Great Northern Expedition (1733-1743): Bering Reaches Alaska

The Great Northern Expedition (1733-1743), also known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition, was one of the largest scientific and exploring enterprises of the 18th century. Organised by the Russian state and led by the Danish-born navigator Vitus Bering, it mapped thousands of kilometres of Siberia’s Arctic coast and in 1741 sent two ships across the North Pacific to the coast of Alaska. Bering himself never returned: his ship was wrecked on the way home, and he died on the island that now bears his name.

Background

By the early 18th century Russia had expanded across Siberia to the Pacific, a process that began with Yermak’s conquest of Siberia in the 1580s. Yet its north-eastern edge remained poorly known. Peter the Great wanted to know whether Asia and America were joined, to find routes for trade and to strengthen Russia’s claims in the region.

Shortly before his death in 1725, Peter ordered the First Kamchatka Expedition. Vitus Bering, born in Horsens, Denmark, in 1681 and an officer in the Russian navy, led it across Siberia to Kamchatka. In August 1728 his ship, the St Gabriel, sailed through the strait between Asia and America, but fog hid the American coast. Critics argued he had not proved that the continents were separate.

Bering proposed a far larger follow-up. In 1732, under Empress Anna, the Senate and the Admiralty approved an ambitious plan that combined naval exploration with scientific research.

Scope of the expedition

The expedition was divided into several detachments with different tasks:

• Arctic coast teams were to map the northern coast of Russia from the White Sea to the Kolyma River, travelling by ship, boat and dog sledge.
• A Pacific team under Martin Spangberg explored the Kuril Islands and reached Japan in 1739.
• The American voyage, led by Bering and Aleksei Chirikov, was to sail east from Kamchatka to find and claim the coast of America.
• An academic team from the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, including the historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller and the naturalist Johann Georg Gmelin, studied the geography, peoples and natural history of Siberia.

In total several thousand people took part, many of them soldiers, workers and Siberian local people forced to provide transport and supplies. The burden on Siberian communities was heavy, and the expedition was also enormously expensive for the Russian state.

Mapping the Arctic coast

The northern detachments worked for nearly a decade in extreme conditions. Ships were trapped in ice, crews suffered scurvy and many men died. Vasily Pronchishchev, who tried to sail west from the Lena River, died in 1736 together with his wife Tatiana, often remembered as one of the first women to take part in Arctic exploration.

The cousins Khariton and Dmitry Laptev mapped long sections of the coast on either side of the Lena delta; the Laptev Sea is named after them. In May 1742 the navigator Semyon Chelyuskin reached by sledge the northernmost point of mainland Eurasia, now Cape Chelyuskin. Together these teams produced the first reasonably accurate maps of much of Russia’s Arctic coastline.

Bering and Chirikov sail to America

After years of preparation, including hauling supplies thousands of kilometres across Siberia, Bering founded a harbour at Avacha Bay in Kamchatka in 1740. It was named Petropavlovsk after his two new ships, the St Peter and the St Paul.

The ships sailed on 4 June 1741 (Julian calendar, used in Russia at the time). They first searched in vain for a land shown on some maps to the south-east, and on 20 June they lost each other in fog. Chirikov, on the St Paul, sighted the coast of the Alexander Archipelago in south-east Alaska on 15 July 1741. He sent two boats ashore, with 15 men in all; neither boat returned, and their fate is unknown. Chirikov sailed back to Kamchatka, reaching it in October, though many of his crew, including the astronomer Louis De l’Isle de la Croyère, died of scurvy.

Bering’s St Peter sighted the high, snow-capped peak of Mount Saint Elias on 16 July 1741. On 20 July the ship anchored off Kayak Island, where the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller spent about ten hours ashore, collecting plants and observing birds and animals. Bering, ill and anxious about the season, ordered an early return.

Shipwreck and Bering’s death

The voyage home was a disaster. Contrary winds and storms slowed the ship, and scurvy spread through the crew. The first to die was the sailor Nikita Shumagin, after whom the Shumagin Islands are named. In the Aleutian Islands the crew had brief contacts with Aleut (Unangan) people.

In early November 1741 the crew sighted land and, believing it to be Kamchatka, made for the shore. It was an uninhabited island in what are now the Commander Islands. The St Peter was later driven ashore and wrecked. The sick men sheltered in pits dug into the sand, covered with sails.

Bering died there on 8 December 1741 (19 December in the modern calendar), aged 60. In all, about 30 of the 77 men on board died during the voyage and the winter. The survivors lived on sea otters, seals and the huge, slow sea cows of the island’s shores. In the summer of 1742 they built a small vessel from the wreck’s timbers and, in August, the 46 survivors sailed it back to Petropavlovsk.

Key people

• Vitus Bering (1681-1741): Danish-born Russian naval officer and leader of both Kamchatka expeditions.
• Aleksei Chirikov (1703-1748): Bering’s second-in-command, captain of the St Paul.
• Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746): German naturalist on the St Peter, whose journal is a key source.
• Semyon Chelyuskin: navigator who reached Eurasia’s northernmost cape in 1742.
• Gerhard Friedrich Müller (1705-1783): historian whose research laid foundations for the study of Siberian history.

Consequences and legacy

The expedition proved beyond doubt that Asia and America were separate and that a sea route ran between them, and it gave Russia a claim to north-western America. Its scientific results filled many volumes, including Stepan Krasheninnikov’s description of Kamchatka and Gmelin’s “Flora Sibirica”.

The sea otter pelts brought back by the survivors fetched high prices in China, and fur hunters soon headed for the Aleutians and Alaska. This led to the colony of Russian America, which Russia sold to the United States in the Alaska Purchase of 1867. Steller’s sea cow, found only around the Commander Islands, was hunted to extinction by about 1768.

Bering’s name was given to the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea and the ancient land bridge of Beringia. In 1991 a joint Danish and Soviet team excavated his grave on Bering Island. Study of his remains suggested he may not have died mainly of scurvy, and he was reburied in 1992.

Timeline

• 1725-1730: First Kamchatka Expedition; Bering sails through the strait in 1728.
• 1732: Plans for the Second Kamchatka Expedition are approved.
• 1733: The first detachments leave St Petersburg.
• 1739: Spangberg’s ships reach Japan.
• 1740: Petropavlovsk is founded in Kamchatka.
• 1741, 4 June: The St Peter and St Paul sail for America.
• 1741, 15-16 July: Chirikov and then Bering sight the coast of Alaska.
• 1741, 8 December: Bering dies on Bering Island.
• 1742, May: Chelyuskin reaches the northernmost point of Eurasia.
• 1742, August: Survivors of the St Peter return to Kamchatka.

Why it matters

The Great Northern Expedition put the far north of Asia and the north-western coast of America on the world map. It combined exploration with science on a scale rarely seen before, opened the way to Russian expansion into Alaska and left a human story of endurance and loss that still defines Bering’s name.