Vitus Bering

Vitus Jonassen Bering (also, less correctly, Behring) (August, 1681 - December 19, 1741) was a Danish navigator in the service of Russia , who was known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich.

Bering was born in the town of Horsens. In 1703 he entered the Russian Navy, and served in the Baltic Fleet during the Great Northern War. In 1710-1712 he served in the Azov Sea Fleet and took part in the Russo-Turkish war. He married a Russian woman, and in 1715 he made a brief visit to his hometown, never to see it again. A series of explorations of the north coast of Asia, the outcome of a far-reaching plan devised by Peter the Great, led up to Bering's first voyage to Kamchatka. In 1725, under the auspices of the Russian government, he went overland to Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and built the ship Sviatoi Gavriil (St. Gabriel). In her he pushed northward in 1728, until he could no longer observe any extension of the land to the north, or its appearance to the east.

In the following year he made an abortive search for mainland eastward rediscovering one of the Diomede Islands (Ratmanov Island) observed earlier by Dezhnev. In summer of 1730 Bering returned to St. Petersburg. During the long trip through Siberia along the whole Asia he became very ill. Five of his children died during this trip. Bering was subsequently commissioned to a further expedition, and returned to Okhotsk in 1735. He had the local craftsmen, Makar Rogachev and Andrey Kozmin, build two vessels, Sviatoi Piotr (St. Peter) and Sviatoi Pavel (St. Paul), in which he sailed off and in 1740 established the settlement of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. From there he led an expedition towards America in 1741. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at Kayak Island or in the vicinity. The second ship, under the command of Chirikov, discovered the shores of the north-western America (Aleksander Archipelago of present day Alaska). These voyages of Bering and Chirikov are known as the Great Northern expedition.

Bering was forced by adverse conditions to return quickly, and discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back. One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands which was named after him (Shumagin Island). Bering became too ill to command his ships, which were at last driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group in the SW Bering Sea, where Bering himself and 28 men of his company died. This island bears his name. Out of 77 men aboard Sv. Piotr only 46 survived the hardships of the expedition which claimed its last victim just one day before coming into homeport.

It was long before the value of Bering's work was fully recognized; but Captain Cook was able to prove his accuracy as an observer. Nowadays, the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island and the Bering Land Bridge bear his name.

In August 1991, Bering's grave and the graves of five other seamen were discovered by a Russian-Danish expedition. The remains were transported to Moscow where they were investigated by the forensic physicians who succeeded in recreating Bering's appearance. Examination of Bering's teeth showed no sign of scurvy, leading to the conclusion that he died of some other disease.

References

• 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• G. F. Müller, Sammlung russischer Geschichten, vol. iii. (St Petersburg, 1758)
• P. Lauridsen, Bering og de Russiske Opdagelsesrejser (Copenhagen, 1885)