User:Jarry1250/Vitus Bering

Vitus Bering
Born	5 August 1681 (baptism) Horsens, Denmark
Died	December 8, 1741(1741-12-08) (aged 60) Bering Island, Russia
Known for	Explorer
Spouse	Anna Bering

Vitus Jonassen Bering (baptised 5 August 1681 in Horsens, Denmark – 8 December 1741 in Bering Island, Russia) was a Danish-born navigator in the service of the Russian Navy as (eventually Captain-Komandor) Витус Ионассен Беринг, known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich Bering. He is known for his two explorations of the north-eastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast on the North American continent. The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge have since all been (posthumously) named in honour of the explorer.

Taking to the seas at the age of 15, Bering travelled extensively over the next eight years, as well as taking naval training at Amsterdam. In 1704, he enrolled with the rapidly expanding Russian navy of Peter the Great. After serving with the navy in significant but non-combat roles during the Great Northern War, Bering resigned in 1724 to avoid the continuing embarrassment of his low rank to Anna, his wife of eleven years. Having obtained a promotion on his retirement to the level of first captain, Bering kept this rank when he decided to rejoin the Russian navy later the same year. He was selected by Peter to captain the first Kamchatka expedition, an expedition set to sail north from Russian outposts on the Kamchatka peninsula, probably with the greatest emphasis on mapping the new areas visited (and particularly establishing Asia and America shared a land border). Bering departed St. Petersburg in February 1725 at the head of a 34-man expedition, aided by the expertise of lieutenants Martin Spangberg and Aleksei Chirikov. The party took on men as it headed towards Okhotsk, encountering many difficult (most notably a lack of food) before they arrived in the settlement. From there, they sailed to the Kamchatka peninsula, preparing new ships there and sailing north (repeating a little documented journey of Semyon Dezhnyov eighty years previously). In August 1728, Bering decided that they had enough evidence that there was clear sea between Asia and America, which he did not sight during the trip. For the first expedition, Bering was rewarded with money, prestige, and a promotion to the noble rank of-Captain Commander. He immediately started preparations for a second trip.

Having returned to Okhotsk with a much larger, better prepared, and much more ambitious expedition, Bering set off led an expedition towards North America in 1741. While doing so, the expedition spotted the volcano Mount Saint Elias, and sailed past Kodiak Island. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at Kayak Island or in the vicinity. Bering was forced by adverse conditions to return, and he discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back. One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands, and the group was named after him (as the Shumagin Islands). Bering himself became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group (Komandorskiye Ostrova) in the southwest Bering Sea. On 19 December 1741 Vitus Bering died on the uninhabited island which was given the name Bering Island after him, near the Kamchatka Peninsula, reportedly from scurvy (although this has been contested), along with 28 men of his company.

Biography

Early life

Vitus Bering was born in the port town of Horsens in Denmark to Anne Pedderdatter Bering and her husband Jonas Svendsen (a "customs inspector and churchwarden"), being baptised in the Lutheran church there on 5 August 1681. He was named after a maternal great-uncle, Vitus Pedersen Bering, who had been a chronicler in the royal court, and was not long deceased at the time of Vitus Jonassen Bering's birth. The family enjoyed reasonable financial security, with two of Vitus' elder half-brothers both attending the University of Copenhagen. Vitus, however, did not, and instead signed on at age 15 as a ship's boy. Between 1696 and 1704, Bering travelled the seas, reaching India and the Dutch East Indies, whilst also finding time to complete naval officer training in Amsterdam. He would also claim later (and, it seems, not without some supporting evidence) to have served on Danish whalers in the North Atlantic, visiting European colonies in the Caribbean and on the eastern seaboard of North America. It was in Amsterdam, however, that in 1704 and under the guidance of Danish-born Russian admiral Cornelius Ivanovich Cruys, Bering enlisted with the Russian navy, taking the rank of sub-lieutenant. He would be repeatedly promoted in Peter the Great's rapidly evolving navy, reaching the rank of second captain by 1720. In that time, it appears he was involved in no sea battles, but commanded several vessels in potentially dangerous missions, including the transport of a ship from the Azov Sea on Russia's southern coast to the Baltic on her northern coast. His work in the latter stages of the Great Northern War (ending in 1721), for example, was dominated by lightering duties.

On 8 October 1713, Bering married Anna Christina Pülse; the ceremony took place in the Lutheran church at Vyborg, only recently annexed from Sweden. Over the next 18 years, they would have 9 children, of which 4 survived childhood. During his time with the Russian navy – particularly as part of the Great Nothern War – he was unable to spend much time with Anna, who was approximately eleven years Bering's junior and the daughter of a Swedish merchant. At the war's conclusion in 1721, Bering was not promoted like many of his contemporaries. The omission proved particularly embarrassing when, in 1724, Anna's younger sister Eufemia upstaged her by marrying Thomas Saunders, already a Rear-Admiral despite a much shorter period of service. In order to save face, the 42-year-old Bering decided to retire from the navy, securing two months' pay and a notional promotion to first captain. Shortly after, the family – Bering, his wife Anna, and two young sons – moved out of St. Petersburg to live with Anna's family in Vyborg. After a period of joblessness lasting five months, however, Bering (keenly aware of his dependants), decided to reapply to the Admiralty. He was accepted for a renewed period of active service the same day. By 2 October 1524, Bering (retaining the rank of first captain he had secured earlier in the year) was back on the sea, commanding the ninety-gun Lesnoe. The Tsar would soon had a new command for him, however.

First Kamchatka expedition

St. Petersburg to Okhotsk

On 29 December 1724 [N.S. 9 January 1725], Peter I of Russia asked Bering to command a voyage east, probably to map the lands (and possibly seas) between Russia's eastern boundary and the North America continent. Preparations for the trip had begun some years before, but with his health rapidly deteriorating, the Tsar had ordered that the process be hurried, and it was with this backdrop that Bering (with his knowledge of both the Indian Ocean and the eastern seaboard of North America, good personal skills and experience in transporting goods) was selected ahead of the experienced cartographer K. P. von Verd. His lieutenants for the journey, which would become known as the First Kamchatka Expedition, were named as hardened fellow Dane Martin Spangberg and well-educated but relatively inexperienced Russian Aleksei Chirikov, a respected naval instructor. They would receive annual salaries of some 180 roubles during the trip; Bering would be paid 480. The final papers from Peter before his death on 28 January made it clear to Bering that he should proceed to Kamchatka peninsula, build one or two ships there, and, keeping the land on his left, sail northwards until the land turned westwards, making it clear that there existed sea between Asia and North America. Instructions were left on how to proceed if North America was sighted during the voyage, which was scheduled to last three years. The natural route to Kamchatka was along tributaries of the Lena; but after the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) this look politically infeasible. Instead, Bering's party, it was decided, would travel over land and river from St. Petersburg to Okhotsk, a small port town on Russia's eastern coast, and then by sea from Okhotsk to the Kamchatka peninsula, where they could start their voyage of exploration. On 24 January, Chirikov departed with 26 of the 34-strong expedition along the well-travelled roads to Vologda, 411 miles (661 km) to the east. Having waited for the necessary paperwork to be completed, Bering and the remaining members of the expedition followed on 6 February. Bering was supplied with what few maps Peter had managed to commission in the preceding years.

A portrait once believed to be of Vitus Bering (according to more recent data, it is likely his uncle's portrait)

Both parties used horse-drawn sledges and made good time over the first legs of the journey. On 14 February they were reunited in Vologda, and, now travelling together, headed eastwards across the Ural mountains, arriving in the small city of Tobolsk (one of the main stopping points of the journey) on 16 March. They had already travelled over 1750 miles. At Tobolsk, Bering took on more men to help the party through the more difficult journey ahead. He asked for 24 more from the garrison, before upping the request to 54 after hearing that the ship the party required at Okhotsk (the Vostok) would need significant manpower to repair. In the end, the governor could spare only 39, but it still represented a significant expansion in numbers for the party. In addition, Bering wanted 60 carpenters and 7 blacksmiths; the governor responded that half of these would have to be taken on later, at Yeniseysk. After some delays preparing equipment and funds, on 14 May the now much enlarged party left Tobolsk, heading along the Irtysh. The journey ahead to the next major stopping point Yakutsk, was well-worn, but rarely by groups as large as Bering's, who had the additional hassle of needing to take on more men as the journey progressed. As a result, the party ran behind schedule, reaching Surgut on 30 May and Makovsk in late June before entering Yeniseysk, where the additional men could be taken on; Bering would later claim that "few were suitable". In any case, the party left Yeniseysk on 12 August, desperately needing to make up lost time. On 26 September they arrived at Ilimsk, just three days before the river froze over. After the party had completely an eighty mile trek to Ust-Kut, a town on the Lena where they could spend the winter, Bering travelled on to the town of Irkutsk both to get a sense of the conditions and to seek advice on how best to get their large party across the mountains separating Yakutsk (their next stop) to Okhotsk on the coast.

After leaving Ust-Kut when the river ice melted in the spring of 1726, the party rapidly travelled down the River Lena, reaching Yakutsk in the first half of June. Despite the need for hurry and men being sent in advance, the governor was slow to grant them the resources they needed, prompting threats from Bering. On 7 July, Spangberg left with a detachment of 209 men and much of the cargo; on 27 July apprentice shipbuilder Fyodor Kozlov led a small party to reach Okhotsk ahead of Spangberg, both to prepare food supplies and to start work repairing the Vostok and building a new ship (the Fortuna) needed to carry the party across the bay from Okhotsk to the Kamchatka peninsula. Bering himself left on 16 August, whilst it was decided that Chirikov would follow the next spring with fresh supplies of flour. The journeys were as difficult as Bering had worried they would be. Both men and horses died, whilst other men (46 from Bering's party alone) deserted with their horses and portions of the supplies as they struggled to build roads across difficult marshland and river terrain. If Bering's party (which reached Okhotsk in October) fared badly, however, Spangberg's fared far worse. His heavily loaded boats could be tugged at no more than one mile a day—and they had some 685 miles to cover. When the rivers froze, the cargo was transferred to sleds, enduring blizzards and waist-high snow. Even provisions left by Bering at Yudoma Cross could not hold back the starvation. On 6 January 1727 Spangberg and two other men, who had together formed an advanced party carrying the most vital items for the expedition, reached Okhotsk; ten days later sixty others joined them, though many were ill. Parties sent by Bering back along the trail from Okhotsk rescued seven man and much of the cargo that had been left behind. Okhotsk's inhabitants describe the winter as the worst they could recall; Bering seized flour from the local villagers to ensure that his party too could take advantage of their stocks and consequently the whole village soon faced the threat of starvation. The explorer later reported how it was only the arrival of an advance party of Chirikov's division in June with 27 tons of flour that ensured his party (diminished in numbers) could be fed.

Okhotsk to Kamchatka and beyond

The Vostok was readied and the Fortuna build at a rapid pace, with the first party (48 men commanded by Spangberg and comprising those required to start work on the ships that would have to be built in Kamchatka itself as soon as possible) leaving in June 1727. Chirikov himself arrived in Okhotsk soon after, bringing further supplies of food. He had had a relatively easy trip, losing none of his men and only 17 of the 140 horses he had set out with. On August 22, the remainder of the party sailed for Kamchatka. Had the route been charted, they should have sailed around the peninsula and made port on its eastern coast; instead, they landed on the west and made a gruelling trip from the settlement of Bolsheretsk in the South-West, north to the Upper Kamchatka Post and then east along the Kamchatka River to the Lower Kamchatka Post. This Spangberg's party did before the river froze; next, a party led by Bering completed this final stint of approximately 580 miles land without the benefit of the river; and finally, in the spring of 1728, the last party to leave Bolsheretsk, headed by Chirikov, reached the Lower Kamchatka Post. The outpost was six thousand miles from St. Petersburg and the journey itself (the first time "so many [had] gone so far") had taken some three years. The lack of immediate food available to Spangberg's advance party slowed their progress, which hastened dramatically after Bering's and Chirikov's grouping arrived with provisions. As a consequence, the ship the expedition they constructed (named the Archangel Gabriel) was ready to be launched as soon as 9 June 1728 from its construction point upriver at Ushka. It was then fully rigged and provisioned by 9 July, and on 13 July set sail downstream, anchoring offshore that evening. On 14 July, Bering's party began their first exploration, hugging the coast in not a northerly direction (as they had expected) but a north-easterly one. The ship's log records a variety of landmarks spotted (including St. Lawrence Island) many of which the expedition took the opportunity to name. Translation problems hindered the exploration attempt, however, as Bering was unable to discuss the local geography with locals he encountered. Sailing further north, Bering entered for the first time the strait that would later bear his name.

Reaching a cape (which Chirikov named Cape Chukotsk), the land turned westwards, and Bering asked his two lieutenants on 13 August 1728 whether or not they could reasonably claim it was turning westwards for good: that is to say, whether they had proven that Asia and America were separate land masses. The rapidly advancing ice prompted Bering to make the controversial decision not to deviate from his remit: the ship would sail for a few more days, but then turn back. The expedition was neither at the most easterly point of Asia (as Bering had supposed) nor had it succeed in discovering the Alaskan coast of America, which on a good day would have been visible to the east. As promised, on 16 August, Bering turned the Gabriel around, heading back towards Kamchatka. Not before a storm forced hasty repairs, the ship was back at the mouth of the Kamchatka River, fifty days after it had left. The mission was at its conclusion, but the party still needed to make it back to St. Petersburg to document the voyage (thus avoiding the fate of Admiral Semyon Dezhnyov who, unbeknownst to Bering, had made a similar expedition eighty years previously). In the spring of 1729, the Fortuna, which had sailed round the Kamchatka Peninsula to bring supplies to the Lower Kamchatka Post, now returned to Bolsheretsk; and shortly after, so did the Gabriel. The delay was caused by a four day journey Bering had embarked upon directly eastwards in search of North America, to no avail. By July 1729 the two vessels were back at Okhotsk, where they were moored alongside the Vostok; the party, no longer needing to carry shipbuilding materials made good time on the return journey from Okhotsk, and by 28 February 1730 Bering was back in the Russian capital. In December 1731 he would be awarded 1000 roubles and promoted to captain-commander, his first noble rank (Spangberg and Chirikov were similarly promoted to captain). It had been a long and expensive expedition, costing 15 men and souring relations between Russia and her native peoples: but it had provided useful new (though not perfect) insights into the geography of Eastern Siberia, and presented useful evidence that Asia and North America were separated by sea. He had not, however, proved it beyond doubt.

Second Kamchatka expedition and death

Preparations

1966 Soviet postage stamp depicting Bering's second voyage and the discovery of the Commander Islands

Bering soon proposed a second Kamchatka expedition, much more ambitious than the first and with an explicit aim of sailing east in search of North America. The political situation in the Russian Empire was difficult, however, and this meant delays. In the interim, the Berings enjoyed their new-found status and wealth: there was a new house and a new social circle for the newly ennobled Berings. Bering also made a bequest to the poor of Horsens, had two children with Anna and even attempted to establish his familial coat of arms. The proposal, when it was accepted, would a significant affair, which involved 600 people from the outset and several hundred added along the way. Though Bering seems to have been primarily interested in landing in North America, his recognised the importance of secondary objectives: the list of which expanded rapidly under the guidance of planners Nikolai Fedorovich Golovin (head of the Admiralty); Ivan Kirilov, a highly-ranked politician with an interest in geography, and Andrey Osterman, a close adviser of the new Empress, Anna Ivanovna. As Bering waited for Anna to solidify her grip on the throne, he and Kirilov worked to find a new, more dependable administrator to run Okhotsk and to begin work on improving the roads between Yakutsk and the coastal settlement. Their choice for the post of administrator, made remotely, was Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev; possibly the least worst candidate, he would nevertheless turn out to be a poor choice. In any case, Skornyakov-Pisarev he was ordered in 1731 to proceed to Okhotsk, with directions to expand it into a proper port. He did not leave for Okhotsk for another four years, by which time Bering's own expedition (in time for which Okhotsk was supposed to have been prepared) was not far off.

In 1732, however, Bering was still at the planning stage in Moscow, having taken a short leave of absence for St. Petersburg. The better positioned Kirilov oversaw developments, eyeing up not only the chance of discovering North America, but of mapping the whole Arctic coast, finding a good route south to Japan, landing on the Shantar Islands and even making contact with Spanish America. On 12 June the Senate approved resources to fund an academic contingent for the expedition, and three academics – Johann Georg Gmelin (a natural historian), Louis De l’Isle de la Croyère (an astronomer), and Gerhard Friedrich Müller (an anthropologist) – were selected by the Academy of Sciences. Bering was wary of this expansion in the proposed size of the whole expedition, given the food shortages experienced on the first voyage. Proposals were made to transports goods or men to Kamchatka by sea via Cape Horn, but these were not approved. Other than a broad oversight role, Bering's personal instructions from the Admiralty were surprisingly simple. Given on 16 October 1732, they amounted only to recreating his first expedition, but with the added task of heading east and finding North America (a feat which had in fact just been completed by Mikhail Gvozdev, though this was not known at the time). The suggestion was made that Bering share more of his command with the Chirikov, suggesting that the 51-year-old Bering was slowly being edged out. Elsewhere, instructions were sent ahead to Yakutsk, Irkutsk and Okhotsk to aid Bering's second expedition – and thus, the naivety of the first expedition in assuming compliance was repeated. Further follies included plans to send ships north along the rivers Ob and Lena towards the Arctic.

St. Petersburg to Okhotsk

Spangberg left St. Petersburg in February 1733 with the first (small) detachment of the second expedition, bound for Okhotsk. Chirikov followed on 18 April with the main contingent (initially 500 people and eventually swelling to approximately 3000 after labourers were added). Following them, on 29 April Bering followed with Anna and their two youngest children – their two eldest, both sons, were left with friends in Reval. The academic contingent, including the three professors, left in August. Soon catching the main party, Bering and Chirikov led the group eastwards, descending on Tobolsk for the winter. The arrival of such a large party with such great demands – and so soon after Spangberg had made similar demands – put a strain on the town. Bering and a small advance party left Tobolsk in later February, stopping at Irkutsk to pick up gifts for the native tribes they would later encounter; it arrived at Yakustsk in August 1734. The main grouping, now under Chirikov's command left Tobolsk in May 1734, but had a more difficult trek and one which required harsh discipline be imposed to prevent desertions. Nonetheless, it arrived in Yakutsk in June 1735. Whilst Spangberg had headed east to Okhotsk, Bering waited in Yakutsk, preparing two ships on the Lena (one would be captained by Vasili Pronchishchev and the second first by Peter Lassenius and later by Dmitry Laptev). Both were to sail northwards, and over the coming years both chart the Arctic coastline and to test whether it was navigable. Nevertheless, Bering soon found he was quickly bogged down in Yakutsk; two parties sent east to find a better route to the Okhotsk Sea were both failures (the second coming far closer than it realised), and yet this was information the expedition desperately needed. Bering decided to prepare a similar land route to the one he had used on the first expedition instead, constructing huts along the route in advance. It was work, however, that was still unfinished even by the summer of 1737, such were the delays.

Bering was thus back in Okhotsk in 1735. He had the local craftsmen Makar Rogachev and Andrey Kozmin build two vessels, Sviatoi Piotr (St. Peter) and Sviatoi Pavel (St. Paul), in which he sailed off and in 1740 established the settlement of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka.

Sea voyage, death and achievements

From Petropavlovsk, he led an expedition towards North America in 1741. This expedition was to map the Russia-Siberia coast, the western part of North America and even parts of Mexico. While doing so, the expedition spotted the volcano Mount Saint Elias, and sailed past Kodiak Island. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at Kayak Island or in the vicinity. Under the command of Aleksei Chirikov, the second ship discovered the shores of the northwestern America (Aleksander Archipelago of present-day Alaska). These voyages of Bering and Chirikov were a major part of the Russian exploration efforts in the North Pacific known today as the Great Northern Expedition. Notably, the medical officer on Bering's ship was Georg Steller, a naturalist who discovered and described several species of plant and animal native to the North Pacific and North America during the expedition (including the Steller sea cow and the Steller sea jay).

Bering was forced by adverse conditions to return, and he discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back. One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands, and the group was named after him (as the Shumagin Islands). Bering became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group (Komandorskiye Ostrova) in the southwest Bering Sea. On 19 December 1741 Vitus Bering died on the uninhabited island which was given the name Bering Island after him, near the Kamchatka Peninsula, reportedly from scurvy (although this has been contested), along with 28 men of his company. A storm shipwrecked Sv. Piotr, but the only surviving carpenter, S. Starodubtsev, with the help of the crew, managed to build a smaller vessel out of the wreckage. The new vessel had a keel length of only 12.2 meters (40 ft) and was also named Sv. Piotr. Out of 77 men aboard Sv. Piotr, only 46 survived the hardships of the expedition, which claimed its last victim just one day before coming into home port. Its builder, Starodubtsev, returned home with government awards and later built several other seaworthy ships.

There exists some debate as to whether Bering can claim "discovery" of the Bering strait. European geographers had long believed in a Strait of Anian at the northeast end of Asia. Where this idea came from is unknown. In 1648 Semyon Dezhnyov probably sailed through the strait from the Arctic, but his voyage was not reported outside of Siberia. Of Dezhnyov Bering knew only the rumor that some Russians had once sailed from the Lena River to Kamchatka. Since Bering did not see the American side he did not know that he had passed through a strait, only that he had rounded the northeastern tip of Asia. He could not prove that there was no land bridge to the north under the ice. In 1732 Mikhail Gvozdev and Ivan Fedorov saw the American side of the strait. To prove that this was the end of North America rather than another island required the third voyage of Captain James Cook.

See also

• Johann Georg Gmelin
• Stepan Krasheninnikov
• Gerhardt Friedrich Müller
• Georg Steller
• Second Kamchatka expedition
• Exploration of the Pacific.

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Armstrong, Terence (1982), "Vitus Bering", Polar Record, 21 (131), United Kingdom: 161–163, doi:10.1017/S0032247400004538
• Debenham, Frank (1941), "Bering's last Voyage", Polar Record, 3 (22), United Kingdom: 421–426, doi:10.1017/S0032247400064342
• Frost, Orcutt William, ed. (2003), Bering: The Russian Discovery of America, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, ISBN 0300100590
• Lauridsen, Peter (1885), Bering og de Russiske Opdagelsesrejser (in Danish), Copenhagen{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Müller, Gerhard Friedrich (1758), Sammlung russischer Geschichten (in German), vol. iii, St Petersburg: Kayserl. Academie der Wißenschafften
• Oliver, James A. (2006), The Bering Strait Crossing, United Kingdom: Information Architects, ISBN 095469957264 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
• Lind, Natasha Okhotina; Møller, Peter Ulf, eds. (2002), Under Vitus Bering's Command: New Perspectives on the Russian Kamchatka Expeditions, Beringiana, Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, ISBN 8772889322
• Egerton, Frank N. (2008), "A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 27: Naturalists Explore Russia and the North Pacific During the 1700s", Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 89 (1): 39–60, doi:10.1890/0012-9623(2008)89[39:AHOTES]2.0.CO;2, S2CID 86490679

External links

• (in Russian) Bering, Vitus
• PBS story of the expedition
• Report from the 1991 Russian-Danish archeological expedition that found Bering's grave (in Danish)
• The Bering Strait Crossing
• World Digital Library, presentation of a map made at the first expedition to Kamchatka, National Library of Sweden[1]