Vitus Bering: the Discoverer of Bering Strait

by Peter Lauridsen

Even these tasks exceeded all reasonable demands, and not until several generations later did Cook, La Perouse, and Vancouver succeed in accomplishing what the Russian Senate in a few pen-strokes directed Bering to do. And yet, not until the government touched the Arctic side of this task, did it entirely lose sight of all reason. Its instructions to Bering were, not only to chart the coast of the Old World from the Dwina to the Pacific, to explore harbors and estuaries along this coast, to describe the country and study its natural resources, especially its mineral wealth, but also to dispatch an expedition to the Bear Islands, off the mouth of the Kolyma, and to see to it that his earlier trip to the Chukchee peninsula was repeated, besides sailing from there to America, as the results of his former voyage "were unsatisfactory," reliable information concerning that country having been received from the Cossack Melnikoff.

All these expeditions were to start out from the great Siberian rivers,—from the Dwina to the Obi with two vessels under the charge of the Admiralty; from the Obi and Lena with three twenty-four-oared boats, two of which were to meet between these two rivers, and the third was to sail around Bering's Peninsula (this Reclus calls the Chukchee peninsula), or, if America proved to be connected with that country, it was to attempt to find European colonies. The orders of the Senate were, furthermore, to the effect that surveyors should be sent out in advance for the preliminary charting of these river-mouths, and to erect light-houses, establish magazines for convenient relays, and procure provisions and other necessaries,—very excellent directions, all of which, however, were so many meaningless words after they had left the government departments. Our age, which still has in mind the Franklin expeditions—the English parallel—is able to form an idea of these gigantic demands, and yet the Senate did not hesitate to load the organization of all this upon the shoulders of one man. Bering was made chief of all the enterprises east of the Ural Mountains. At the Obi and the Lena, at Okhotsk and Kamchatka, he was to furnish ships, provisions, and transportation.

But in spite of all that was vague and visionary in these plans, they had nevertheless a certain homogeneity. They were all nautical expeditions for nautical purposes and nautico-geographical investigations. Then the Academy added its demands, making everything doubly complicated. It demanded a scientific exploration of all Siberia and Kamchatka,—not only an account of these regions based on astronomical determinations and geodetic surveys, on minute descriptions and artistically executed landscape pictures, on barometric, thermometric, and aerometric observations, as well as investigations in all the branches of natural history, but it demanded also a detailed presentation of the ethnography, colonization, and history of the country, together with a multitude of special investigations in widely different directions. The leading spirits in these enterprises were two young and zealous Germans, the chemist Johann Georg Gmelin and the historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller, twenty-eight and twenty-four years of age respectively, members of the Academy, and later, highly respected scholars. Müller was a personal friend of Bering, and through him got a desire to participate in the expedition.

Kiriloff, the secretary of the Senate, himself a successful student of geography, supported the efforts of the Academy, and most generously gratified all the exaggerated demands that only imperious and inexperienced devotees of science could present. Indeed, Bering could not but finally consider himself fortunate in escaping a sub-expedition to Central Asia, one of Kiriloff's pet plans, which the latter afterwards took upon himself to carry out. The Academic branch of the expedition, which thus came to consist of the astronomer La Croyère, the physicist Gmelin (the elder), and the historian Müller, was right luxuriously equipped. It was accompanied by two landscape painters, one surgeon, one interpreter, one instrument-maker, five surveyors, six scientific assistants, and fourteen body-guards. Moreover, this convoy grew like an avalanche, as it worked its way into Siberia. La Croyère had nine wagon-loads of instruments, among them telescopes thirteen and fifteen feet in length. These Academical gentlemen had at least thirty-six horses, and on the large rivers, they could demand boats with cabins. They carried with them a library of several hundred volumes, not only of scientific and historical works in their specialties, but also of the Latin classics and such light reading as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. Besides, they had seventy reams of writing paper and an enormous supply of artists' colors, draughting materials and apparatus. All archives were to be open to them, all Siberian government authorities were to be at their service and furnish interpreters, guides, and laborers. The Professors, as they were called, constituted an itinerant academy. They drafted their own instructions, and no superior authority took upon itself to make these subservient to the interests of the expedition as a whole. From February, 1734, they held one or two weekly meetings and passed independent resolutions. It became a part of Bering's task to move this cumbersome machine, this learned republic, from St. Petersburg to Kamchatka, to care for their comforts and conveniences, and render possible the flank movements and side sallies that either scientific demands or their own freaks of will might dictate. In the original instructions such directions were by no means few. But Bering had no authority over these men. They were willing to recognize his authority only when they needed his assistance. None of them except Bering and his former associates had any idea of the mode and conditions of travel in that barbarous country. That there should be lack of understanding between men with such different objects in view as academists and naval officers, is not very strange. Their only bond of union was the Senate's senseless ukase. If it had been the purpose of the government to exhibit a human parallel to the "happy families" of menageries, it could hardly have acted differently. In all his movements Bering was hampered by this academical deadweight. The Professors not only showed a lack of appreciation of Bering's efforts in their behalf, but they also stormed him with complaints, filled their records with them, and concluded them—characteristically enough—with a resolution to prefer formal charges against him before the Senate.

Only a new state, as the Russian then was, only a government that recently had seen the will of one energetic man turn topsy-turvy a whole people's mode of life, and yet had preserved a fanciful faith in Peter the Great's teachings—his supreme disregard for obstacles,—only such a government could even think of heaping such mountains of enterprises one upon the other, or demand that any one man, and a foreigner at that, should carry them into execution. Peter's spirit undoubtedly hovered over these plans, but the marble sarcophagus in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul had long since received his earthly remains, and without his personal energy the Senate's plans were but the projects of a dazzled fancy. On paper the Senate might indeed refer Bering to various ways and means; it might enjoin upon the Siberian authorities to do everything in their power to promote the progress of the various expeditions; it might direct its secretaries to prepare a very humane declamation denouncing the practice of any violence against, or oppression of, the weak nomadic tribes in the East; but it could not by a few pen-strokes increase the natural resources of Siberia, or change the unwillingness of the local authorities to accede to the inordinate demands which the nautical expedition necessarily had to make, nor could it make roads in the wild forest-regions where only the Yakut and Tunguse roamed about. The Senate's humanitarian phrases were of but little significance to the explorers when it was found necessary to compel the nomads of the East to supply what the government had failed to furnish. The Senate had ventured so near the extreme limits of the possible, that it could not but end by crossing the border and demanding the impossible. These numerous expeditions, scattered over half a continent, were exposed to so many unforeseeable accidents and misfortunes, that the government, in order to render support and retain its control, would necessarily have to be in regular communication. But east of Moscow there was no mail service. Hence the government instructed Bering to establish, on consultation with the local authorities, postal communication, partly monthly and partly bi-monthly, from Moscow to Kamchatka, to the Chinese border by way of Irkutsk, and by a new route to Uda,—as though such a matter could be accomplished through consultation. The Senate might have known, and in fact did know, that in the mountainous forest-region between Yakutsk and Okhotsk (a distance of about seven hundred miles) there was but one single Russian hut, and that all the requisites for a mail service—men, horses, and roads—demanded unlimited means and most extensive preparations.

A number of plans and propositions of minor importance are here omitted. The object has been to show, in a succinct review, the origin of the Great Northern Expedition, its enormous compass, and the grouping of its various enterprises about Vitus Bering as its chief. Von Baer classes the tasks to be accomplished by Bering, each of which demanded separately equipped expeditions, under seven heads: namely, astronomical observations and determinations in Siberia, physico-geographical explorations, historic-ethnographical studies, the charting of the Arctic coast, the navigation of the East Siberian coast, and the discovery of Japan and America. This writer adds that no other geographical enterprise, not even the charting of China by the Jesuits, Mackenzie's travels, or Franklin's expeditions, can in greatness or sacrifice be compared with the gigantic undertakings that were loaded upon Bering, and carried out by him.[51]

It would no doubt be wrong to ascribe the over-burdening of Bering's plans to any one man, and for a foreign author, who but imperfectly understands the Russian literature of that period, to do so, would be more than foolish. Kiriloff, the secretary of the Senate, had great zeal for geographical explorations, and did all in his power to further the plans of Czar Peter. It has been proved that Bering's proposition was presented after a conference with Kiriloff, and that as long as he lived, he assisted Bering by word and deed. Furthermore, it seems probable that, in order to promote the exploration of Siberia, he prevented the Admiralty from sending Bering's expedition by sea south of Africa. However, it is undoubtedly a fact that Bering's plan reached its final proportions as a result of the discussions between Count Ostermann, the influential courtier and statesman, (who evidently landed in Russia in company with Bering in 1701), Soimonoff, an officer of the Senate, Kiriloff, and Golovin, chief of the Admiralty, and these men would hardly have consulted the opinions of Bering, who often and most emphatically disapproved of the additions that had been made to his plans. Moreover, as a result of the distrust which his first expedition inspired in Russia, he was in an insecure and unfortunate position. But he had reason to complain of other things. The gigantic task assigned to him demanded a despotic will endowed with dictatorial power. Bering lacked both, especially the latter.

The Senate exhausted itself in minute hints, directions, and propositions, instead of issuing definite orders concerning the necessary means. Unfortunately, too, numerous and exaggerated complaints had been made in regard to the suffering which Bering's first expedition had caused the Kamchatkans, and on this account the government was foolish enough to bind the chief's hands, while it simultaneously overloaded his shoulders. Through injudicious instructions he was made dependent upon his subordinates. It was bad enough that he was not to be permitted to take any decisive steps in Siberia without first consulting and coming to an agreement with the local authorities,—the governor of Tobolsk, the lieutenant-governor of Irkutsk, and the voivode of Yakutsk. On account of the great distances and the wretched roads such proceedings were well-nigh impossible. The government should have known that these authorities only under the most peremptory orders would comply with demands liable to exhaust the resources of the country and ruin the thinly-populated and poverty-stricken districts. This was, indeed, bad enough, but matters were much aggravated when the Senate ordered him to take action in all important questions, only after deliberation with his officers, and to refer every loading measure to a commission. Such a method of procedure seems to us entirely incomprehensible. But Sokoloff, who was himself a Russian naval officer, says on this point, that the laws of the empire, which at that time were in full force, required of every superior officer that he should consult his subordinates before inaugurating any new movement. In its instructions to Bering the Senate expressly emphasized this decree of the law, and it actually went so far as to order him, even in matters of comparative unimportance, to seek the opinion of his Academical associates, and always act in the strictest accordance with his Russian colleague Chirikoff's propositions.

The chiefs of the different branches of the expedition were of course subject to the same regulation. In this way Bering was deprived of a sovereign chief's power and authority, and it afforded him but little reparation that the government gave him the power to reduce or promote an officer,—only naval officers, however. Necessary regard for the needs of the service and for his own principles forbade him to use this weapon in that arbitrary manner which alone could have neutralized the unfortunate influence of the government laws. Hence this feature of his instructions, besides causing much delay, became a source of the most incredible troubles and aggravations, which, as we shall see later, laid him in his grave on the bleak coasts of Bering Island.

Everything carefully considered, it could have surprised no one if the Northern Expedition had collapsed in its very greatness, and it was without any doubt due to Bering that this did not happen. In many respects Bering was unqualified to lead such an expedition into a barbarous country, surrounded as he was with incapable, uneducated, and corruptible assistants, pestered by calumniators and secret or avowed enemies in every quarter, to whom the government seemed more disposed to listen than to him. More just than arbitrary, more considerate than hasty, more humane than his position permitted, he nevertheless had one important quality, an honest, genuine, and tenacious spirit of perseverance, and this saved the expedition from dissolution. The government had sent him in pursuit of a golden chariot, and he found more than the linchpin. The realization, however, was far from that anticipated by the government. Many of the projects of the original plan were but partially accomplished, and others were not even attempted; but in spite of this, the results attained by Bering and his associates will stand as boundary-posts in the history of geographical discovery. Many of these men sealed their work with their lives, and added a luster to the name of Russia,[52] which later explorers have maintained.