[2] In April 1809 the brig was sent from Boston on a maritime fur trade voyage to the Pacific Northwest, under Captain Thomas Brown.

[6] One of the Russian survivors from Nikolai was on board Lydia, having been sold as a slave to the south and acquired by Captain Brown on the Columbia River.

[6][8] Sometime in 1811 Captain Thomas Brown exchanged commands with James Bennett of the Derby, another Boston–based maritime fur trading vessel, also owned by J.

[5] During the War of 1812 American captains in the Hawaiian Islands, worried about the possibility of British warships, sold the maritime fur trading vessels Atahualpa and Lydia to Alexander Baranov, governor of the Russian-American Company (RAC).

[4][10] In 1814 Baranov sent Il'mena, under the American captain William Wadsworth, with supplies to the Russian outpost of Fort Ross in California.

From there Il'mena spent the summer of 1814 engaged in poaching Californian sea otters, a practice that had been established several years earlier.

For this purpose Il'mena had brought a party of about 50 Aleut hunters with their kayaks and baidarkas, under the RAC promyshlenniki overseers Timofei Nikitich Tarakanov and Iakov Babin.

At one point Tarakanov and eleven Aleuts were captured by Spanish authorities near San Pedro (today part of Los Angeles).

[3] The Russian hunters operated in multiple places over several years, focusing on the Channel Islands near Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

In April 1815, at Bodega Bay, the chief hunting supervisor, Timofei Tarakanov, demoted then fired Babin, replacing him with Boris Tarasov.

Babin was taken to Sitka and eventually required to go to Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, to stand trial for the Nicoleño massacre.

He describes Il'mena sailing south from San Luis Obispo Bay to Santa Barbara, with stops at El Cojo and Rancho Nuestra Señora del Refugio.

Captain Wadsworth and three others escaped but supercargo Elliot de Castro, Osip Volkov, and five others were taken to Santa Barbara, then Monterey.

Kuskov sent Kyglaia's disposition to his superior, who in turn sent it to the RAC Main Office in St. Petersburg, where it gained the attention of Emperor Alexander I himself.

In time the Church believed Kyglaia's account to be truthful, leading to Chukagnak's canonization as Saint Peter the Aleut.

Spanish records corroborate most of the events described by Russian sources, including most of Kyglaia's testimony and the deaths of some Aleuts, but are silent on the possibility of Spanish-ordered torture and murder.

After the vessel departed Bodega Bay in April a leak was discovered and Captain Wadsworth decided to sail to the Hawaiian Islands for repairs, arriving there in May 1816.

There Schäffer bought Avon and gave Gyzelaar's Lydia to Kaumualii, King of Kauai, in exchange for the valley and port of Hanalei.

The crews of Il'mena and Kad'ak allegedly built a blockhouse in Honolulu, mounted cannons and raised the Russian flag.

[10] On 24 September 1816 the American ship O'Cain, under captain Robert McNeil, arrived at Waimea, Kauai, en route to Canton (Guangzhou), China, from the Pacific Northwest Coast.

On board as passengers were the experienced fur trading American sea captains Nathan Winship, William Smith, Richard Ebbets, and Henry Gyzelaar, and Doctor Frost.

[10] In early December 1816 the brig Rurik, under Otto von Kotzebue of the Imperial Russian Navy, with Elliot de Castro on board, arrived at Honolulu.

[10] In January 1817 Schäffer received a letter from Governor Baranov, via the American ship Cossack under Thomas Brown (once captain of Lydia before it became Il'mena).

[10] Following this, opposition to Schäffer grew, although the details of how events played out are not entirely clear, but it probably involved Native Hawaiians and a number of American sea captains and merchants, such as Caleb Brintnell, Dixey Wildes, Isaac Whittemore, and William Heath Davis (father of William Heath Davis, Jr).

On 8 May 1817, at Waimea, Schäffer was seized by Hawaiians and Americans, told that he and all other Russians must leave Kauai immediately, and forced to paddle out to Kad'iak.

He waited briefly in the harbor at Waimea, during which time Captain Wadsworth, still a prisoner on Kad'iak, escaped to shore by jumping overboard.

Schäffer and his men sailed Kad'iak and Il'mena around the island to Hanalei, hoping to make a stand at Fort Alexander.

[10] The Kad'iak was unseaworthy for a voyage to Alaska, so Schäffer gave Captain George Young command of Il'mena and sent him to Governor Baranov in Sitka.

He had hired an American shipmaster to transport two Russians and 41 Aleuts from Oahu to Sitka, paying for their passage by hunting Californian sea otters on the way.

On 19 June 1820 Il'mena wrecked at Point Arena on the coast of California, due to carelessness of Christopher Stevens, the vessel's American navigator.