Vitus Bering, leader of the eighteenth-century Great Northern Expedition, died en route and was buried here, in the Commander Islands (pictured in 1980).

POLAR EXPLORATION The forgotten journey Huw Lewis-Jones revisits a pioneering, ill-fated expedition to map the Arctic.

he Great Northern Expedition was an Yet Bering’s brainchild books: Corey Ford’s Where the Sea Breaks Its immense eighteenth-century enter- was certainly one of Back (Little, Brown, 1966) and Steller’s Island prise that redrew the Arctic map. Led the largest, longest and (Mountaineers, 2006) by Dean Littlepage. Tby Danish captain Vitus Bering, it set out in most costly expedi- Bown’s synthesis of these “tragic and 1733 from St Petersburg, Russia. Over the tions mounted in the ghastly” final months is well written. He also next decade, a dwindling cavalcade crossed eighteenth century. goes to great lengths to detail the arduous thousands of miles of Siberian forest and Its budget, at around early phases, essentially an unending gauntlet swamp and then, in ships built by hand, 1.5 million roubles, of implausible logistics. Everything needed TARASEVICH/SPUTNIK/ALAMY V. struck out towards the unknown shores of was roughly one-sixth for the voyage — from shipbuilding gear North America. Sponsor Peter the Great of the annual income Island of the Blue and supplies to anchors, sails and cannon­ had envisioned a grand campaign to elevate of the Russian state. As Foxes: Disaster balls — had to be hauled overland, by sledge, Russia’s standing in the world, with its scien- an example of commit- and Triumph horse and raft. Many of the thousands of men tific and geographic findings shared widely. ment to geographical on the World’s involved didn’t even make it to the Siberian However, he died long before its return, and discovery, it deserves Greatest Scientific coast alive, let alone begin the sea voyage. under subsequent regimes much was buried to be better known. Expedition With no ready voice to be plucked from STEPHEN R. BOWN in obscurity. The challenge for Da Capo: 2017 primary sources to make a charismatic figure In Island of the Blue Foxes, Canadian a historian is the elu- out of Bering, the real star of Bown’s narra- author Stephen Bown retells the story of this siveness of source mat­ tive is Steller. Over the course of the odyssey, epic undertaking. Although this book lacks erial. We don’t have a verifiable contemporary this difficult man transforms from unlikable the narrative drive of his previous accounts portrait of Bering, and his journals have not savant to practical lifesaver, with his knowl- — excellent biographies of explorers Knud survived. For much of the later stages of the edge of flora and fauna ultimately saving his Rasmussen and Roald Amundsen — it should expedition at sea, Bering was rarely seen on scurvy-ridden comrades. His efforts to ‘do draw new readers to a neglected chapter in deck, confined to his cabin with scurvy. He science’ were frequently at odds with the maritime history. Bering’s voyage shows the was nearing 60 years old, and his energies naval command: time ashore was precious, lengths to which humans are driven by their were long spent. What we do have are two and precarious at best. His explorations on curiosity, and demonstrates the environmen- remarkable first-hand accounts: in the unvar- Alaska’s Kayak Island mark the first scien- tal consequences of our greed. nished journal of his second-in-command, tific discoveries in western North America, Bown’s subtitle dubs his subject the Sven Waxell, and in the manuscripts of the yet Steller would complain that ten years of “world’s greatest scientific expedition”, cantankerous, diligent German naturalist preparation had resulted in just ten hours of which is a bit of a stretch when you compare Georg Steller. The harrowing later stages of investigation on a remote beach, as the ship’s it with, for example, the slightly later voyages the expedition, a saga of survival against grue- water barrels were fitfully replenished. of James Cook or Alexander von Humboldt. some odds, have been covered by previous Later wrecked in the Commander Islands,

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BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT

and given up for dead, he and his remain- ing companions had much more experience ashore than they would have ever wished Books in brief for. Here, Steller observed and described the behaviour, diet and life cycles of several new The Unexpected Truth about Animals and endemic species: sea lions and fur seals, Lucy Cooke Doubleday (2017) a large flightless cormorant and a “special Sigmund Freud’s first paper involved the dissection of eels in an sea eagle with a white head and tail”, today attempt to locate their testes. To his frustration, Freud failed to known as Steller’s sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelag- find any. The eel’s life cycle remains slippery, notes natural-history icus). He dissected a male fur seal, making broadcaster Lucy Cooke in her deeply researched, sassily written many measurements to add to his multi- history of “the biggest misconceptions, mistakes and myths we’ve page description. It is said he also prepared concocted about the animal kingdom”, spread by figures from a catalogue of birds and plants, although the Aristotle to Walt Disney. Other chapters spotlight the sloth, vulture, island’s verminous blue foxes would some- hippopotamus, panda, chimpanzee and others, and dismantle times carry off his papers or knock over his anthropocentric clichés with scientific, global evidence. inkstand. Or worse: the foxes chewed on the corpses of the dead, and harassed the dying, until subdued by boot, axe or gunshot. The Lost Species Stellar died on the way back to St Peters- Christopher Kemp University of Chicago Press (2017) burg in 1746. Secrecy in protecting Russian Only one-fifth of Earth’s species are named, observes Christopher imperial interests meant that his contribu- Kemp. Our understanding of biodiversity resembles the sound of tions were little known to the wider world. a symphony in which an orchestra plays every fifth note. A DNA In Russia, however, Bering’s voyage inspired barcode is an isolated note; only a taxonomist can determine whether sailors and entrepreneurs to turn their atten- an unmatched barcode signifies a new species. But taxonomists are tions east. Steller’s legacy as a naturalist is a threatened species, too. This book pleads for their preservation with worth remembering, but there is a sober appealing stories of past and present discoveries, such as Charles consequence to this voyage, as with many Darwin’s rove beetle: found in Argentina in 1832, lost in a London others sent out in the name of science and collection and rediscovered and named Darwinilus sedarisi in 2012. state: namely, later bloody encounters with indigenous peoples and habitat destruction. Just a year after the expedition’s return, De/Cipher: The Greatest Codes Ever Invented and How to Break Them a shipload of hunters arrived home “with a Mark Frary Modern (2017) cargo of sixteen hundred sea-otter, two thou- People often use the same password on multiple websites. Such sand fur-seal, and two thousand blue-fox bad habits remain the best hope for the codebreaker as encryption skins”. Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), becomes increasingly unbreakable, notes science writer Mark discovered in 1741 on the island that would Frary in this eclectic introduction to the mathematics, technology later bear Bering’s name, was hunted to and personalities behind cryptography. It ranges from the baffling extinction in just 27 years. Despite the risks ancient Indus script to Alan Turing’s crucial Second World War and hardships, the profits of the sea-otter codebreaking and the promise of quantum cryptography. Brief trade also drew British and American trad- biographies of codebreakers both famous and obscure enliven the ers north. This wave of hungry sailors wiped challenging codes and compensate for occasional inaccuracies. out the spectacled cormorant (Phalacroco- rax perspicillatus) that Steller first observed, goose-sized and reportedly delicious. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things To understand the full significance of this Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore University of California Press (2017) fateful expedition, compare maps. Before Sociologist-cum-activist Raj Patel and environmental historian Jason 1720, Siberia and the North Pacific are Moore have written an informed, sometimes acute, polemic against riddled with curious fantasies or swathes of capitalism’s half-millennium of colonial exploitation. They argue white space. On charts created after Bering’s that the ‘Capitalocene’ age has triumphed by “cheapening” seven final voyage, the region emerges in its full things: nature, money, work, care, food, energy and lives. They quote complexity. Alaska finds form and the Pacific Christopher Columbus, who observed the Caribbean’s wondrous fur trade opens. A vast archive of manuscripts but unknown vegetation and wrote that many of its herbs and trees and observations from Siberia has not yet might be “worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines”. To the been fully recovered from Russian archives, authors, this unquestionably devalues nature; others might differ. let alone published in English, but work by scholars supported by the Carlsberg Founda- tion in Copenhagen is now bringing material The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire into the public domain. There is much more Kyle Harper Princeton University Press (2017) to be discovered and, in terms of species loss, Ptolemy, the second-century geographer who lived in Roman-ruled still so much that must be learnt. ■ Alexandria, Egypt, said it rained there every month but August. Now, the city has about one day of rain from May to September, says Huw Lewis-Jones is a historian of classicist Kyle Harper. He argues that environmental changes were exploration, a polar guide and editorial as influential in destroying the Roman empire as human agency. His director of publisher Polarworld. He lives in study mingles bacteria, volcanoes and solar cycles with emperors, Cornwall, UK. barbarians, soldiers and slaves — including the Late Antique Little e-mail: [email protected] Ice Age and the first pandemic of bubonic plague. Andrew Robinson

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