Vitus Bering: the Discoverer of Bering Strait

by Peter Lauridsen

The necessary instruments and some provisions were obtained in St. Petersburg. The naval officers were supplied with quadrants, thermometers, and nocturnals, the surveyors with astrolabes and Gunter's-chains, and the Academists were authorized to take from the library of the Academy all the works they needed, and, at the expense of the crown, to purchase such as the library did not contain. La Croyère carried with him a whole magazine of instruments. For presents to the natives two thousand rubles were appropriated. In N. Novgorod and Kazan some other necessaries were obtained, but the enormous ship-supplies and provisions, besides men, horses, barges and other river boats, were to be provided by the Siberian towns and country districts.

The Siberian authorities received orders to make great preparations. They were to buy venison, fish, and cod liver oil, erect light-houses and magazines along the Arctic coast, and dispatch commissions with large transports to the Pacific coast, so as to enable Bering to begin his work of discovery without delay. These preparations were to be followed by efforts toward the founding of various works, such as iron and salt works at Okhotsk, a smaller furnace at Yakutsk for the use of the expedition, and, through the utilization of the saccharine qualities of the "bear's claw,"[53] a distillery was also to be established on the peninsula of Kamchatka. It is unnecessary to say that all of these propositions were buried in the Siberian government departments.

Calculations were made for a six years' expedition. The leaders of each branch of the expedition were authorized to repeat any unsuccessful adventure the succeeding summer. All were prepared for a long stay in the extreme northeast—many, indeed, remained there forever—hence, most of the officers, among them Bering and Spangberg, were accompanied by their wives and children. On this account the expedition seemed more than ever a national migration on a small scale.

The first start was made February 1, 1733. Spangberg, with some laborers and the heaviest marine stores, went directly to Okhotsk to expedite the ship-building on the Pacific coast. Lieutenant Ofzyn went to Kazan to collect supplies. Bering started out March 18, in order as quickly as possible to reach Tobolsk, whence the first Arctic expedition was to be sent out. In the course of the summer, the larger caravans arrived at this place. Simultaneously heavy supplies were brought in from West Siberia by Bering's men. Here, also, the construction of the vessel for the expedition, the shallop Tobol, was begun. Only the Academists were yet in St. Petersburg, where they were receiving the attention of the official world. At an audience, the Empress bade them farewell in the most solemn manner. She allowed them to kiss her hand, and assured them of her most gracious favor. On the succeeding day, the other members of the imperial family manifested similar sympathy. Then, however, the difficulties began. That these heavily-laden gentlemen could not even in St. Petersburg secure adequate means of transportation, makes quite a comical impression. On this account they were detained until late in August, and they would no doubt have been unable to reach Siberia in 1733, if Bering had not left for them in Tver a conveniently equipped vessel, which carried them the same autumn down the Volga to Kazan. They did not reach Tobolsk, however, until January, 1734. Bering, who was to be supplied by them with surveyors and instruments for his Arctic expedition, and who could not, before their arrival, form an estimate of the size of his river transports to be used in the spring, was obliged repeatedly and very forcibly to urge them to make haste. Here the disagreements began, and were continued concerning petty affairs, which history finds it unnecessary to dwell upon.

On May 2, 1734, the Tobol was launched amid the firing of cannon, the blare of trumpets, and the merry draining of goblets. The vessel had a keel of 70 feet, was 15 feet wide, and 7 feet deep. It carried two masts, some small cannon, and a crew of 56 men, among them first mate Sterlegoff and two cartographers, under the command of Lieut. Ofzyn. As the provincial government had secured neither magazines nor provisions, nor attended to any other preparations on the Arctic coast, the necessary supplies, which were to be stored north of Obdorsk, were loaded on four rafts, which, with a force of 30 men, accompanied Ofzyn. On May 14, he received his Admiralty instructions from Bering, and, saluted by cannon, the First Arctic Expedition stood up the Irtish for the Polar seas.

Five days later, Bering, with the main command and the Academists, left Tobolsk and took different routes for Yakutsk, which had been selected as the central point for the future enterprises of the expedition. In October, 1734, he arrived at this place, bringing with him a quantity of materials. The next spring, Chirikoff came with the greater part of the supplies, and during the year following, this dull Siberian city was the scene of no little activity. On his arrival, however, Bering found that no preparations whatever had been made for him. In spite of instructions and orders from the government, nothing had been done toward charting the Arctic coast or for the expediting of the heavily loaded transports on the way to Okhotsk. Nor did Bering find that the authorities were even kindly disposed toward him. Yet, in the course of the next six months, he had two large ships built for the Arctic expedition, and when his own supplies arrived by way of the central Siberian river-route, described in the first part of this work, these vessels, together with four barges, were equipped and furnished with provisions, and in June, 1735, were ready for a start. These two ships—the sloop Yakutsk, Lieut. Pronchisheff, first mate Chelyuskin, surveyor Chekin, and about fifty men, and the decked boat Irkutsk, Lieut. Peter Lassenius, with a surveyor, first mate, and also about fifty men—had most difficult tasks to accomplish. The former was to cruise from the mouth of the Lena, along the whole coast of the Taimyr peninsula, and enter the mouth of the Yenisei. The latter was to follow the Arctic coast in an easterly direction to the Bering peninsula, cruise along its coast, and ascertain the relative positions of Asia and America, and, if it was a geographical possibility, to sail down to the peninsula of Kamchatka. He also had instructions to find the islands off the mouth of the Kolyma (the Bear Islands). From this it is evident that Lassenius's expedition was of the greater geographical interest. Moreover, it had to do with one of the main questions of Bering's whole activity—the discovery and charting of the North Pacific—and hence it is not a mere accident that Bering selected for this expedition one of his own countrymen, or that he assigned the charting of northeastern Asia and the discovery of America and Japan, to chiefs of Danish birth, Lassenius and Spangberg. Nothing is known of the earlier life of Lassenius. In service he was the oldest of Bering's lieutenants. Shortly before the departure of the expedition, he was taken into the Russian fleet, and Gmelin says of him, that he was an able and experienced naval officer, volunteered his services to the expedition, and began his work with intrepidity. All attempts to trace his birth and family relations have proved fruitless.

On the 30th of June, 1735, both expeditions left Yakutsk, and thus the charting of the whole of the Arctic coast of Siberia was planned and inaugurated by Bering himself. He could now apply all his energies to the Pacific expeditions. He constructed a multitude of river-craft, and erected barracks, magazines, winter-huts, and wharves along the river-route to Okhotsk. In the vicinity of Yakutsk he established an iron foundry and furnace, whence the various vessels were supplied with anchors and other articles of iron. In fact, he made this place the emporium for those heavy supplies that in the years 1735-36 were brought from South and West Siberia, and which later were to be sent to Okhotsk.

At Okhotsk the exiled Major-General Pissarjeff was in command. He had been sent there as a government official, with authority on the Pacific coast and in Kamchatka, to develop the country and pave the way for the expeditions to follow, by making roads and harbors, erecting buildings in Okhotsk, introducing agriculture,—in fact, make this coast fit for human habitation. The government had given him ample power, but as he accomplished nothing, he was succeeded by Captain Pavlutski as chief in Kamchatka, and Pissarjeff was reduced to a sort of harbor-master in Okhotsk. A command that had been sent to his assistance under first mate Bireff, he nearly starved to death; the men deserted and the town remained the same rookery as ever.

In this condition Spangberg found affairs in the winter of 1734-35. With his usual energy he had pushed his transports to Yakutsk in the summer preceding, and with the same boats he proceeded up the Aldan and Maya, but winter came on and his boats were frozen in on the Yudoma. He started out on foot by the familiar route across the Stanovoi Mountains to Okhotsk, which place he reached after enduring great hardship and suffering; but even here he found no roof for shelter. He was forced to subsist on carcasses and roots, and not until the spring fishing began and a provision caravan sent by Bering arrived, did he escape this dire distress. In the early summer, Pissarjeff put in an appearance, and very soon a bitter and fatal enmity arose between these two men.

Spangberg was born in Jerne near Esbjerg in Jutland (Denmark), probably about the year 1698. He was the son of well-to-do parents of the middle class. In the Jerne churchyard there is still to be seen a beautiful monument on the grave of his brother, the "estimable and well-born Chr. Spangberg," nothing else is known of his early life. In 1720, he entered the Russian fleet as a lieutenant of the fourth rank, and for a time ran the packet-boat between Kronstadt and Lübeck, whereupon he took part in Bering's first expedition as second in command. In 1732, for meritorious service on this expedition, he was made a captain of the third rank. He was an able, shrewd, and energetic man, a practical seaman, active and vehement, inconsiderate of the feelings of others, tyrannical and avaricious. He spoke the Russian language only imperfectly. His fame preceded him throughout all Siberia, and Sokoloff says that many thought him some general, incognito, others an escaped convict. The natives of Siberia feared him and called him Martin Petrovich Kosar, or in ironical praise, "Batushka" (old fellow). He had many enemies. Complaints and accusations were showered upon him, but it would most certainly be wrong to ascribe to them any great significance. Siberia is the land of slander. All Russian officials were corruptible, and the honest men among those who stood nearest to Peter himself could literally be counted on one's fingers. While in Siberia, Spangberg is said to have acquired the possession of many horses, valuable furs, and other goods of which the authorities had forced the sale. When the Senate, after his great voyage of discovery to Japan, had treated him unjustly, he left Siberia arbitrarily in 1745, and, without leave of absence, set out for St. Petersburg, where he was summoned before a court-martial and condemned to death; but this was finally commuted to his being reduced to a lieutenant for three months. He remained in the service and died, in 1761, as a captain of the first rank. In Okhotsk he was accompanied by his wife and son.[54]