaning “Grandfather,” he spent most of his life as the sole resident of Spruce Island. Today, the island is a pilgrimage site for Orthodox Christians, with a Russian Orthodox Church and monastery at Monks Lagoon. St. Herman’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Kodiak, Alaska, is named in his honor. Some of his relics are enshrined at St. Ignatius Chapel at the Antiochian Village near Ligonier, Pennsylvania, where he is a patron saint.

The Kad’yak was a wooden-hulled sailing ship used to transport personnel and supplies among its settlements in Russian Alaska. In 1860, the Kad’yak was carrying a load of ice from Kodiak and trade goods destined for San Francisco. After departing Kodiak Harbor on March 30, the vessel hit an uncharted submerged rock and immediately filled with water. The Kad’yak stayed afloat for three days due to its cargo of ice but drifted towards Spruce Island and sank in Icon Bay on April 2, 1860. The ship’s mast protruded above the water, with a single yardarm forming a cross. This was visible from the shrine of Saint Herman on the shore of Spruce Island, adding religious significance to the vessel’s misfortune. Divers discovered the shipwreck in 2004. Read more here and here. Explore more of Monks Lagoon and Spruce Island here: