Vitus Bering
 |
Vitus Bering |
Vitus Jonassen Bering (also, less correctly,
Behring) (
August 1681–
December 19,
1741) was a
Danish-born navigator in the service of the
Russian Navy, a captain-
komandor known among the Russian sailors as
Ivan Ivanovich. He was born in the town of
Horsens in
Denmark and died at
Bering Island, near the
Kamchatka Peninsula.
After a voyage to the East Indies, he joined the Russian Navy in
1703, serving in the
Baltic Fleet during the
Great Northern War. In
1710–
1712 he served in the
Azov Sea Fleet in
Taganrog and took part in the
Russo-Turkish War. He married a
Russian woman, and in
1715 he made a brief visit to his hometown, never to see it again. A series of explorations of the north coast of
Asia, the outcome of a far-reaching plan devised by
Peter the Great, led up to Bering's first voyage to Kamchatka. In
1725, under the auspices of the Russian government, he went overland to
Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and built the ship
Sviatoi Gavriil (
St. Gabriel). Aboard the ship, Bering pushed northward in
1728, until he could no longer observe any extension of the land to the north, or its appearance to the east.
In the following year he made an abortive search for mainland eastward, rediscovering one of the
Diomede Islands (
Ratmanov Island) observed earlier by
Dezhnev. In the summer of
1730, Bering returned to
St. Petersburg. During the long trip through
Siberia along the whole
Asian continent, he became very ill. Five of his children died during this trip. Bering was subsequently commissioned to a further expedition, and returned to 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. From there, he led an expedition towards
North America in
1741. 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.
Bering was soon 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 here of
scurvy, along with 28 men of his company. This island bears his name. 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 feet) 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.
Sv. Piotr was in service for 12 years, sailing between Kamchatka and Okhotsk until
1755. Its builder, Starodubtsev, returned home with governmental awards and later built several other seaworthy ships.
The value of Bering's work was not fully recognized for many years, but
Captain Cook was able to prove Bering's accuracy as an observer. Nowadays, the
Bering Strait, the
Bering Sea,
Bering Island, and the
Bering Land Bridge bear the explorer's name.
*
Georg Steller*
Second Kamchatka expedition charted from
Siberia to
Mexico*
Bering, Vitus*G. F. Müller,
Sammlung russischer Geschichten, vol. iii. (St Petersburg, 1758)
*P. Lauridsen,
Bering og de Russiske Opdagelsesrejser (Copenhagen, 1885)
