The men that took part in these early Russian explorations have not yet received their just dues. Not one of them, however, needs rehabilitation so much as Spangberg. He is entitled to an independent place in geographical history, but has been completely barred out. O. Peschel and Prof. Ruge know him as Bering's principal officer, but not as the discoverer of the Kurile Islands and Japan from the north. And yet, just this was his task. He was to sail from Kamchatka to Nipon, chart the Kurile Islands, link the Russian explorations to the West European cartography of northern Japan, and investigate the geography of the intervening region,—especially the cartographical monsters which in the course of a century of contortion had developed from De Vries's intelligent map of East Yezo, Iturup (Staaten Eiland) and Urup (Kompagniland). We have already spoken of these geographical deformities, which assumed the most grotesque forms, and were at that time accepted by the scientific world. The version of the brothers De l'Isle, which perhaps was the most sober, may be seen from Map II. in the appendix.
By Strahlenberg (1730) and by Bellin and Charlesvoix (1735), highly respected names among scholars of that day, Kamchatka and Yezo were represented as forming a great continent separated by narrow sounds from Japan, which was continued on the meridian of Kamchatka and Yezo, and from an eastern chain of islands—Staaten Eiland and Kompagniland—that seemed to project into the Pacific in the form of a continent.
Kiriloff, who was familiar with Bering's map of eastern Asia, and made use of it, and who knew of the most northerly Kuriles, made the necessary corrections in his general map of Russia (1734), but retained, in regard to Yezo and Japan, a strangely unfortunate composition of Dutch and Strahlenberg accounts, and put Nipon (Hondo) much too far to the east. In these cartographical aids Spangberg found only errors and confusion, and he got about the same kind of assistance from his real predecessors in practical exploration. Peschel tells that Ivan Kosyrefski, in the years 1712-13, thoroughly investigated the Kurile chain; there is, however, but little truth in this. Peschel gives G. F. Müller as his authority and refers to his book, but the latter says explicitly on this point: "All of Kosyrefski's voyages were confined to the first two or three Kuriles; farther than this he did not go, and whatever he tells of beyond them was obtained from the accounts of others." It is possible that Müller's judgment is a trifle one-sided, but it is nevertheless certain that Kosyrefski's description of the Kuriles is based on his own explorations only in a very slight degree, and that he by no means deserves the place that Peschel and Ruge have accorded him. Nor did Lushin's and Yevrinoff's expedition in the summer of 1721 get very far—scarcely beyond the fifth or sixth island—and with them, until Spangberg appeared on the scene, Russian explorations in this quarter were at a standstill.
The expedition to Japan (1738) was undertaken with three ships. Spangberg and Petroff sailed the one-masted brig, the Archangel Michael, Lieutenant Walton and first mate Kassimiroff the three-masted double sloop Hope, and Second-Lieutenant Schelting had Bering's old vessel, the Gabriel. The Michael had a crew of sixty-three, among them a monk, a physician, and an assayer, and each of the other two ships had a crew of forty-four. The flotilla left Okhotsk on the 18th of June, 1738, but was detained in the Sea of Okhotsk by ice, and did not reach Bolsheretsk until the early part of July. From here, on the 15th of July, Spangberg departed for the Kuriles to begin charting.
The Kurile chain, the thousand islands or Chi-Shima, as the Japanese call them, is 650 kilometers long. These islands are simply a multitude of crater crests which shoot up out of the sea, and on that account make navigation very difficult. The heavy fog, which almost continually prevails here, conceals all landmarks. In the great depths, sounding afforded little assistance, and, furthermore, around these islands and through the narrow channels there are heavy breakers and swift currents.
For nearly a century after Spangberg, these obstacles defied some of the world's bravest seamen. Captain Gore, who was last in command of Cook's ships, was obliged to give up the task of charting this region; La Pérouse succeeded in exploring only the Boussale channel; the fogs forced Admiral Sarycheff (1792) to give up his investigations here; Captain Broughton (1796) was able to circumnavigate only the most southerly islands, without, however, succeeding in giving a correct representation of them; and not until the early part of this century did Golovnin succeed in charting the group more accurately than Spangberg. All of these difficulties were experienced in full measure by Spangberg's expedition. In constant combat with fogs, swift currents, and heavy seas along steep and rocky coasts, he had, by the 3d of August, 1738, circumnavigated thirty-one islands (our maps have not nearly so large a number), and at a latitude of 45° 30' he reached the large island Nadeshda, (the Kompagniland of the Dutch, Urup), but, as he could nowhere find a place to anchor, and as the nights were growing dark and long, the ship's bread running short, and the crew for a long time having been on half rations, he turned back, and reached Bolsheretsk on the 17th of August. Lieutenant Walton, who had parted company with his chief and had sailed as far down as 43° 30' north latitude, thus reaching the parallel of Yezo, arrived a few days later. As well as the other chiefs of these expeditions, Spangberg had authority, without a renewed commission, to repeat the expedition the following summer; hence the winter was spent in preparations for it. So far as it was possible to do so, he sought to provision himself in Kamchatka, and, especially for reconnoitering the coast, he built of birchwood an eighteen-oared boat, called the Bolsheretsk.
On the 21st of May, 1739, he again stood out to sea with all four ships, and on the 25th of the same month he reached Kurile Strait, and from here sailed south southeast into the Pacific to search for Gamaland and all the legendary group of islands which appeared on De l'Isle's map. This southerly course, about on the meridian of Kamchatka, he kept until the 8th of June, reaching a latitude of 42°. As he saw nothing but sea and sky, he veered to the west southwest for the purpose of "doing the lands" near the coast of Japan. Walton, who, in spite of Spangberg's strictest orders, was constantly seeking to go off on his own tack, finally, on the 14th of June, found an opportunity to steal away and sail in a southwesterly direction. In different latitudes, but on the same day, the 16th of June, both discovered land. Walton followed the coast of Nipon down to latitude 33°, but Spangberg confined his explorations to the region between 39° and 37° 30' N. The country was very rich. A luxuriant vegetation—grape vines, orange trees and palms—decked its shores. Rich fields of rice, numerous villages, and populous cities were observed from the vessel. The sea teemed with fish of enormous size and peculiar form, and the currents brought them strange and unknown plants. The arrival of the ships caused great excitement among the natives, beacons burned along the coast all night, and cruisers swarmed about them at a respectful distance. On the 22d, Spangberg cast anchor one verst from shore, and sought to communicate with them. The Japanese brought rice, tobacco, various kinds of fruits and cloths, which, on very reasonable terms, they exchanged for Russian wares. They were very polite, and Spangberg succeeded in obtaining some gold coins, which, however, he found were described by Kæmpfer. Several persons of high rank visited him in his cabin and attempted to explain to him, by the aid of his map and globe, the geography of Japan and Yezo. As his instructions enjoined upon him the most extreme cautiousness, and as on the following day he found himself surrounded by eighty large boats, each with ten or twelve men, he weighed anchor and stood out to sea in a northeasterly direction.
It was Spangberg's purpose to chart the southern part of the Kurile Islands, and, as will be seen from his chart,[69] he sought to accomplish his task, and thus complete his work of 1738. The casual observer will, however, find this map unsatisfactory and inaccurate, and will not only be quite confused in viewing these islands so promiscuously scattered about, and which seemingly do not correspond with the actual geography of this region as known to us, but he will even be inclined to suspect Spangberg of gross fraud. This is certainly very unjust, however, and after a careful study of a modern map, I venture the following opinion on this subject: In order to be able to understand his chart and course, the most essential thing necessary is simply to determine his first place of landing in the Kuriles, the island Figurnyi, and to identify it with its present name. He discovered this island on the 3d of July. Müller says that, according to the ship's journal, it is in latitude 43° 50' N., and in spite of the fact that Spangberg's determinations in longitude, based on the ship's calculations, were as a rule somewhat inaccurate, which in a measure is shown by Nipon's being located so far west, he is nevertheless in this case right. Figurnyi is the island Sikotan and has the astronomical position of this island on the chart (according to Golovnin 43° 53' N. and 146° 43' 30" E.). This opinion is corroborated by a map of the Russian discoveries published at St. Petersburg in 1787, and by Captain Broughton, who described the island in the fall of 1796, and gave it the name of Spangberg's Island, in honor of its first discoverer. With this point fixed, it is not difficult to understand and follow Spangberg.
Spangberg labored under very unfavorable circumstances. It rained constantly, the coast was enveloped in heavy fogs, and at times it was impossible to see land at a distance of eight yards. From Figurnyi he sailed southwest, but under these difficult circumstances he took the little islands of Taroko and the northern point of Yezo to be one continuous coast (Seljonyi, the green island), and anchored at the head of Walvisch bay, his Bay of Patience. From here he saw the western shore of the bay, reached its farthest point, Cape Notske, and discovered the peninsula of Sirokot and parts of the island Kumashiri, which he called Konosir and Tsyntrounoi respectively; but, as he turned from Cape Notske and sailed east into the Pacific, between Sikotan and the Taroko Islands, he did not reach the Kurile Islands themselves, and only the most northerly island in the group of the "Three Sisters" may possibly be the southern point of Iturup. He then proceeded along the eastern coast of Yezo, took the deep bay of Akischis as a strait separating Seljonyi and Konosir, then crossed in a southerly direction the large bay on the central coast of Yezo, without seeing land at its head, to Cape Jerimo (his Matmai), and had thus navigated the whole east coast of Yezo; but on account of the heavy fog, which prevented him from seeing the exact outline of the coast, he made three islands of Yezo: Matmai, Seljonyi and Konosir. In 1643, De Vries had in his map linked a number of islands together, making one stretch of country called Jeço, and now Spangberg had gone to the opposite extreme.
These explorations engaged Spangberg from the 3d to the 25th of July. He several times met inhabitants of North Yezo, the Aïno people, whose principal characteristics he has fully described, but as his men were suffering from scurvy, causing frequent deaths among them (by August 29, when he arrived at Okhotsk, he had lost thirteen, among them the physician), he resolved to turn at Cape Jerimo, and on his return trip keep his course so close to the Kuriles that he might strike the extreme points of De l'Isle's Jeço, all of Kompagniland, and the most westerly parts of Gamaland.