Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

While groping in fog and tempest on the high seas, Bering drifted one Sunday (July 18th) upon or about the Alaskan mainland coast; he disembarked at the foot of some low, desolate bluffs that face the sea near the spot now known to us as Kayak Island, and in plain view of those towering peaks of the St. Elias Alps. He passed full six weeks in this neighborhood, while the crew were busy getting fresh food-supplies, water, etc., when, on the 3d of September, a storm of unwonted vigor burst upon them, lasted seven days, and drove them out to sea and before it, down as far as 48° 8´ north latitude, and into the lonely wastes of the vast Pacific. Scurvy began to appear on board the St. Peter; hardly a day passed without recording the death of some one of the ship’s company, and soon men enough in health or strength sufficient to work the vessel could not be mustered. A return to Kamchatka was resolved upon.

Bering became surly and morose, and seldom appeared on deck, and so the second in command, “Stoorman” Vachtel, directed the dreary cruise. After regaining the land, and burying a sailor named Shoomagin on one of a group of Alaskan islets that bear his name to-day, and making several additional capes and landfalls, they saw two islands which, by a most unfortunate blunder, they took to be of the Kurile chain, and adjacent to Kamchatka. Thus they erred sadly in their reckoning, and sailed out upon a false point of departure.

In vain they craned their necks for the land, and strained their feeble eyes; the shore of Kamchatka refused to rise, and it finally dawned upon them that they were lost—that there was no hope of making a port in that goal so late in the year. The wonderful discipline of the Russian sailors was strikingly exhibited at this stage of the luckless voyage: in spite of their debilitated and emaciated condition, they still obeyed orders, though suffering frightfully in the cold and wet; the ravages of scurvy had made such progress that the steersman was conducted to the helm by two other invalids who happened to have the use of their legs, and who supported him under the arms! When he could no longer steer from suffering, then he was succeeded by another no better able to execute the labor than himself. Thus did the unhappy crew waste away into death and impotency. They were obliged to carry few sails, for they were helpless to reef or hoist them, and such as they had were nearly worn out; and even in this case they were unable to renew them by replacing from the stores, since there were no seamen strong enough on the ship to bend new ones to the yards and booms.

Soon rain was followed by snow, the nights grew longer and darker, and they now lived in dreadful anticipation of shipwreck; the fresh water diminished, and the labor of working the vessel became too severe for the few who were able to be about. From the 1st to the 4th of November the ship had lain as a log on the ocean, helpless and drifting, at the sport of the wind and the waves. Then again, in desperation, they managed to control her, and set her course anew to the westward, without knowing absolutely anything as to where they were. In a few hours after, the joy of the distressed crew can be better imagined than described, for, looming up on the gray, gloomy horizon, they saw the snow-covered tops of high hills, still distant however, ahead. As they drew nearer, night came upon them, and they judged best, therefore, to keep out at sea “off and on” until daybreak, so as to avoid the risk of wrecking themselves in the deep darkness. When the gray light of early morning dawned, they found that the rigging on the starboard side of the vessel was giving way, and that their craft could not be much longer managed; that the fresh water was very low, and that sickness was increasing frightfully. The raw humidity of the climate was now succeeded by dry, intense cold; life was well-nigh insupportable on shipboard then, so, after a brief consultation, they determined to make for the land, save their lives, and, if possible, safely beach the St. Peter.

The small sails were alone set; the wind was north; thirty-six fathoms of water over a sand bottom; two hours after they decreased it to twelve; they now contrived to get over an anchor and run it out at three-quarters of a cable’s length; at six in the evening this hawser parted; tremendous waves bore the helpless boat on in toward the land through the darkness and the storm, where soon she struck twice upon a rocky reef. Yet, in a moment after, they had five fathoms of water; a second anchor was thrown out, and again the tackle parted; and while, in the energy of wild despair, prostrated by sheets of salty spray that swept over them in bursts of fury, they were preparing a third bower, a huge combing wave lifted that ark of misery—that band of superlative human suffering—safely and sheer over the reef, where in an instant the tempest-tossed ship rested in calm water; the last anchor was dropped, and thus this luckless voyage of Alaskan discovery came to an end.

Bering died here, on one of the Commander Islands,[1] where he had been wrecked as above related; the survivors, forty-five souls in number, lived through the winter on the flesh of sea-lions, the sea-cow,[2] or manatee, and thus saved their scanty stock of flour; they managed to build a little shallop out of the remains of the St. Peter, in which they left Bering Island—departed from this scene of a most extraordinary shipwreck and deliverance—on August 16, 1742, and soon reached Petropaulovsky in safety the 27th following. In addition to an authentic knowledge of the location of a great land to the eastward, the survivors carried from their camp at Bering Island a large number of valuable sea-otter, blue-fox, and other peltries, which stimulated, as no other inducement could have done, the prompt fitting out and venture of many new expeditions for the freshly discovered land and islands of Alaska.

THE RHYTINA, OR SEA-COW (Extinct)

The flesh of this animal constituted the chief food supply of Bering’s shipwrecked crew, 1741-’42

So, in 1745, Michael Novodiskov first, of all white men, pushed over in a rude open wooden shallop from Kamchatka, and landed on Attoo, that extreme western islet of the great Aleutain chain which forms upon the map a remarkable southern wall to the green waters of Bering Sea. No object of geographical search was in this hardy fur-hunter’s mind as he perilled his life in that adventure—far from it; he was after the precious pelage of the sea-otter, and like unto him were all of the long list of Russian explorers of Alaskan coasts and waters. These rough, indomitable men ventured out from their headquarters at Kamchatka and the Okotsk Sea in rapid succession as years rolled on, until by the end of 1768-69 a large area of Russian America was well determined and rudely charted by them.[3]