 These schooners acted as tenders to barques, which sent boat crews ahead in the early summer with provisions to cruise for bowhead whales with the schooners before the ships were able to work their way through the ice to Tugur Bay.In the summer of 1862 the Russian-American Company (RAC) established a whaling station on the tip of the peninsula that forms the eastern side of the bay.Under the command of a Captain Elfsberg of the Imperial Navy, two schooners obtained 2,700 bbls of whale oil and 31,000 lbs of whalebone between 1863 and 1865.