Bering, Vitus Jonassen

He was a Dane, born at Horsens Denmark.

In 1703 he sailed to the East Indies.

He joined the Imperial Russian Navy in 1704 and served against Sweden in the ‘Northern War’ until 1721.

In 1725-28 he was in command of an expedition sent by Peter the Great that crossed Russia by land to the Sea of Okhotsk and then to cross it with ships built on the shore. His group included Martin Spanberg and Aleksei Chirikov. The goal was to see if Asia and America were separated or joined at the Chukotka Peninsula. It took three and half years to get there. The timber at the sea was too poor for boat building so the constructed as vessel called the Fortuna - a sort of raft.

They ferried the men and equipment across to Kamchatka - two voyages of 600km each way.

They crossed the mountains on Kamchatka where he built another vessel - the St. Gabriel.

In 1728 he sailed from Kamchatka north to St. Lawrence Island.

He sailed north o 67 degrees North but poor weather prevented him from seeing the Alaska coast. Local Inuit told him that the Asian coast turned east so they turned south.

He returned to St. Petersburg in 1730. On a Second Kamchatka Expedition he left St. Petersburg in 1733 reaching Okhotsk in 1737.

In 1740 he built two ore ships, the St. Peter (under his own command) and the St. Paul (under Chirikov) sailing to Petropavlovsk. Bering crossed the Bering Strait to the coast of Alaska and named Mount St. Elias.

He discovered some of the Aleutian Islands and Chirikov (second-in-command) discovered Prince of Wales Island. A member of the expedition was Georg Steller who named a number of animals new to science. Bering, now at an advanced age, died in 1741 of scurvy on he return voyage and was buried on the Komandorskiy Islands when Bering’s vessel the St. Peter was wrecked.

In 1991 his grave site was exhumed by a joint Russo-Danish Expedition to Bering Island.

Bering Strait (Russia/USA); Bering Sea (Russa/USA)