48 Fun Facts About Vitus Bering

In which country was Vitus Bering born?

Denmark. He went to sea as a boy, joined the Russian navy as a young officer and spent the rest of his career in Russian service under the name Ivan Ivanovich Bering.

The survivors of Bering's last voyage brought home pelts of which animal, setting off Russia's fur rush to Alaska?

Sea otter. Hunters followed Bering's route from island to island toward America, and Russia went on to claim Alaska until it sold the territory to the United States in 1867.

Whose navy did Bering join in 1704?

Peter the Great's. The tsar was building a fleet almost from nothing and hired foreign seamen to officer it; Bering joined as a sub-lieutenant and stayed for 37 years.

Where had the young Bering voyaged just before he joined the Russian navy?

East Indies. He came back from the voyage to Amsterdam, where a Norwegian-born admiral in Russian service met him and recruited him.

Why did Bering briefly retire from the Russian Navy in 1724?

Embarrassment at his low rank. Passed over while others were promoted, he left the navy in 1724, yet within months he was back in service as a captain of the first rank.

Which two continents was Bering ordered to determine were separated by sea?

Asia and North America. He sailed through the strait between them in 1728 but in bad weather never saw the far shore, so the Admiralty called his proof inconclusive and sent him back.

Which animals plagued Bering's shipwrecked crew on their island, raiding the camp day and night without fear?

Arctic foxes. They stole even iron tools, and the men killed them by the dozen and stacked the bodies to plug the gaps in their huts.

Which Pacific port town did Bering's party reach overland before sailing to Kamchatka?

Okhotsk. Crossing Siberia to reach it took the expedition almost two years by river boat, sledge and packhorse, and it still had to build a ship there to cross to Kamchatka.

What was the ship Bering built on the Kamchatka River and sailed north in 1728?

St. Gabriel. Four years after Bering turned her back, another Russian crew took the same ship across the strait and made the first Russian sighting of Alaska without him.

Which island did Bering sight and name in August 1728 after the saint whose feast day it was?

St. Lawrence. Sighting it meant the ship was entering the strait that now bears Bering's name, though nobody aboard knew how close the far shore was.

Why did Bering turn back in August 1728 without ever sighting Alaska?

He feared wintering on a hostile coast. The land had stopped running north, so he judged his orders fulfilled, though one of his two lieutenants urged him in writing to press on.

Which islands did Bering sight on 16 August 1728, a saint's day that gave them their name?

Diomede. The two islands lie only about four kilometres apart, but the date line runs between them, so the Russian one is almost a full day ahead of the American one.

Which 17th-century Russian had sailed through the strait some 80 years before Bering?

Semyon Dezhnev. He rounded the tip of Asia in 1648, but his report lay in a Siberian archive until 1736, so the credit and the strait's name went to Bering.

What rank did Bering receive in December 1731 after the first expedition?

Captain-commodore. The Russian title is also translated captain-commander, which is why the islands where he was wrecked and died are called the Commander Islands.

Which empress was on the Russian throne while Bering planned the second expedition?

Anna Ivanovna. Under her ministers Bering's simple plan for a second voyage swelled into the Great Northern Expedition, a ten-year enterprise involving some 3,000 people.

Which country did Martin Spanberg's ships reach in 1739, sailing south from Kamchatka along the Kuril Islands?

Japan. The country was closed to foreigners, yet the villagers who met Spanberg's crews traded rice, fruit and cloth with them and treated them with courtesy.

Which Kamchatka city, founded by Bering in 1740, shares its name with his two ships?

Petropavlovsk. The name joins St. Peter and St. Paul, the saints for whom both his two ships and the settlement's first church were named.

How did American Lynne Cox cross the Bering Strait from Alaska to Soviet territory in 1987, during the Cold War?

By swimming. She spent about two hours in the icy water, and Mikhail Gorbachev praised her at a treaty signing that year for showing how close the two peoples live.

Which mountain did the St. Peter's crew sight on 16 July 1741?

Mount Saint Elias. The 5,489-metre peak rising behind the coast was the proof, after nearly ten years of preparation, that the expedition had reached America.

What was the purpose of the landing Bering allowed in Alaska in July 1741?

Fresh water. Steller went ashore on Kayak Island with the watering party, and remarked sourly that they had come all that way only to fetch American water.

Roughly how long was Steller allowed ashore in Alaska in July 1741?

Ten hours. Steller wrote bitterly that ten years of preparation had bought him ten hours of exploration, yet in that time he gathered the first scientific record of Alaska's plants and animals.

Which large marine mammal, described by Steller in 1741, was extinct within 27 years?

Sea cow. Steller's sea cow was a giant relative of the dugong whose meat was prized, and the hunters who followed Bering's route had killed the last of them by 1768.

Which type of North American bird did Steller become the first European to describe?

A jay. Steller saw that it resembled the American blue jay he knew from a book of plates, and took it as proof that the expedition had reached the New World.

Which island group did Bering discover on his way back and name after a dead sailor?

Shumagin Islands. Nikita Shumagin died as his shipmates carried him ashore, the first man the voyage lost to scurvy; within weeks most of the crew were too weak to work the ship.

Who took command of the St. Peter when Bering became too ill from scurvy?

Sven Waxell. The lieutenant was sick with scurvy himself, yet he held the crew together through the winter after the wreck and brought 45 men home the following August.

What did archaeologists digging on Bering Island in 1991 report finding, 250 years after the explorer died there?

His grave. The team identified one of the skeletons it dug up near the wreck site as Bering's, and scientists later rebuilt his face from the skull.

How did Bering's shipwrecked crew get home?

By self-built boat. They broke up the wrecked ship, built a smaller vessel from her timbers and sailed it home to Kamchatka in August 1742, nine months after they were cast ashore.

What did Steller gather on shore to treat scurvy among Bering's crew, at first to the officers' scorn?

Herbs and berries. With fresh scurvy grass picked at an island stop he had the bedridden Bering back on deck in about a week, yet the officers refused him men to gather enough for the whole crew.

Which captain, commanding Bering's sister ship, sighted the Alaskan coast in July 1741 shortly before Bering did?

Aleksei Chirikov. He made his landfall far to the south-east of Bering's, in what is now the Alaska panhandle, and nursed his ship home to Kamchatka that October with the water almost gone.

Which Russian had actually sighted Alaska before Bering, in the 1730s?

Mikhail Gvozdev. In 1732 he reached the American side of the strait in the very ship Bering had built for his first voyage, a feat still unknown in the capital when Bering's new orders were written.

Which British explorer's 1778 voyage did most to fix Bering's name on the strait?

James Cook. Checking the coast for himself fifty years after Bering, he wrote that Bering had 'delineated the coast very well', and he used Bering's name for the strait in his published voyage.

Roughly how wide is the Bering Strait at its narrowest point?

About 85 km. On a clear day Alaska can be seen from the Asian side, yet Bering passed through in bad weather and never saw the far shore.

During the last Ice Age, what lay where the Bering Strait is today?

A land bridge between the continents. So much water was locked in ice sheets that the sea fell far enough to bare the shallow strait floor, and plants, animals and people crossed on foot.

Which distinction does the Bering Glacier hold, together with the Bagley Icefield?

Largest in North America. It surges forward every twenty years or so, yet it has been shrinking overall: its front retreated as much as 12 km over the twentieth century.

Which sea of the Arctic Ocean lies immediately north of the Bering Strait?

Chukchi Sea. It takes its name from the Chukchi people of the Asian shore, whose country Bering's ship coasted on its way through the strait in 1728.

Why did so little about Bering's last voyage reach the public in the years after 1741?

Russia kept the reports secret. The officers were under orders to keep even their instructions to themselves, and the government guarded the logs and charts so closely that no full account appeared for generations.

What did Bering leave in a native cellar in Alaska in return for goods his men took?

A kettle, tobacco and silk. A Chinese pipe went with them, but Steller complained that his shipmates had plundered far more from the cellar than the gifts could repay.

What did Bering do with his share of the family inheritance once he had prospered?

Gave it to the town's poor. It was 140 rigsdaler from the modest home he had left as a ship's boy, and he made the gift once his first expedition had brought him rank and money.

The Alaskan lands that Bering's voyage opened to Russia were sold to the United States in 1867 for roughly how much?

$7.2 million. That came to about two cents an acre for a territory Russia had claimed ever since the fur rush that followed Bering's last voyage.

What became of the two boat crews Bering's sister ship sent ashore in Alaska?

They were never seen again. The first boat failed to come back, so did the one sent after it, and with no boat left the captain could only sail home; what happened to the men was never learned.

Bering's 1741 voyage began with a detour to the south-east in search of what?

A land shown on a map. The expedition astronomer's chart marked a 'Gama Land' south-east of Kamchatka, so the ships ran down to the 46th parallel, found only open sea, for no such land exists, and then turned for America.

Which creature that Steller described on Bering's 1741 voyage matches no animal known to science?

A sea ape. It played round the ship for two hours, rearing out of the water like a man; no known animal fits his description, and naturalists suspect he misjudged a familiar one in the dusk.

What did Bering's officers load at an island stop in 1741, over Steller's protests, that worsened the sickness aboard?

Brackish water from a pond. Steller had found clean springs nearby and sent a sample aboard, but the casks were filled from a pool that rose and fell with the tide and soon turned foul.

Which island chain did Bering's two ships discover on their way home from Alaska in 1741?

Aleutian Islands. Each ship sighted several of them on its separate way home, and within a few years Russian fur hunters were working their way east along the chain.

Which signs convinced Steller, weeks before landfall, that Bering's ship was close to land?

Drifting seaweed, seals and birds. The officers trusted the sounding lead, which found no bottom, and scorned him; the ship had in fact been running parallel to a chain of islands just out of sight.

What happened to Bering's salary in 1737, when the expedition's planned four years ran out?

It was halved. The Admiralty had lost patience with the delays: it also threatened him with fines and a court-martial, and the extra pay stayed withheld for several years.

How did Bering's shipwrecked crew shelter through the island winter of 1741-42?

In sand pits roofed with sails. They dug them into the frozen sand beside a stream, laid driftwood and canvas over the top, and carried the sick ashore to lie in them.

Why is Bering's death dated both 8 December and 19 December 1741?

Russia still used the Julian calendar. It then ran eleven days behind the Gregorian calendar of western Europe, so his officers' logs give the earlier date and modern reference books the later.