North Pacific High Sea

South of the Aleutians lies a wide and stormy reach of the North Pacific. In 1783 the Japanese captain Daikokuya Kōdayū and his crew drifted across the ocean after their ship lost its mast and rudder, finally reaching Amchitka in the western islands. Stranded there for years, the surviving sailors eventually left with Russian hunters aboard a vessel built from driftwood and fitted with sails of sea otter skins.