Vitus Jonassen Bering (baptised 5 August 1681 – 19 December 1741), also known as Ivan Ivanovich Bering, was a Danish-born Russian cartographer, explorer, and officer in the Russian Navy. He is known as a leader of two Russian expeditions, the First Kamchatka Expedition and the Great Northern Expedition, exploring the northeastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast of the North American continent. The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, the Bering Glacier, and Vitus Lake were all named in his honor.
Biography
Early life and family background
Vitus Bering was born in the port town of Horsens in Denmark to Anne Pedderdatter and her husband Jonas Svendsen (a "customs inspector and churchwarden") and was baptized 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's elder half-brothers both attending the University of Copenhagen.
Early seafaring career
Vitus instead signed on as a ship's boy at age 15. During his time with the Russian Navy—particularly as part of the Great Northern War—he was unable to spend much time with Anna, who was approximately 11 years Bering's junior and the daughter of a Swedish merchant.
Retirement and reinstatement
Bering served with the navy in significant but non-combat roles during the Great Northern War. At the war's conclusion in 1721, Bering was not promoted like many of his contemporaries.
First Kamchatka Expedition
St. Petersburg to Okhotsk
On 29 December 1724 <small>[N.S. 9 January 1725]</small>, Peter I of Russia ordered Bering to captain the First Kamchatka Expedition, an expedition set to sail north from Russian outposts on the Kamchatka Peninsula, with the charge to map the new areas visited and establish whether Asia and America shared a land border.
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.]]
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.
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, Spanberg 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 Spanberg, 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.
Okhotsk to Kamchatka and beyond
The Vostok was readied and the Fortuna built at a rapid pace, with the first party (48 men commanded by Spanberg 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 22 August, the remainder of the party sailed for Kamchatka.
Reaching a cape (which Chirikov named Cape Chukotsky), 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. 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 St. 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-commodore, his first noble rank (Spanberg 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. 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, he recognised the importance of secondary objectives: the list of which expanded rapidly under the guidance of planners (head of the Admiralty); , 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 bad candidate, he would nevertheless turn out to be a poor choice. In any case, Skornyakov-Pisarev 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. Other than a broad oversight role, Bering's personal instructions from the Admiralty were surprisingly simple. though this was not known at the time). The arrival of such a large party with such great demands – and so soon after Spanberg 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 Yakutsk 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.
At Okhotsk things were little better; it was "ill-suited to be a permanent port", and Skornyakov-Pisarev was slow to construct the buildings needed. Spanberg was, however, able to ready the ships the expedition needed. By the end of 1737 the St. Gabriel had been refitted; additionally, two new shipsthe Archangel Michael (, Arkhangel Mikhail) and the Nadezhda ()had been constructed and were rapidly readied for a voyage to Japan, a country with which Russia had never had contact. The same year, Bering took up residence in Okhotsk. It was the fifth year of the expedition, and the original costings now looked naive compared to the true costs of the trip. The additional costs (300,000 roubles compared to the 12,000 budgeted) brought poverty to the whole region. On 29 June 1738, Spanberg set off for the Kuril Islands with the three ships he had prepared. After he had left there were further delays, probably due to a lack of natural resources. Over the next three years, Bering himself was criticised on an increasingly regular basis (his salary had already been halved in 1737 when the originally planned four years ran out); the delays also caused friction between Bering, Chirikov (who felt unduly constrained) and Spanberg (who felt Bering was too weak in his dealings with the local peoples). The two key figures who had been so useful to Bering in St. Petersburg back in the early 1730s (Saunders and Kirilov) were now dead, and there were occasional moves to either terminate the expedition or to replace Bering. Meanwhile, a fourth ship, the Bolsheretsk () was constructed and Spanberg (having identified some 30 Kuril Islands on his first trip) led the four ships on a second voyage, which saw the first Russians land in Japan. In August 1740, with the main, America-bound expedition almost ready, Anna Bering returned to St. Petersburg with her and Vitus' younger children. Bering would never see his wife again.
Sea voyage, death and achievements
thumb|right|250px|Vitus Bering's expedition being wrecked on the Aleutian Islands in 1741.
thumb|right|250px|The grave of Vitus Bering on Bering Island
With time now of the essence, the Okhotsk () left for Bolsheretsk, arriving there in mid-September. Another new ship, the St. Peter (, Sviatoi Piotr, Pyotr, or Pëtr), captained by Bering, also left. It was accompanied by its sister creation the St. Paul (, Sviatoi Pavel) and the Nadezhda. Delayed by the Nadezhdas hitting a sand bank and then being beaten by a storm, such that it was forced to stay at Bolsheretsk, the two other ships arrived in their destination of Avacha Bay in south-eastern Kamchatka on 6 October. The foundation of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, including warehouses, living quarters and a beacon had been built there on Bering's orders few months before, and now the explorer named the settlement after his vessels.
Over the winter, Bering recruited for the trip ahead naturalist Georg Steller and completed the report he had promised to send. At the same time, however, the murder of several Russians under Bering's command by native tribesmen prompted him to send armed men to the north, with orders not to use force if it could be avoided. Apparently it could not, because the detachment killed several native Koryaks in the settlement of Utkolotsk and enslaved the remainder, bringing them back south.
Steller was horrified to see the Koryaks tortured in search of the murderers. His ethical complaints, like Chirikov's more practical ones before him, were suppressed.
The expedition spotted the volcano Mount Saint Elias on 16 July 1741, where it briefly landed. His objective complete, ill and exhausted, Bering turned ship and headed back towards port.
Storms, however, meant that the crew of the St. Peter was soon driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group (Komandorskiye Ostrova) in the south-west Bering Sea. On 19 December 1741 Vitus Bering died on the uninhabited island near the Kamchatka Peninsula, which was later given the name Bering Island in his honour. certainly, it had afflicted him in the final months. The situation was still dire for Bering's expedition (now headed by Waxell), many of them, including Waxell, were still ill and the St. Peter was in poor condition.
By April 1742 the party had ascertained that they were on an island. They decided to construct a new vessel from the remnants of the ship in order to return home. By August it was ready, successfully reaching Avacha Bay later in the month. There, the party discovered that Chirikov had led a rescue mission during 1741 that came within miles of the stranded group. Out of 77 men aboard the St. Peter, 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.
Assessing the scale of Bering's achievements is difficult, given that he was neither the first Russian to sight North America (that having been achieved by Mikhail Gvozdev during the 1730s), nor the first Russian to pass through the strait which now bears his name (an honour which goes to the relatively unknown 17th-century expedition of Semyon Dezhnev). Reports from his second voyage were jealously guarded by the Russian administration, preventing Bering's story from being retold in full for at least a century after his death. Nonetheless, Bering's achievements, both as an individual explorer and as a leader of the second expedition, are regarded as substantial. Consequently, Bering's name has since been used for the Bering Strait (named by Captain James Cook despite knowledge of Dezhnev's earlier expedition), the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge.
See also
- Exploration of the Pacific
- Russian America
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
- This further cites:
- Müller, G. F. Sammlung russischer Geschichten, vol. iii. (St Petersburg, 1758)
- Lauridsen, P. Bering og de Russiske Opdagelsesrejser (Copenhagen, 1885).