Vitus Bering (1681-1741)

Abstract

Bering was asked by Peter the Great to lead the 100-man First Kamchatka Expedition, 1725-1729. In 1782 he navigated up Anian (Bering) Strait to 67 18' N, in the process discovering St. Lawrence Island and the two Diomedes. The Second Kamchatka Expedition, 1733-1742, again under Bering's leadership, finally set sail June 1741 on the St. Peter and the St. Paul. Although these ships became permanently separated from each other by a storm early in their voyage, they both made separate landfalls on the Gulf of Alaska coast. The St. Peter was wrecked on Bering Island in the Commander group. The crew was forced to winter there and Bering, among others, died of scurvy and hypothermia. The survivors, who constructed a ship from the remains of the St. Peter, returned to Petropavlovsk, to which Captain Chirikov had returned aboard the St. Paul the previous fall. Although it cost him his life, Bering had succeeded in laying the basis for Russia's claim to the "big land". The 2000 sea otter pelts that his expedition brought back sparked a fur rush which resulted in the establishment of the Russian-American Company in 1799.