The tiny settlement of Okhotsk proved to be a miserable collection of native huts and houses belonging to a handful of Russian colonists. Since departing St. Petersburg, nearly two years had passed, and five thousand miles had been travelled. At this point, in keeping with the Russian naval tradition of consultation with subordinates, Bering summoned a conference to consider the next step. Despite their fatigue, they agreed to speed up matters, all in the interests of a rapid return home. They would now push forward to Kamchatka, another thousand miles. By the early spring of 1727, Bering’s party had not only established itself on the peninsula’s forlorn coastline, but the men had constructed a shipyard of sorts. A rapid start was made in the building of a vessel, and in less than three months the job was done. The iron brought from St. Petersburg was indeed an effective means of reinforcing the hull, but the caulking was primitive, made from heavy grass bonded together by a crude tar distilled from bark. On July 13, the St. Gabriel was launched and Bering immediately set sail on his mission. Access to the Northeast Passage would be his — if, in fact, it existed.
Winter comes early to those parts and that year the weather turned steadily foul at the start of September. Continuous fogs and drenching rains beset the tiny vessel. Frigid, depressing dampness enveloped the decks of the St. Gabriel. The hull’s rudimentary caulking began to give way, and what started as minor seepage developed into a worrisome flow, which seemed to increase by the hour. After fifty-three days at sea, shipboard conditions had become wretched. Weather and high seas were developing into a threat. The Siberian coast seemed to go on and on — and there was no sign of a connection with America. Enough was enough. The dispirited Bering wished nothing more than to quit the inhospitable waters and return to St. Petersburg, and his colleagues agreed unanimously.
The St. Gabriel in its sail had all along been hugging the Russian coastline, land to port and heavy fog to starboard. In reaching 67º 18' north, Bering had in fact penetrated the Arctic Ocean, and unwittingly sailed through the very strait they were seeking. It was at this juncture that Bering came about for the return home “because the coast did not extend farther north and no land was near.”
On the return passage, the fog cleared sufficiently to reveal a small, rocky island, which Bering named St. Diomede (known today as Big Diomede). Had the Dane ventured to circumnavigate the island, he would undoubtedly have spotted Little Diomede, the place where the unwavering Lynne Cox started her swim in the 1980s. But lacking the will for further exploration and because the fog closed in once more, he never laid eyes on the American shoreline. Sighting or no sighting, Bering was satisfied that the two continents were unconnected.
By March 1729 the expedition returned home after an absence of four years. The fledgling Academy of Science received Bering’s comprehensive report with skepticism and no small degree of dissatisfaction. The academicians heatedly debated the data, which for the most part they judged inconclusive. Agreement was eventually reached and a report submitted to the newly enthroned Empress Anna. The sovereign concurred with the Academy of Science’s recommendations and agreed to send a follow-up expedition to the Pacific. Despite the manifold criticism and rebuke that had been levelled at Bering, he successfully persuaded the authorities once more to trust him, but this time with an enlarged (and significantly more costly) enterprise.
The objective of his new commission was twofold: first, to explore a coastline east of Siberia, which charts showed was there, a land called Terra da Gama.[5] Bering and crew were to find it and proceed south as far as latitude 46° (5.5 on today’s maps, a point just north of the U.S.-Canadian border); second, the expedition was to return north and continue the search for the Northeast Passage.
In the spring of 1733, the fifty-three-year-old Dane set out once more from St. Petersburg to travel the arduous trans-Siberian route to Kamchatka again. On the earlier expedition, he carried nearly a hundred men. By the time the second expedition was completed, three thousand men had been drawn into the work. The original budget for the enterprise was ten thousand rubles, but it ultimately cost over three hundred thousand rubles. It took the cumbersome enterprise eight years to cross the immense distance, to establish a base of operations on the Okhotsk and to complete the construction of two vessels. (It might be noted, however, that much of the time spent on the trans-Siberian segment had been devoted to assigned scientific studies.)
Bering christened his two new ships the St. Peter and the St. Paul. They were small double-masted riggers, approximately eighty feet in length, each carrying fourteen guns. He commanded the St. Peter; the sister ship was under Captain Alexei Chirikov, a veteran of the first expedition. Chirikov was much younger than the Dane, but he was well educated in the sciences and possessed a developed sense of curiosity. The vessels sailed out of Kamchatka on June 4, 1741, and headed due east to Terra da Gama, whatever it was.
The best of plans can go astray and these certainly did. Shortly after quitting Russian shores, an impenetrable fog enveloped the ships and sight of each other was lost. Days of circling and searching for the other came to naught. In exasperation, the two frustrated captains, each on his own, gave up the exercise and continued on solo.
A fortnight later, Chirikov was making slow but steady progress south, confident that the elusive shore lay just ahead. Then, on July 26, through the gloom of lingering fog, a flock of forest birds were heard and then sighted. They hovered over the ship, circled a couple of times, and landed on the St. Paul’s yardarms. This was clear evidence that land was nearby.
Two days later, the vessel dropped anchor just off the shore, in a wide basin of still water. The shoreline seemed to blend neatly into the woodland, which rose vertically into sharp mountains. Latitude 55º 21' had been reached, just south of Sitka, midway down the Alaskan panhandle. Delighted with the prospect of replenishing the ship’s supply of freshwater and the larder with meat, Chirikov dispatched a party of crew members to feel out the prospects. Hours passed with no return of the men — then more hours passed. The worried captain sent out more crew to search for the missing party, and these men also failed to return.
Eight anxiety-filled days passed. Then, at a distance, two dugouts of Natives were spotted paddling toward the ship. When they came within hailing distance, one of the Natives stood up and, gesticulating angrily with his arms, let fly with an unintelligible stream of words. The perplexing message delivered, the two little boats paddled away speedily. Chirikov notes dryly in his diary, “Some misfortune had happened to our men.… The fact that the Americans did not dare to approach our ship leads us to believe that they have either killed or detained our men.” Whatever happened, his crew had vanished, as though swallowed up by the eerie silence that now resounded all about.
The lengthy passage to American shores in untenable conditions was bad enough. The disappearance of fellow crew members, plus the unfriendly encounter with the Natives, was even more unsettling for those remaining on board the St. Paul. The men petitioned Chirikov to quit the terrible place for a prompt return home. As he thought about the idea, the situation grew worse — mutiny was in the air. With little to gain by remaining where they were, he gave in. Anchor was weighed and sails were raised for a return to Kamchatka, despite the nearly empty water casks and sparse larder.
On October 19, the battered St. Paul at last reached its destination. The crossing had been anything but smooth — appalling weather, high seas, privation of every sort, and illness plus torn sails and a leaking hull all played havoc with the voyage. For a significant portion of the trip, the captain had been bedridden with an unidentified illness.
Days after their arrival in Kamchatka, Chirikov died.
While Chirikov had been following his path, Bering — chagrined over having lost the St. Paul — continued on his own way. But everything changed for Bering and his crew on July 6. The fog unexpectedly cleared and skies opened up into dazzling blue. Ahead of him, a brilliant congregation of snow-covered peaks came into view, soaring almost vertically — the range that stands on the Alaskan-Canadian border, with mountains exceeding eighteen thousand feet. Bering named the tallest one Mount St. Elias. Today’s visitors to the area are no less awed by the sight of it all than were those early Russian explorers. For them, however, it was not simply dazzling nature; it was justification for years of gruelling search. The American continent had been found, unconnected to Siberia.
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