Vitus Bering: The Discoverer Of Bering Strait By Peter Lauridsen Vitus Bering: The Discoverer Of Bering Strait PART I. BERING'S FIRST EXPEDITION. CHAPTER I. RUSSIA AND ENGLAND IN THE WORK OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION.— VITUS BERING'S RANK AS AN EXPLORER. In the great work of Arctic exploration done during the last two centuries, it was first Russia and later England that took the lead, and to these two nations we are principally indebted for our knowledge of Arctic continental coast-lines. The English expeditions were undertaken with better support, and under circumstances better designed to attract public attention. They have, moreover, been excellently described, and are consequently well known. But in the greatness of the tasks undertaken, in the perseverance of their leaders, in difficulties, dangers, and tragic fates, Russian explorations stand worthily at their side. The geographical position of the Russians, their dispersion throughout the coldest regions of the earth, their frugal habits, remarkable power of foresight, and their adventurous spirit, make them especially fitted for Arctic explorations. Hence, as early as the first half of the eighteenth century, they accomplished for Asia what the English not until a hundred years later succeeded in doing for the other side of the earth,—namely, the charting of the polar coasts. In this work the Russians introduced the system of coasting and sledging into the service of Arctic expeditions, and it is only through a systematic development of these means that western Europe has been enabled to celebrate its most brilliant triumphs in the Arctic regions, and to succeed in getting farther than did the navigators of the seventeenth century. The history of Russian polar explorations has a series of proud names, which lack only the pen of a Sherard Osborn to shine by the side of Franklin and McClure, and it redounds to the honor of Denmark that one of the first and greatest of these men was a Dane,—that the most brilliant chapter in the history of Russian explorations is due to the initiative and indefatigable energy of Vitus Bering. In the service of Peter the Great he successfully doubled the northeastern peninsula of Asia, and after his return he made a plan for the exploration of the whole Northeast passage from the White Sea to Japan. Although he succumbed in this undertaking, he lived long enough to see his gigantic plans approach realization. Bering was buried on an island in the Pacific, amid the scenes of his labors, under that sand-barrow which had been his death-bed. For many generations only a plain wooden cross marked his resting-place, and as for his fame, it has been as humble and modest as his head-board. His labors belonged to a strange people who had but little sympathy for the man. His own countrymen, among whom he might have found this sympathetic interest, knew his work but very imperfectly. Not until after the lapse of a century did he find a careful biographer, and even within comparatively recent years the great scientist Von Baer has found it necessary to defend him against misunderstandings and petty attacks. Danish literature contains nothing of moment concerning him, for the two treatises which several generations ago were published by M. Hallager and Odin Wolff, are merely scanty extracts from G. F. Müller's historical works. In the following pages, therefore, relying not only upon Russian, but also upon West European literature for information, we desire to erect to him a monument by giving a short account of his life and work, sketching at the same time a chapter of geographical history which is lacking neither in importance nor in interest. CHAPTER II. BERING'S NATIVITY.—NORWEGIANS AND DANES IN THE SERVICE OF PETER THE GREAT.—FOUNDING OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY. Vitus Bering was a son of Jonas Svendsen and his second wife, Anna Bering of Horsens, at which place he was born in the summer of 1681. On the maternal side he descended from the distinguished Bering family, which during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries flourished in various parts of Denmark, and included a very respectable number of ministers and judicial officers. Our hero passed his childhood in a Christian family of culture in the Jutland seaport town of his birth. Here for a series of years his father filled several positions of trust, and was closely associated with the leading men of the place, as his wife's sister, Margaret Bering, had married two consecutive mayors. He was, however, far from being considered well-to- do. He had many children. One of his sons had caused him much trouble and expense, and was finally sent to the East Indies. In the probate record of his estate, made in 1719, there is a deed of conveyance from himself and wife in which the following appears: "We are old, miserable, and decrepit people, in no way able to help ourselves. Our property consists of the old dilapidated home and the furniture thereto belonging, which is of but little value." It was his share of this inheritance, with accrued interest, all amounting to 140 rigsdaler, that Vitus Bering later presented to his native town to be used for the benefit of the poor. From inclination, and forced by the circumstances of his humble home, Bering went to sea, and on the long expeditions that he made, he developed into an able seaman. From an East India expedition in 1703 he came to Amsterdam, where he made the acquaintance of Admiral Cruys, a native of Norway. Soon afterwards, at the age of twenty-two, he joined a Russian fleet as a sub-lieutenant. What Norwegian and Danish seamen accomplished at this period in the service of Russia, has been almost entirely forgotten. In the company of intelligent foreigners that Czar Peter employed for the transformation of his kingdom, the Danish-Norse contingent occupies a prominent place. This is due principally to Peter himself, and was a result of his experiences in Holland. After having, on his first extensive foreign trip, learned the art of ship-building,—not in Zaandam, as it is usually stated, but at the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam,—he was much dissatisfied with the empirical method which the Hollanders used, and he wrote to Voronetz, his own ship-yard, that the Dutch ship-builders there should no longer be permitted to work independently, but be placed under the supervision of Danes or Englishmen. Peter retained his high regard for Danish-Norse ship-building during his whole life, and it was on this account that Danes and Norwegians were enabled to exert so great an influence in St. Petersburg. This is the reason, too, that Danish-Norse seamen were received so kindly in Russia even long after the death of the great Czar. Next to Peter, Norwegians and Danes had the greatest share in the founding of the Russian fleet, and among them the place of honor belongs to the Norseman Cornelius Cruys, who in 1697 was assistant master of ordnance in the Dutch navy, where he was held in high regard as a ship- builder, a cartographer, and as a man well versed in everything pertaining to the equipment of a fleet. Peter made him his vice-admiral, and assigned to him the technical control of the fleet, the building of new vessels, their equipment, and, above all, the task of supplying them with West European officers. Weber assigns Cruys a place in the first rank among those foreigners to whom Russia owes much of her development, and remarks that it was he, "the incomparable master of ordnance, who put the Russian fleet upon its keel and upon the sea." He belonged to the fashionable circles of St. Petersburg, owned a large and beautiful palace on the Neva, where now tower the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, and was one of the few among the wealthy that enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the Czar on festive occasions. He became vice-president of the council of the Admiralty, was promoted, after the peace of Nystad, to the position of admiral of the Blue Flag, and made a knight of the order of Alexander Nevsky. In Peter the Great's remarkable house in St. Petersburg there is preserved, among many other relics, a yawl which is called the grandfather of the fleet. With this, Peter had begun his nautical experiments, and in 1723, when he celebrated the founding of his fleet, he rowed down the Neva in it. Peter himself was at the rudder, Apraxin was cockswain, and Admiral Cruys, Vice-Admiral Gordon, Sievers and Menshikoff were at the oars. On this occasion the Czar embraced Cruys and called him his father. During his whole life Cruys preserved a warm affection for his native land; hence it was natural that the Scandinavian colony in St. Petersburg gathered about him. His successor as vice-president of the council of the Admiralty, and as master of ordnance, was the former Danish naval lieutenant Peter Sievers, who likewise elevated himself to most important positions, and exerted a highly beneficial influence upon the development of the Russian fleet. At the side of these two heroes, moreover, there were others, as Admirals Daniel Wilster and Peter Bredal, Commander Thure Trane, and also Skeving, Herzenberg, Peder Grib, "Tordenskjold's brave comrade in arms," and many others. For a long time Vitus Bering was one of Cruys's most intimate associates, and these two, with Admiral Sievers, form an honorable trio in that foreign navy. Bering was soon appointed to a position in the Baltic fleet, and during Russia's protracted struggles, his energy found that scope which he before had sought on the ocean, and at the same time he had the satisfaction of fighting the foes of his native land.