Island of the Blue Foxes

by Stephen R. Bown

  Bering’s commander at the Admiralty College, Count Golovin, who managed to persuade the senate to continue financing the expedition despite the lack of progress, or at least the seeming lack of progress, sent a note to Chirikov, authorizing him to countermand Bering’s orders if he felt they were unjustified. Bering’s greatest weakness, if indeed it can be seen that way, was that he was too thorough—rather than rush off to do the crowning job of the voyage, he wanted to establish the infrastructure of the entire expedition so that it could be repeated without the same logistical challenges in the future. The Russian government, on the other hand, would have liked to see exciting claims of the success of the voyages to inspire continued support, even if it came at the expense of a more solid foundation. Bering’s lack of political sense was his greatest failing, his devotion to the boring foundational aspects of his commission rather than to the exciting details. So far he had provided no rousing stories and dramatic discoveries around which to rally support. As the complaints against him grew, he felt threatened and dared not deviate from the letter of his orders, so that none could hold him accountable for any failures. This position, while sensible in Empress Anna’s Russia, was a position that chafed the younger officers like Spangberg and Chirikov, who strained for adventure and risk and great deeds.

  There is no doubt that the Siberian dignitaries had little incentive to aid Bering other than fear of reprisals, and St. Petersburg was far away. What was demanded of them by Bering and the expedition was nearly impossible to provide if they had any hope of maintaining order. There were too many people for the resources available, and they required too much assistance—food, iron, leather, horses, and laborers from a society that was already marginal and sparsely populated. The peasants who were conscripted into service fell into “extreme ruin,” unable to tend their subsistence farms, harvest crops, or see their families.

  One political exile in Siberia, Heinrich Von Fuch, reported some of the direct consequences of the expedition’s demands on the local populace: “Every year Russian peasants are required to transport provisions over a distance of 2,000–3,000 versts to the town of Iakutsk for this expedition.… Consequently, many of the peasants are away from their homes for as long as three years at a time. When they return they have to live on charity or by hiring themselves out.” The nomadic Yakuts were not spared, either: they are “required to send several hundred fully equipped horses to Iakutsk [Yatutsk] in the spring, plus one man to care for every five horses. These horses are used to transport provisions and supplies overland to Okhotsk. Because the land between Iakutsk and Okhotsk is marshy and barren steppe, very few of these horses come back. The officials who are sent out to requisition these horses burden the Iakuts [Yatutsk] in every possible way to enrich themselves.” Von Fuch reported that when the exorbitant demands for tribute were not met, or if a relative died or ran away, the officials could confiscate a man’s livestock in compensation, and if the livestock proved insufficient, they would then seize his wife and children into servitude, at which point suicide was common. “If the newly commenced Kamchatka Expedition continues to burden the local people, it will obviously become necessary to take measure to prevent them from completely ruining the local population.”

  Bering’s report to Golovin is also revealing of the general hardships during these years: “There are no clothes or shoes for the servitors of my command… because no salaries have been sent from Irkutsk by the provincial administration.… While transporting provisions, they became very emaciated, and in wintertime some hands and feet were frozen by the severe cold, and because of such difficulty and the lack of other victuals many can barely walk, and throughout the month of June, 22 men were very sick, and all became emaciated.” The constant food shortages and lack of proper supplies hindered the work and withered morale. It was not until the late summer of 1740 that the majority of the expedition and all the supplies and equipment were transported over the mountains and stored in Okhotsk. This had been the total time estimated for the entire expedition. Nearly all the delays were at least in part caused by the rugged geography between Yakutsk and Okhotsk. Bering himself advised in his report that a faster, cheaper, and safer route was needed, despite the years of effort he devoted to securing and formalizing the current route. “It is very necessary to find a way of transporting provisions and all other supplies to Okhotsk without such difficulty as before.” Despite the ridiculously laborious and dangerous route, the trail pioneered by Bering between Yakutsk and Okhotsk remained the primary route to the Pacific until the Amur River was annexed from China in the 1850s.

  While these tons of equipment and supplies were slowly being transported from Yakutsk to Okhotsk, a task that took more than two years, Bering had sent Spangberg on to Okhotsk to supervise the construction of the ships that Spangberg would sail to Japan and the Kuril Islands and other ships that would eventually cross the Pacific. Crews were sent up the Okhota River to chop the timber, more than three hundred trees for each ship, and, as usual, ongoing food shortages and unreliable laborers prolonged the task. When the three ships with 151 men aboard finally launched a year later than planned, on June 29, 1738, they took with them all the food supplies stored in Okhotsk. The flotilla consisted of the old reconstructed Gabriel from the first expedition and two new vessels, the Archangel Michel and the Nadezhda. They cruised first through pack ice across the Sea of Okhotsk to Bolsheretsk on the western coast of Kamchatka, a distance of more than 680 miles, and then turned south into uncharted foggy waters around the Kuril Islands, north of Japan. They were soon separated in storms. Each of the ships independently spied and charted about thirty islands, and they all returned safely to Bolsheretsk in September without having landed anywhere. The following summer, Spangberg made a second expedition. With an earlier departure and starting from Bolsheretsk, he planned to head farther south before the fall storms. As far as the Russian government was concerned, his job was to establish the location and relationship between Kamchatka and Japan with the intention of promoting trade. Trade between the two nations would help solidify Russian claims to the eastern portion of their empire. Along with increased population, the eastern region could become less dependent upon the West and stop being such a drain on the national treasury.

  The second voyage departed in May 1739 and produced far more valuable and interesting results. The flotilla was soon engulfed in “thick” weather, and one of the ships became lost and returned while two continued on south, one commanded by Spangberg, the other by Lieutenant William Walton. They reached the island of Honshu in northern Japan in late June. Here they spied many small ships in the shallow bays. Coastal villages were surrounded by people working in fields of grain of a variety they did not recognize, while large forested hills dominated inland. On several occasions, boats sailed out to meet them, and men came aboard their ships to trade fresh fish, water, large tobacco leaves, rice, fruit, salted pickles, and other foods for Russian cloth and clothing. They were small men who bowed when entering the ship’s cabin and were “excessively polite.” Spangberg did not allow his men to go ashore, nor did he allow many Japanese to board his ship, “since Japan’s history abounds in accounts of attacks on Christians.” He observed that “in each Japanese craft was a number of stones, each of about two to three pounds weight. Perhaps the stones served as ballast, but being of that size, they could also have been used as projectiles, if things should have gone wrong.” The Japanese people he described as

  mostly small in height, and it is seldom that anybody really is met with. Their complexion is brownish, their eyes black. They have strong black head-hair, of which the half is cut off, the rest being combed back quite flat. Their hair is smeared with glue or grease, and then wrapped up in white paper.… The Japanese have small flat noses, yet not as flat as those of the Kalmuks; it is most exceptional to meet anyone with a pointed nose. Their dress is white and fastened with a band round the body. The sleeves are wide, like those on a European dressing gown. None were seen with
trousers and all went barefoot.

  They understood sea charts and made it clear to Spangberg that their land was called Nippon and not Japan.

  Once Spangberg was sure that he had reached Japan, he hastened north with this new information, stopping for water on one of the larger Kuril Islands. Here he encountered eight men who called themselves Ainu, whom he reported were quite hairy all over their bodies but friendly. The Ainu fell on their knees and bowed to the deck when “entertained” with gin. “They have black hair, and the elderly are altogether grey-haired. Some of them had silver rings in their ears.” Spangberg’s account of visiting Japan is similar to countless descriptions from other travelers, following the age-old lurid interest in foreign peoples and strange customs since the time of written records and undoubtedly before. He arrived back in Okhotsk on September 9, 1739, and gave a detailed report of his voyages to Bering, who was then finalizing the construction of the two ships for the American expedition, which he wanted completed by the next spring. Spangberg wanted to return to the Kurils to subjugate them into the Russian Empire, but Bering refused to authorize the action, instead giving him permission to return to St. Petersburg and present his case.

  When Skornyakov-Pisarev saw Spangberg’s charts of the Japanese voyage, he proclaimed that they were poorly done and erroneous because they failed to show the large series of islands then believed to be located in those waters. He dashed off an official communication to St. Petersburg, denouncing Spangberg for incompetence. Spangberg decided that he would have to defend his findings in person before proposing another voyage. After traveling west for many weeks through Siberia, he met an eastbound courier from St. Petersburg, ordering to him to return to Okhotsk and make a third voyage to Japan, this time to search for the fabled islands. On his way back to Okhotsk, Spangberg met with Steller, who was also heading east, and they returned together to Okhotsk in August 1740. While Spangberg’s voyage was delayed, Bering was happy to have Steller come to Kamchatka and perhaps to America. Steller was then thirty-one years old, outspoken and brash, full of enthusiasm for new adventures, with no dependents to distract him. Bering was now fifty-nine, determined and plodding, yet bent under the weight of seven years of responsibility for the expedition, worried about his wife and children and his future career.

  After all these years, Bering had still not yet crossed the Sea of Okhotsk to Kamchatka, let alone America, and the officials in St. Petersburg were wringing their hands. The Admiralty College realized that all their directives were not speeding up the process. They sent officers to demand compliance from the Siberian officials and to threaten them with torture if their attitude did not change. In 1739 two officers, named Tolbuchin and Larinof, arrived with the commission to investigate the claims against Bering and his many counterclaims. The imperial cabinet was pressuring them “to look into the Kamchatka Expedition to see if it can be brought to a head, so that from now on the treasury should not be emptied in vain.” Skornyakov-Pisarev was finally replaced by a more competent and less contrary and obstructionist official, a political exile named Anton Manuilovitch Devier. The mere threat implied by the arrival of these special officers sped up the work, compounded by the fact that the penalty for not sufficiently aiding the expedition could now be torture: men worked harder, boats were launched, and supplies and horses materialized, so that by 1740 nearly everything needed for the American voyage had been brought from Yakutsk to Okhotsk over new rudimentary roads. Okhotsk boasted many new buildings, industries, and farms. But one unintended consequence of the new imperial pressure was that the officers, and Bering in particular, who was in the spotlight, were even more afraid to deviate from their written orders, even when circumstances pointed to the need for a new plan. Thus, all proceeded as had been envisioned and laid out in St. Petersburg, by officials who had never been to Siberia or America.

  CHAPTER 6

  PHANTOM ISLANDS

  THE TWO NEW SHIPS for the American expedition, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, were slowly taking shape at the Okhotsk dockyards—like the ribs of a giant whale, with men scampering over the frame, covering it with planks of Siberian timber and fitting it with metalworks, much of it hauled all the way from Russia. By June 1740, they were ready to float. Once in the water, the work could begin on the ballast and rigging, and supplies and food could be loaded. They were identical twin ships, ninety feet long by twenty-three feet wide by nine and a half feet high to the deck, each with two masts and displacing 211 tons. Built on a Dutch design for moderately sized light cargo and passenger duty in the Baltic and North Seas, the design was adjusted to accommodate fourteen small cannons, two-and three-pounders, and three falconets. The captain’s cabins were large and spacious for the ship size, capable of comfortably hosting a dozen officers, while each ship had sleeping quarters for seventy-seven men. Each ship would be loaded with about 106 tons of provisions, one hundred barrels of freshwater, firewood, and ammunition. There were spare anchors, pumps, a capstan for hauling heavy rope, and a windlass for raising the anchors. The decks had three hatches and a larger cargo opening, and they each were outfitted with two smaller shore boats, a ten-oared longboat around twenty feet long and a six-oared yawl, each with a small mast and simple rigging and sail. The interminable delays were finally coming to an end.

  SINCE HE FIRST ARRIVED in Okhotsk in 1737, Bering had been organizing the construction of shipyards and numerous ships, first for Spangberg’s voyages to Japan and then the two ships for his own grand voyage across the Pacific. All the construction of ships for the various voyages was certainly time consuming, but the main difficulty had been the need to get the supplies over the final mountain range from Yakutsk. Waxell wrote, “We were forced to send most of [twenty carpenters] to the storehouses on the Urak and to Iudoma Cross to assist in transporting our supplies from those two places.” Even skilled tradesmen had been conscripted into general labor duties. For two years, the outfitting and provisioning for Spangberg’s Japan voyages had sucked resources from the American expedition, but by the fall of 1739 the final work on the St. Peter and the St. Paul had sped up considerably. The canvas for the sails had arrived only that spring after a year on the trail from St. Petersburg. And it was only in early 1740 that Bering had a full complement of men working on the ships, a workforce that included about eighty carpenters, in addition to dozens of blacksmiths, blockmakers, and sailmakers.

  On August 19, 1740, the final loading was nearly complete, and Bering said good-bye to Anna and their two youngest children, aged nine and ten. The servants who had packed all of their baggage and belongings departed on the long road to St. Petersburg, along with many hundreds of the workers, shipwrights, carpenters, and soldiers who would not be sailing to Kamchatka or America. The families of the other officers also departed. Although it had grown over the years into a small town, Okhotsk was not a desirable place to wait for the return of the St. Peter and the St. Paul. The voyage could take two years, and the families had decided it would be safer to reestablish their lives in western Russia. It must have been a difficult parting for Bering, since he and Anna were a devoted couple; she did follow him to the ends of the earth, leaving their two oldest children behind with family friends and relatives. Personal correspondence from them from before they parted in 1740 reveals a couple desperately trying to keep their extended family unified and the challenges they faced, particularly Anna, in doing so from such a great distance, where letters could take six months to be delivered. Anna refers to her husband as “my Bering,” and the letters are concerned with the career choices of their absent children and the health of Anna’s parents. They are scandalized at nineteen-year-old Jonas’s decision to join the infantry, worried that he would meet the wrong type of people, and hoping that he hadn’t “staggered into pubs.” Despite Bering’s career in the navy, Anna fretted that their son’s “arm or leg will be shot to pieces in the first flush of youth.” The parents were so far away and unable to do much more for their two older boys than write advice and s
end it off by courier. Bering wrote a formal letter to the admiralty, requesting retirement from active duty upon his return. “I have been in the service for 37 years and have not reached the point where I can have a home in one place for myself and my family. I live like a nomad.”

  Barely a week after the dozens of workers and the officers’ families departed and the ships were readying to sail, an unexpected visitor rode his horse into Okhotsk, exhausted and road weary. The rider was a courier from the Imperial Household Troops in St. Petersburg, and he had letters for Bering. The empress demanded a detailed report of the expedition’s progress to date, specifying how closely he had followed his instructions, and the document was to be signed by all the officers. It was a record that could take many days, perhaps even weeks, to prepare, if they wanted to be accurate in accounting for their years of activity in a manner that would preserve their careers and ward off punishment. But they could not delay if they wanted to sail to Kamchatka before the fall storms and ice made the voyage dangerous. Missing the sailing window in 1740 would add yet another year to the expedition. Bering convened the officers, and they all agreed that further delay was impossible. Bering wrote up a document for the courier, stating that Spangberg, who was remaining in Okhotsk until ships were available for his third voyage to Japan, would write everything he could about those voyages and that Bering would prepare the larger document over the winter in Kamchatka and then send it. Bering would also respond to a query about the status of another as yet unfulfilled job that he had been ordered to complete, the creation of Siberian post offices. Naturally, this was a near-impossible task. How could he possibly construct these post offices and then staff them, particularly on the route between Yakutsk and Okhotsk and then throughout Kamchatka? The mail service between Kamchatka and Okhotsk was supposed to run every second month, yet the sailing season across the Sea of Okhotsk was safely open only between May and September. Nevertheless, the lack of post offices could be construed as an example of Bering’s failure to follow his orders satisfactorily.