Island of the Blue Foxes

by Stephen R. Bown

  On December 1, Bering decided to send off a small exploratory expedition into the interior of the mysterious land, the first of several such missions. The three men, led by sailor Timofei Anchugov, were among the least affected by scurvy. They struggled up wind-lashed, rocky slopes, across “tall mountains and untrodden paths,” for about seven miles to the top of a barren hill, from which they could see open water to the west and the coastline ringed in frothy surf. Their journey lasted nearly four weeks, as they trudged through the rough interior of what they soon determined was most likely an island. Later exploration confirmed that the camp was situated on the east coast, about a third of the way from the southern tip of the island, which runs generally southeast to northwest and is around ten to fifteen miles wide and forty miles long. When they eventually returned with this news, it was a sobering blow. “We now saw ourselves threatened with certain destruction,” Waxell recalled, “being on an unknown deserted island without a ship or timber with which to build a new one, and at the same time with little or no provisions. Our people were very sick and we had no medicines or drugs of any description. Nor were we even decently quartered, but lodged, so to speak, under the open sky. The whole ground was covered in snow and we quailed at the thought of the long winter and the fierce cold that would descend upon us here, where there was no sign of fuel.” This news sent many into “utter despair” and to “abandon hope of ever being rescued.” They were on their own.

  BERING HAD BEEN GROWING steadily weaker in the month since leaving the ship. Once ashore, he never rose from his place in the sandpit under a makeshift tent. He suffered from more than just scurvy. Under Steller’s care, he had recovered from scurvy twice during the voyage. Four of his teeth had fallen out from puffed, darkly swollen gums earlier on the voyage, but his gums were firm on December 8. Steller claimed that Bering suffered from a collection of unclear maladies and that he “perished rather from hunger, thirst, cold, vermin and grief” more than any specific disease. His feet were swollen, he was feverish, and “internal gangrene” had caused “inflammation of the lower abdomen.” He had been refusing Steller’s attempts to broaden his shore diet. Once when Steller brought back to the cluster of huts a still suckling sea otter and pleaded with Bering “in every way and manner” to let Steller prepare it specially for him, he was rebuffed. Bering looked away and muttered, “I wonder at your taste.” Steller did not take offense. He looked around him at the huts and the snow-covered beach with the wreck of the ship in the background, and he replied that he adapted his taste “to the circumstances.” But Bering would eat only boiled ptarmigan.

  Bering was wracked by worry and stress, constantly preoccupied with the survival of his men, and brooding over the failures of the expedition. He confessed to Steller that his strength was not what it had been. A powerfully built man, Bering was referring not just to physical strength but to his will to bring order to the expedition. He complained to Steller that the expedition had been made far more complex and extensive than he had ever imagined and that “at his age he could have wished to have the whole task taken out of his hands and put into those of a young and active man.”

  The voyage planned by Bering was to have been a quick and fruitful excursion that would make his career and fortune. He would cross the Pacific, which was believed to be much smaller than it was, even without the wasted search for Gama Land; roughly chart the coast; hope for friendly encounters with people in safe harbors with freshwater; lay claim to a vast new world and an even greater frontier for imperial Russia; and burnish his and Russia’s international reputations for scientific discovery and the advancement of knowledge. Then he would return to Petropavlovsk and the long trek west across Siberia to St. Petersburg, to Anna and his children. It would be capped off with a respectable and wealthy retirement, perhaps with some prestigious ceremonial appointments. Now here he was weakened and withering on a deserted and frozen beach, the expedition and his dreams in tatters, with one ship lost and the other shattered and destroyed in the nearby lagoon, his men starving and scurvy ridden on this barren island in the middle of nowhere. He would never see his family again. There was little to be enthusiastic about, even had he been in good health. He spoke to Steller frequently about how he had had incredible luck in his life and career until about two months earlier, when the first bout of scurvy attacked him. Steller was convinced that had he been able to bring the commander back to Kamchatka, he would have lived, that Bering was broken in spirit if not completely in body. At sixty years old, Bering was just too weakened and dispirited to recover.

  He died at five in the morning, before daybreak, on December 8. That night a strong wind was blowing sand around the encampment. It trickled into the pit where Bering lay with his legs partially covered in sand. “Let me be,” he told Waxell and Steller, to forestall any further medical help in his final hours. “The deeper in the ground I lie, the warmer I am; only the part of me that is above ground suffers from the cold.” Steller wrote in his published account of the expedition that Bering had “composure and an earnest preparation for death,” with full possession of reason and speech. But later in a private letter to a colleague at the Academy of Sciences, he also wrote that Bering “died miserably under the open sky… almost eaten up by lice.”

  The next day, Bering’s body was taken about fifty feet from the camp, where a grave was dug in the sand next to Hesselberg’s, marked by a wooden cross. Some of the men banged together a primitive coffin, which although too small for his body and requiring him to be bent to fit, was certainly a sign of respect. The planks of wood, scavenged from the ship, were extremely valuable, and no other person was given such a distinction. Many of the men and the officers retained a great respect for their commander, and Waxell led a brief service in the Lutheran tradition.

  Though Bering was honored with a burial ceremony, Steller was annoyed at the choice of sermon: “He died like a rich man and was buried like the ungodly.” Bering, after all, was the supreme commander of not just the voyage but the entire expedition from St. Petersburg. He was a wealthy man and a man of high status in a culture that prized hierarchy and social standing. In all of Siberia, Bering could outrank any local governor or official in matters related to the expedition. He traveled in style, with an entourage, inhabiting the trappings of his office as the czar’s representative. He looked and lived as the imperial symbol. Even on shipboard he inhabited the role of the noble, with nine sea chests of ornaments and fancy, impractical attire. But in the dramatic shift in the social situation following the wreck, he dropped from his rarefied position of authority and respect to at best first among equals. Waxell’s sermon probably captures Bering’s situation. In the suffering and chaos on the beach, symbolic attire and social rank were valueless compared to the skill of skinning an animal, tending the sick, or starting a fire. Bering was buried in a primitive, or ungodly, land, unable to adapt to the new reality of their predicament.

  Although Waxell’s sermon was undoubtedly given in respect and honor, Steller was rankled because of the implication that Bering was flawed. He groused that “in the slimy environs of Okhotsk and Kamchatka he [Bering] tried to lift out and up everybody who had fallen into the mire, they leaned so heavily on him that he himself must sink.” Steller felt that Bering “took with him to his grave everyone’s receipted bill.” Steller’s opinion was that “the only blame which can be laid against this excellent man is that by his too lenient command he did as much harm as his subordinates by their too impetuous and often thoughtless action.” In the sort of eulogy he wrote for Bering in his journal, Steller did allow that Bering was not known for quick, decisive action and wondered whether “more fire and heat” would have better overcome the dangers and challenges of the expedition.

  Despite his clashes with Bering during the voyage, Steller had great respect for the commander for piloting the expedition and laid blame for the voyage’s failures at the hands of the other officers—in fact, Steller contrived to believe that all of Bering
’s failures were the result of the undue influence of these officers, who eventually became too conceited and “looked with contempt on all those near them.” And Steller reserved, as usual, a particular ire for Khitrov, whom he felt should have shown loyalty to Bering because Bering had promoted him to lieutenant, instead of challenging his commander at the sea council that resulted in their shipwreck. Khitrov, Steller wrote, owed Bering a particular debt but afterward “contradicted him in everything, became the author of our misfortune, and after Bering’s death his greatest accuser.”

  While Steller resented Bering’s choice of certain officers, particularly Khitrov, he also respected Bering for living his life as “a righteous and devout Christian whose conduct was that of a man of good manners, kind, quiet and universally liked by the whole command, both high and low.” The officers and sailors decided to name the island in Bering’s honor, despite the fact that it was Bering who wanted to sail on, while it was Waxell and Khitrov who overruled him and sailed the St. Peter toward the beach.

  IN THE ARCTIC LATITUDE of Bering Island, December and January have as little as seven hours a day of light, and even then it felt gloomy on the numerous overcast days. But the ocean moderated the temperature, and it was much warmer on the island than it would have been at a corresponding latitude in Siberia, with an average temperature of 6–8 degrees Celsius (17–21 degrees Fahrenheit). Unfortunately, late fall and winter were also the seasons with the most precipitation. It was a miserable and deadly time of year to be shipwrecked without proper shelter and food, huddled in pits dug into frozen sand, with tattered sails for a roof and frozen fox corpses for walls. The primitive dwellings deteriorated throughout the winter, frayed by wind, snow, and rain.

  “From the sea came thick mists and dampness that caused the sails to rot,” Waxell recalled, “until they were no longer able to withstand the violence of the storms, but were blown away on the first gust, leaving us lying under the open sky.” Savage winter gales pried through the cracks in the huts, tearing off the roofs and dumping sleet inside. After each storm, the able-bodied stood up and shook off the snow, swept their dugouts as best as they could, and readied themselves for the next storm. There was no “great, penetrating cold,” but there were frequent hurricanes and “stormy winds with thick snow.” The snow depth inland varied between six and nine feet. “The storms were so violent that on several occasions people getting out of their hollows to relieve nature were whirled away and would undoubtedly have been blown out to sea had they not flung themselves on the ground and clung to a stone or anything else that they were able to seize.” Once Waxell was uplifted and nearly sucked out of his tent. He hung on by his hands while his legs flapped in the wind, and he was saved only when two companions each grabbed an arm and hauled him back in. Undoubtedly, the men’s generalized weakness contributed to the perceived violence of the wind and storms, but it surely was not pleasant.

  Throughout December and early January, the terrible scurvy plague continued once the snow covered everything. Steller could not find enough fresh herbs to fully drive away the disease. The monotonous diet consisted of fox, sea otter, and fried rye flour. The cooks took the salted rye flour, added water to it, and put it in a bowl for several days until it began to ferment and then fried it in seal oil. Although unpalatable, it filled empty stomachs. “Altogether, want, nakedness, cold, dampness, exhaustion, illness, impatience, and despair were the daily guests,” Steller recalled. But at least the plague of foxes had subsided. As December wore on, many had been killed and others had grown wary. Outside of each dwelling pit, at Steller’s urging, they placed barrels for food storage and constructed wooden racks three to four feet off the ground for hanging items and drying clothes when the wind was calm. Both of these strategies prevented fox attacks, since there was now no loose food lying about nor any personal item worth defiling or stealing.

  After Bering died, the command of the expedition passed to the next in command, Lieutenant Waxell, even though he was still unable to rise from his place in the Barracks. Waxell, like Steller, proved to be a man of good cheer in the face of disaster, and he sought to bring up the spirits of the others, despite the grim situation. Also like Steller, he recognized the new social reality of the beach camp. “I considered it most advisable,” he wrote, “to carry [orders] out with the greatest possible mildness and calmness. That was no place for exerting one’s power and authority. Severity would have been quite pointless.” He retained his position as leader, but he no longer commanded as a ranking naval officer. Either his appreciation of the circumstances or his own weakness and lethargy allowed for a decentralized authority and a general disregard for rules that he never would have permitted onboard the ship.

  The general laxness, however, caused its own problems within the band of despairing and dying men. Of the five communal dugouts—which they variously referred to as pits, graves, yurts, or huts—four were clustered near each other in the original spot selected by Steller and Plenisner, while one camp was conspicuously positioned farther upstream along a sandy ridge. Here dwelled twelve men, mostly regular sailors. Their unofficial leader was Dmitry Ovtsin, the lieutenant who had been demoted to regular sailor prior to the voyage, ostensibly for having relations with a political exile during his explorations in Siberia. Bering had recognized Ovtsin’s abilities and had given him the responsible position as his adjutant, but when Bering died Waxell did not want him in this role, and, according to navy protocol at least, he was again demoted to regular sailor. Ovtsin harbored a grudge, and Waxell feared a challenge to his leadership would come from this quarter. Ovtsin was a leader of the discontented, waiting for an opportunity to exploit weakness or incompetence, to wedge some authority for himself, or to increase his standing. Although Waxell was the commander, he was still so weak that he relied on others to nurse him back to health and to carry out his few orders. Waxell was not secure in his command or even convinced that he would live for long.

  Among the rules that Waxell relaxed were the standard naval regulations regarding cards and gambling. The games started slowly and innocuously, and when Steller, with his pious upbringing, frowned on all forms of gambling, complained to Waxell, Waxell defended the practice, claiming that not only was he in too weak a position to be issuing commands, but he was in favor of the gaming. “The regulations or ukase against playing cards had been made without any thought of this deserted island,” he replied, “because at that time it had not yet been discovered. If they had had any inkling then of our men’s card-playing and of our pitiable circumstances, I was sure that they would have introduced a special paragraph giving permission for all suitable pastimes.” Not only did Waxell not disapprove, but he actually had in his personal luggage many decks of cards that he gave or sold to the men. Since in December most of the men were still immobilized with scurvy or very weak, Waxell thought it a good way for them to pass the time. They could become despondent dwelling on their dire circumstances, and he hoped the games would distract them and help them to “overcome the melancholy” and to redirect them from searching about for someone on whom to pin the blame. He told Steller his opinions and reasoning and said that “as long as I remain in command,” he would stick to his decision. After he died, however, he said that “my successors could deal with matters as they liked, for all I cared.”

  But Steller, true to his character, was not easily mollified when he thought he was in the right. He pointed out to Waxell the serious problems he observed that were caused by the “wretched gambling with cards.” Though one hopes he did so in a more diplomatic manner than the way he wrote about it in his journal, this is unlikely to have been the case. Steller cast his critical eye about the sprawling camp and fumed that “whole days and nights nothing but card playing was to be seen in the dwellings.… In the morning, at inspection, no other topic of conversation was heard than: this one has won a hundred rubles or more, and that one has lost so and so much.” Both Waxell and Steller had valid points—most of the men could ha
rdly move, so playing cards was one of the only things they could do other than stare at the flapping tent walls and listen to the snow or hail pelting down or the ripping wind or, worse, the mumbled prayers or insensible groans of the sick and dying. They were desperately bored without work or recreation. Over time, rather than solving problems, however, the gambling created more. Steller claimed that the officers were using their better skills to win all the money and furs from the sailors. He meant Khitrov in particular and suggested that the real reason Waxell, and the other officers, allowed gambling was because they liked it and were winning. Some of the men lost so much that they began stealing otter pelts from others to pay their debts, and soon “hate, quarrels and strife were disseminated through all the quarters.”

  As December passed and some of the men regained a semblance of their former strength, the plague of scurvy was indeed supplanted by a plague of gambling that caused discord rather than unity. By then Waxell, Khitrov, and the other officers were too afraid of the men, at least some of them, to remove their one pastime. It could provoke a rebellion. And any discontent among the men would likely coalesce around Ovtsin, himself an already discontented former officer.

  When Waxell refused even to acknowledge any of these legitimate concerns, Steller secretly began buying up the decks of cards and removing them from circulation. Waxell later discovered that most of the decks of cards he had sold or given to the sailors were in Steller’s possession—a dangerous gambit to halt the gaming. Steller was nothing if not a man of conviction and principle. Nevertheless, it reveals how his stubbornness led to poor judgment, since he assumed the men would see the error of their ways and accept that it was all for the better once, like a parent punishing recalcitrant children, he had removed their toys. Waxell, in contrast, seemed to have a healthy appreciation of the possibilities for discord and the limits of power, perhaps stemming from his naval training and experience—once the gambling had started, he probably would not have commanded the authority to stop it. Why risk it and have his authority challenged over something he hoped would just go away on its own?