Bering had sailed these waters before. In 1728 he piloted the St. Gabriel through the strait that now bears his name, concluding that Asia and America were not joined. On that voyage, however, he never saw the fog-shrouded Alaska mainland. Disappointed when his findings were not deemed conclusive by European scientists or the Russian government, Bering successfully lobbied for the chance to lead another expedition.
On this second voyage, Bering and Chirikov lost contact in foul weather, never to meet again. Each maintained an eastward course, however, and in July both ships sighted southern Alaska. On July 16, Steller led a landing party on Kayak Island at Cape Saint Elias, just east of Prince William Sound. He quickly gathered a few plants and birds before being ordered back to the ship by Bering. Chirikov had sighted the islands of Southeast Alaska a day earlier, but the two small boats he sent ashore for fresh water never returned to the mother ship. Their fate has remained a mystery.
Their diets short on vitamin C, many of Bering’s crew became ill with scurvy—the captain included. Weak and exhausted by years of labor struggling with the imperial bureaucracy, Bering was anxious to get back to Kamchatka before the cold weather began. Instead of wintering in Alaska, as Steller advised, the explorer sailed for home. In heavy seas the St. Peter ran aground on a rocky island off the Siberian coast, since known as Bering Island. Twenty of the stranded sailors died of scurvy, including Bering, on December 8, 1741. Those remaining survived with Steller’s medical care and eventually built a 40-foot boat from the wreck of the St. Peter. They finally reached Kamchatka in the spring. Chirikov had already made a safe return in the previous October.
Bering’s voyage not only laid the basis for Russian claims to Alaska but also opened the fur trade. His crews brought back many pelts, among them 800 sea otter skins, more prized even than sable on Chinese markets because of their plush density. The fur-trading promyshlenniki immediately began to outfit trips to the Aleutians, and the fur rush was on. By the late 1700s—the era of Catherine the Great—the Russian fur trade became the richest fur enterprise in the world; a single sea otter skin might equal three times a man’s yearly income and profits were dazzling—100 percent on the average.
As for the otters, eventually they were hunted to near extinction—by the 1820s sea otters were scarce even as far south as Oregon and California. Harder hit was the “Steller’s sea cow,” which became extinct by 1768 because the fur traders had hunted them for food. Our only full description of the large, manatee-like beast is Steller’s.
IN THE RUSSIANS’ WAKE: BRITISH AND FRENCH EXPLORERS
The death of 21 French sailors in rip tides, Lituya Bay, 1786.
For decades following Bering’s 1741–42 expedition, Russia enjoyed uncontested control of Alaskan seas, and the lucrative fur trade remained a closely guarded secret. By the 1770s, however, the explorers of other nations began to penetrate the North Pacific. Spain was the first power to encounter Russia in the New World. But ultimately, Russia’s greatest challenge came from Britain and the new American republic.
In the late 1770s, British Captain James Cook sailed north under orders to find an ice-free passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Along the way he produced the first reliable charts of the Northwest Coast. (Cook’s best cartographer was the young William Bligh, later of Mutiny on the Bounty notoriety.)
In May 1778, Cook reached the bay since known as Cook Inlet, site of modern Anchorage, noting the region’s promise for the fur trade but doubting its value for Britain without discovery of a northern channel.
Searching for just such a passage, he sailed through the Bering Strait, but was stopped by ice in the Chukchi Sea. Turning southward, he charted the Aleutian Islands for two months. He then sailed for Hawaii where he was killed by Polynesian Natives.
Cook’s crew returned to Alaska in another futile search for the passage, and as they sailed for England via the China Sea made an astounding discovery. In Canton, they found that sea otter furs fetched astronomical prices. A ship’s officer wrote the “rage with which our seamen were possessed to return to Cook’s River (Cook Inlet) and buy another cargo of skins at one time was not far short of mutiny.”
The word was out; others soon followed. In a measure of sea otter skins’ value, New England trader Robert Gray sold his sloop Adventure to the Spanish Captain Bodega y Quadra for 75 prime skins. But the most famous of those sailing in Cook’s wake was George Vancouver, a veteran of Cook’s last voyage.
In a four-year expedition between 1791 and 1795, Vancouver charted the Inside Passage, and became the first European to sight from Cook Inlet “distant stupendous mountains covered with snow”—now known as Mount Foraker and nearby Denali, the continent’s highest peak.
By 1805, at least 200 European scientific and commercial voyages had been made up the Northwest Coast by the Russians, British, Americans, Spanish, and French. Most tragic of the early expeditions was that of Jean François Galaup de la Pérouse, master of the French vessel Boussole, which visited Lituya Bay near Yakutat in July 1786. In a humbling display of nature’s power, two of the ship’s small boats attempting to chart the bay’s mouth were caught in violent rip tides, killing all 21 crewmen. Later on the ill-starred voyage, the expedition’s second-in-command and nine others were killed by Natives in Samoa. Their troubles did not end there. La Pérouse, along with the Boussole and his remaining crew, disappeared in a 1788 typhoon in the southwest Pacific.
MALASPINA AND THE SPANISH INCURSIONS
“Return of the Stolen Trousers.” Drawing by José Cardero, 1791–92.
The luster of Spain’s American empire—created in the age of Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro—had tarnished considerably by the time the Russians landed in Alaska in 1741. Still, Spain’s proud tradition compelled her to contest all rival claims to America’s Pacific shore. From her naval base at San Blas in Baja California, Spain sent 13 voyages northward between 1774 and 1793 under such commanders as Bodega y Quadra, Arteaga, Martínez, Lopez de Haro, and Malaspina.
Some expeditions pushed as far as Prince William Sound and the Aleutians. Spanish charts of Alaska’s waters and fjords were often more thorough and precise than those produced by Russian or British cartographers. This helps explain why so many Spanish place names stuck: present-day Ketchikan, for instance, is located on Revillagigedo Island, named for a viceroy of New Spain, and the site of modern Valdez (today pronounced val-DEEZ by Alaskans) was christened Puerto de Valdés by Captain Salvador Fidalgo in 1790.
Though Spain never controlled Alaskan soil, Russian-Spanish tensions had far-reaching consequences for the North Pacific region. Partly out of fear of Russian expansion southward, the Spanish moved into what was known as Upper California, where they founded missions and presidios in San Diego (1769), Monterey (1770), and San Francisco (1776).
Among the most notable Spanish incursions was the expedition of Captain Alejandro Malaspina, which sailed from Cádiz, Spain, in July 1789. Malaspina’s ships, the Descubierta (Discovery) and Atrevida (Daring) were lavishly outfitted, and the Spanish crown hoped the expedition’s scientific achievements would exceed those of the great British navigator, Captain James Cook. After two years mapping the shores of South America and Mexico, Malaspina received orders to head for Alaska to search for the fabled Northwest Passage, believed to link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans at the top of the globe. The mission led him to Yakutat Bay in June 1791. “Great was the joy of the commander and all the officers,” wrote Tomás de Suria, the ship’s artist, “because they believed… that this might be the much-desired and sought-for strait.” Two weeks of exploration, however, produced only disappointment. Malaspina named the inlet