Bering, Vitus

Bering, Vitus

(b. Horsens, Denmark, summer 1681; d. Bering Island, Russia, 19 December 1741)

geography.

Bering’s parents were Jonas Svendsen and Anna Bering. There were many children in the family, and the need to earn a living sent Bering to sea at an early age. Returning from a voyage to the East Indies in 1703, he was recruited into the Russian navy, where he rose quickly in rank.

On 5 February 1725, Bering left St. Petersburg on his first expedition, which, under Peter the Great’s orders, was to determine whether Asia and America were joined by land. He journeyed overland through Siberia and across to the Kamchatka Peninsula, which he was the first to map. On 9 July 1728 he sailed in a northerly direction along the east coast of Asia; on 15 August he reached latitude 67° 18’ N. There he turned back, having convinced himself that there was no more land to the north. Owing to poor visibility in the strait that was to be named after him, he could not sight the American mainland. He was much criticized for not having proved whether East Cape (now Cape Dezhnev) was the end of Asia.

In spite of that, Bering led a second and even more ambitious expedition to investigate the Kurile Islands and Japan, to make a landing in America, and to map the north coast of Siberia. The expedition achieved the first two objectives. Bering himself left St. Petersburg in 1733 and sailed from Kamchatka for the New World in June 1741. Setting his course in accordance with Delisle’s map, he searched for the land mass of Gamaland on the 47th parallel. Failing to find it, he turned northeast and on 16 July 1741 sighted Alaska; four days later he landed on Kayak Island. Bering’s return was delayed by the lateness of the season, by scurvy, and, again, by the inaccuracy of the maps. He returned along the hitherto unknown Aleutian Islands and was forced to winter on an uninhabited island only 300 miles short of home. There he died, and the crew named the island Bering Island.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The translated report of the first expedition by Bering is reproduced in F. A. Golder, Bering’s Voyages, an Account of the Efforts of the Russians to Determine the Relations of Asia and America, 2 vols. (New York, 1922–1925).

There is no complete biography of Bering. Of value are an account of the first expedition in W. H. Dale, “Notes on an Original Chart of Bering’s Expedition of 1725–1730 and an Original Manuscript Chart of His Second Expedition, Together With a Summary of a Journal of the First Expedition, Kept by Peter Chaplin,” Appendix 19 of U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Report for 1890’(Washington, D.C., 1891), pp. 759–174; accounts by members of the second expedition S. Khitrov. K. Yushin, and G. W. Steller, in F. A Golder, Bering’s Voyages (see above), I, 36–49; 50–230; II, 9–158, respectively; and Sven Waxell, The American Expedition, M. A. Michael, trans. (London, 1952), pp. 11–135.

Wilma George