Many other expeditions to Kamtchatka and the western part of Behring Sea were soon thereafter made. Taras Stadukin in 1654 discovered the westernmost Kurill Islands, and sailed round Kamtchatka into Penjinsk Bay. In 1696, Lucas Simeonoff Moroscovich explored Kamtchatka by land, and during the next year the Cossack Vladimir Atlassoff followed him thither and by force of arms made the Kamtchatdales subjects of the Czar. This conquest was marked by wholesale butcheries of the helpless natives, and confiscation of their goods. The conquest of the Tchukchees was attempted in 1701, but failed, as did a second expedition against them ten years later. This latter, however, under the Cossack Peter Iliunsen Potoff, in 1711, had one highly-important result. It brought back definite reports of the narrowness of Behring Strait, of the location of the Diomedes Islands, and of the proximity of the American continent. Then, for some years, all further advance was stayed.
The next movement was undertaken by no less a personage than Peter the Great,
"——that Czar
Who made of tribes an Empire."
It was at the end of his reign and life. Two passions moved him. One was the zeal for scientific exploration and knowledge of the world; the other, the desire to extend his dominion across the Arctic borders of another continent. Accordingly in 1725 he planned a great expedition, drew up full instructions with his own hand, and delivered them to Admiral Apraxin; then died. His widow, who became Autocrat in his stead, ordered the plan fulfilled, and it was done promptly. On February 5th, 1725, the chief members of the expedition set out from St. Petersburg, their leader and commander being the illustrious Captain Vitus Behring.
The explorers made their way by slow stages to Okhotsk. There they built two ships, the "Fortuna" and the "Gabriel," and on July 20th, 1728, set sail on their adventurous voyage. On this occasion they contented themselves with traversing Behring Strait, and returned without seeing the American coast or even the Diomedes Islands. A second voyage, in 1729, was altogether fruitless, and in the spring of 1730 Behring returned to St. Petersburg without having achieved a single work of importance or won the first fraction of his later fame. But one of the objects of his expedition was presently attained by others, accidentally. The Yakutsk Cossacks, under Athanasius Shestakoff, had been for years fighting to subdue the indomitable Tchukchees, with little success. A party of them took the ship "Fortuna," abandoned by Behring, to make a war-like cruise along the Tchukchee coast. They were soon wrecked in Penjinsk Bay, and were routed in battle with the Tchukchees. But the engineer and navigator of the expedition, Michael Gwosdeff, made a boat from the wreck of the "Fortuna," and with his surviving comrades sailed to the Anadyr River. Thence they sailed to Cape Serdze, expecting there to meet a Cossack expedition from overland. In this they were disappointed. And presently a great storm arose from the eastward and drove them, helpless, before it. Right across the strait they were driven, to the American coast. Upon the latter, however, they could make no landing. The shore was inhospitable and the storm was furious. For two days they cruised along the coast, and then, the storm abating, made their way back to Asia.
Despite the failure of his first expedition, Behring was received with honors and promotion at the Russian capital, and preparations were pressed for another venture under his command. For several years he was engaged in voyages along the Siberian coast, and to Japan. But in 1741 the great achievement of his life began. His pilot, Ivan Jelagin, had gone to Avatcha with two ships, the "St. Peter" and the "St. Paul." On Niakina Bay he had founded the town of Petropaulovsk, named for the vessels. Thither went Wilhelm Steller, the Franconian naturalist, and Louis de Lisle de la Croyere. Thither, finally, went Behring, and on June 4th, 1741, sailed for America. On June 20th the two vessels were parted by a storm, and did not come together again; nor did Behring and Chirikoff, their commanders, ever meet again in this world. Chirikoff, in the "St. Paul," made quickest progress. On July 15th he reached the American coast, and anchored in Cross Sound. His mate, Dementieff, and ten armed men, in the long boat, went ashore. They did not return, and on July 21st Sidor Saveleff with other armed men went after them, in the only other boat of the "St. Paul." They did not return either. But the next day two canoes filled with savages came from the shore toward the ship, showing only too plainly what had become of the landing parties. The savages did not venture to attack the ship, but Chirikoff had no more boats in which to effect a landing. So on July 27th he weighed anchor and sailed back for Kamtchatka. He passed by numerous islands, and on October 9th re-entered the harbor of Petropaulovsk. Twenty-one of his seventy men had perished; among them Louis de Lisle de la Croyere, the French naturalist, who died of scurvy on the day of their return.
The "St. Peter," with Behring and his comrades on board, meanwhile, was driven blindly through tempest and fog toward the Alaskan coast. On Sunday, July 18th, he reached the land and disembarked. He was at the foot of some low, desolate bluff which skirted the shore for a long distance, and beyond which rose the savage splendors of Mt. St. Elias and the Arctic Alps. The spot was near what is now called Kayak Island. For six weeks Behring tarried in that neighborhood, refitting his storm-strained ship, laying aboard supplies of water and food, and making a few explorations of the coast. The two capes between which he landed he named St. Elias and Hermogenes. Here the naturalist Steller found many interesting traces of the natives. Going further north, into Prince William's Sound, Behring became confused by the number of islands and the difficulties of navigation, and abandoned the direction of the vessel to Lieutenant Waxel. They kept on, past the Kenai Peninsula, past Kadiak Island, and down the coast of the slender Alaska Peninsula, to the south-west, until they reached a group of islands which they named Shumagin, for a member of the company who died and was buried there. This was on August 29th. On September 3d a terrific storm arose, before which they were driven, helpless, far out into the North Pacific, southward to latitude 48°. Scurvy broke out among them with fatal force, and the disheartened men resolved to return to Kamtchatka.
Thenceforward for weeks they suffered almost incredible hardships. Every one was suffering from scurvy. So weakened were they by disease and famine that it took three men to hold the helm. Only a few sails were used, for the men were not able to hoist and manage more. When these were torn away by the storms, the helpless craft drifted under bare poles. The weather was a chaos of wind and fog and snow. For weeks they drifted blindly, now eastward, now westward, scarcely hoping to see land again, and utterly ignorant of the part of the ocean into which they had been borne. But on November 4th a particularly furious gale drove them ashore on an unknown coast. They were in the south-eastern part of Behring Sea, on one of the Kommandorski group of islands. The vessel was completely wrecked, and the men built huts on the shore for winter quarters. Waxel was still in command. Behring was a victim to natural stupidity, constitutional cowardice, and scurvy. All through the dreadful voyage from Prince William Sound he had remained in his cabin, shivering in abject terror. A few weeks after landing, on December 8th he died. In honor of him his men named the island Behring Island, and the group the Kommandorski, while Behring Strait and Behring Sea in their names give immortality to one of the least worthy of men. Waxel, Steller, and the others remained on Behring Island all that winter, feeding on the flesh of sea-lions and the monster Arctic manatee or sea-cow, now extinct. They collected a considerable store of furs of the sea-otter, blue fox and other animals, which they took back to Russia and thus greatly stimulated the zeal of further conquest. In the summer of 1742 they made their way to Petropaulovsky in a boat constructed from the wreck of their ship. Waxel reached St. Petersburg with the official report of the expedition in 1749.
Thenceforward the greed of gain led many Russian adventurers to the waters and shores of Behring Sea. Emilian Bassoff discovered Attoo Island, the westernmost of the Aleutian chain, in 1745, and Michael Novodtsikoff, in the same year, discovered other islands near by, and got a rich cargo of furs. Other explorers, who followed up the Aleutian chain were Ribinski, in 1748; Trapesnikoff, in 1749; Yagoff, in 1750; and Ivan Nikiforoff, who reached Unimak Island in 1757. Simon Krasilnikoff, Maxim Lazeroff and others kept up the work of discovering islands, getting furs, and massacring the natives. The Andreanoffsky Islands were discovered in 1761, and named in honor of Andrean Tolstoi, who fitted out Lazeroff's expedition. In the winter of 1761-2, Pushkareff and his men lived on the shore of False Pass. They were the first to spend a winter on the mainland of Alaska. The atrocities committed by them excited the hostility of the natives, and they were glad to get away in August, 1762. They took with them thirty natives, mostly women, as prisoners and slaves; but on the voyage home they wantonly murdered them all except two.