Island of the Blue Foxes

by Stephen R. Bown

  Lauridsen, Peter. Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Strait. Translated by Julius E. Olsen. Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1889.

  Lincoln, Bruce. The Conquest of a Continent: Siberia and the Russians. New York: Random House, 1993.

  Lind, James. A Treatise of the Scurvy. 1753. Reprint, Birmingham, AL: Classics of Medicine Library, 1980.

  Littlepage, Dean. Steller’s Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2006.

  Longworth, Philip. The Three Empresses: Catherine I, Anne & Elizabeth of Russia. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1973.

  Massie, Robert, K. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.

  Møller, Peter Ulf, and Natasha Okhotina Lind, eds. Under Vitus Bering’s Command: New Perspectives on the Russian Kamchatka Expeditions. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2003.

  , eds. Until Death Do Us Part: The Letters and Travels of Anna and Vitus Bering. Translated by Anna Halager. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2008.

  Montefiore, Simon Sebag. The Romanovs, 1613–1918. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.

  Müller, Gerhard Friedrich. Bering’s Voyages: The Reports from Russia. Translated by Carol Urness. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1986.

  Sauer, Martin. Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition… by Commodore Joseph Billings in the Years 1785 to 1794. London: A. Strahan, 1806.

  Schuyler, Eugene. Peter the Great. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.

  Smeeton, Miles. Once Is Enough. 1959. Reprint, New York: International Marine, 2003.

  Stejneger, Leonhard. Georg Wilhelm Steller: The Pioneer of Alaskan Natural History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

  Steller, Georg Wilhelm. De Bestiis Marinis; or, The Beasts of the Sea [1751]. Translated by Walter Miller and Jennie Emerson Miller. Transcribed and edited by Paul Royster. Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries. Paper 17.

  . Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741–1742. Edited by O. W. Frost. Translated by Margritt A. Engel and O. W. Frost. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.

  . Steller’s History of Kamchatka: Collected Information Concerning the History of Kamchatka, Its Peoples, Their Manners, Names, Lifestyle, and Various Customary Practices. Edited by Marvin W. Falk. Translated by Margritt Engel and Karen Willmore. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2003.

  . Steller’s Journal of the Sea Voyage from Kamchatka to America and Return on the Second Expedition, 1741–1742. Translated and edited by Leonhard Stejneger. New York: Octagon Books, 1968. Vol. 2 of Bering’s Voyages: An Account of the Efforts of the Russians to Determine the Relation of Asia and America, by F. A. Golder. New York: American Geographical Society, 1922.

  von Staehlin, Jacob. Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great. London: J. Murray, 1788.

  Waxell, Sven. The American Expedition. London: William Hodge, 1952.

  Williams, Glyndwr. Naturalists at Sea. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.

  . The Prize of All the Oceans: Commodore Anson’s Daring Voyage and Triumphant Capture of the Spanish Treasure Galleon. New York: Penguin Viking, 1999.

  Zviagin, V. N. “A Reconstruction of Vitus Bering Based on Skeletal Remains.” In Bering and Chirikov: The American Voyages and Their Impact, edited by Orcutt Frost. Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society, 1992.

  A Note on Sources and Further Reading

  There were several publications that were invaluable in creating the narrative account of Russia’s great expeditions.

  Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean: A Documentary Record, edited and translated by Basil Dmytryshyn, E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan, and Thomas Vaughan, is a collection of instructions, orders, journals, and reports of the expedition, select letters mostly to do with the Siberian part of the expedition, and the overall government directive of the enterprise. It is an invaluable source for primary documents relating to the official Russian activities in Siberia and Alaska.

  Volume 1 of F. A. Golder’s Bering’s Voyages is a collection of the logbooks of the St. Peter and St. Paul, official reports, and letters relating to the Pacific voyage. Anyone who wants to know the exact compass or wind directions or precise location of the ship on each day should consult the logs, which provide the exact hourly log entries for each ship and separate supplementary information such as additional letters signed by the officers or journal entries by the officers. It is a wealth of precise information on pragmatic actions of the crew, weather, location, and passing thoughts or suppositions.

  Volume 2 of Bering’s Voyages is an edited, annotated, and translated edition of Steller’s Journal. I quoted extensively from this translation because I preferred the older archaic English and the less perfected turn of phrase for no other reason than it suited the style of how I felt Steller must have been writing while onboard ship or shipwrecked. For anyone wanting to read Steller’s journal for themselves, I would recommend Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741–1742, edited by O. W. Frost. This translation is more smooth, modern, and fluid and contains numerous interesting annotations and asides.

  Sven Waxell’s journal manuscript of the expedition, including the crossing of Siberia, was published posthumously as The American Voyage and represents, along with Steller’s Journal, the bulk of the firsthand accounts of the voyage. It is unvarnished and entertaining rather than precise or technical, a window into how things actually were.

  Only a small portion of the available documentary material related to the Great Northern Expedition in Russian archives, or published in Russian, is available in English translation. However, in recent years, Peter Ulf Møller and Natasha Okhotina Lind have published Under Vitus Bering’s Command: New Perspectives on the Russian Kamchatka Expeditions, essays by prominent specialists on various topics deriving from the latest documentary evidence relating to the First and Second Kamchatka Expeditions. This would be the place to start for further reading, with essays on cartography, navigation, surveying, and natural history. These essays are focused on the more academic information collected by the scientific component of the expeditions.

  Perhaps the most interesting recent publication on Bering and the Second Kamchatka Expedition is Until Death Do Us Part: The Letters and Travels of Anna and Vitus Bering by MØller and Lind, a collection of the personal correspondence of the Berings that sheds previously unknown light on their relationship and personalities that is distinct from official correspondence and reports. It also contains a detailed accounting of the extensive possessions they brought with them to Siberia.

  Bering and Chirikov: The American Voyages and Their Impact, edited by O. W. Frost, is a collection of essays by Bering scholars. Particularly useful to me in creating a narrative account of this remarkable expedition was James Gibson’s “Supplying the Kamchatka Expedition, 1725–30 and 1742,” which included some translations of Russian documents not otherwise available in English.

  The only full biography of Steller is Georg Wilhelm Steller, by Leonhard Stejneger. Published in 1936 it is thorough and balanced. Steller’s Island, by Dean Littlepage, is a good more recent account of Steller’s explorations in Alaska and on Bering Island.

  Vasilli Divin’s The Great Russian Navigator, A. I. Chirikov, while nearly a hagiography of the Russian mariner, contains a wealth of information about the First and Second Kamchatka Expeditions.

  See also The Journal of Midshipman Chaplin, the annotated journal of a junior officer who accompanied Bering and Chirikov on the first expedition. It also has some interesting articles on navigation, surveying, and mapmaking in the period that would be of interest to anyone furthering their study of those topics.

  Much detail of the work of the scientific component of the expedition in Siberia (weather, flora, fauna and observations of customs, languages, and culture of native peoples) has not been properly published in English. Recently, much more information, correspondence, reports, and the like is being translated and pub
lished by scholars associated with the Carlsberg Foundation. See http://www.carlsbergfondet.dk/en/Research-Activities/Research-Projects/Postdoctoral-Fellowships/Peter-Ulf-Moeller_Vitus-Berings-Kamchatka-Expeditions.

  For further reading on the history of the Russian conquest and government of Alaska, consult Lydia Black’s Russians in Alaska, 1732–1867.

  Image Sources

  Peter the Great, here, Library of Congress

  Anna Ivanovna, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Catherine I, here, Wikimedia Commons

  The Kremlin, here, NYPL

  St. Petersburg, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Packhorse road, here, NYPL

  Avacha Bay, here, NYPL

  Yakut woman, here, NYPL

  Dogsleds, here, NYPL

  Cook Inlet, here, George Vancouver’s Voyage of Discovery

  Waxell meeting Aleutians, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Steller’s sea bear, here, NYPL

  Steller measuring, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Khitrov sketch, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Steller’s sea lions, sea cows, and sea otters, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Bering’s ship wrecked, here, Wikimedia Commons

  US Russian stamp, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Bering found dead, here, Wikimedia Commons

  Bering Island, here, Sergey Krasnoshchokov, Shutterstock

  Notes

  Part One. Europe

  CHAPTER 1. THE GREAT EMBASSY

  “such as is due only among private friends”: Johann Georg Korb, Diary of an Austrian Secretary of Legation at the Court of Tsar Peter the Great, 155.

  “Confess, beast, confess!”: Ibid., 243.

  “crimes that lead to the common ruin”: Ibid., 180.

  “his character is exactly that of his country”: Sophia Charlotte, quoted in Eugene Schuyler, Peter the Great, 1:285.

  “constructed and launched a new ship”: Peter the Great, in Maritime Regulations, quoted in ibid., 265.

  “the Tsar wants to eat!”: Korb, Diary of… Peter the Great, 157.

  “made many attempts along the American coast”: Reports of Peter the Great, quoted in Frank Alfred Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, 1641–1850, 133.

  “draw a chart and bring it here”: Ibid., 134.

  CHAPTER 2. THE FIRST KAMCHATKA EXPEDITION

  He was a handsome man in good health: See V. N. Zviagin, “A Reconstruction of Vitus Bering Based on Skeletal Remains,” 248–262. See also Svend E. Albrethsen, “Vitus Bering’s Second Kamchatka Expedition: The Journey to America and Archaeological Excavations on Bering Island,” in Vitus Bering, 1741–1991: Bicentennial Remembrance Lectures, edited by N. Kingo Jacobsen, 75–93.

  “everything had come his way”: Georg Wilhelm Steller, Steller’s Journal of the Sea Voyage from Kamchatka to America and Return on the Second Expedition, 1741–1742, 157.

  “universally liked by the whole command”: Ibid., 155.

  “even if your people did not bring them”: Schuyler, Peter the Great, 2:458.

  “Bering has been in East India and knows the conditions”: Instructions from Czar Peter Alekseevich, in Basil Dmytryshyn, E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan, and Thomas Vaughan, eds. and trans., Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 1700–1799: A Documentary Record, 66.

  “It is very necessary to have”: Ibid. See also Peter the Great’s Orders, Papers of the Admiralty Council, 1724, in Frank Alfred Golder, Bering’s Voyages: An Account of the Efforts of the Russians to Determine the Relation of Asia and America, 1:7.

  Wealth and status were the goals of this couple: See Orcutt Frost, Bering: The Russian Discovery of America, 32; and Natasha Okhotina Lind, “The First Pianist in Okhotsk: New Information on Anna Christina Bering,” in Under Vitus Bering’s Command: New Perspectives on the Russian Kamchatka Expeditions, edited by Peter Ulf Møller and Natasha Okhotina Lind, 51–62.

  commanding the governor of Siberia: Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 68.

  “You are all swindlers and you should be hanged”: Evgenii G. Kushnarev, Bering’s Search for the Strait: The First Kamchatka Expedition, 1725–1730, 35.

  “many were lame, blind, and ridden with disease”: Ibid., 36.

  “in order to keep warm during the night”: Bering’s Report, in Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 83.

  “I cannot put into words how difficult this route is”: Kushnarev, Bering’s Search for the Strait, 55.

  “we are going straight to town [Yakutsk] and you can’t stop us”: Ibid., 67.

  “penetrated even under our parkas and into our baggage”: Peter Dobell, Travels in Kamchatka and Siberia, 102.

  “then he will be covered by snow and die”: Bering’s Report, in Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 84.

  “and are quite devoid of any good habits”: Ibid.

  “out into the forest with only enough food for a week”: Ibid.

  “variable winds blew from the ravines between the mountains”: Piotr Chaplin, The Journal of Midshipman Chaplin: A Record of Bering’s First Kamchatka Expedition, 131.

  “if one moves not far from here to the east”: Ibid., 133.

  “covered in snow even in winter”: Bering’s Report, in Golder, Bering’s Voyages, 1:19.

  “a harbor on Kamchatka where we will stay through the winter”: Kushnarev, Bering’s Search for the Strait, 107; Chaplin, Journal of Midshipman Chaplin, 142, 303.

  CHAPTER 3. THE BEST-LAID PLANS

  “Let me see everything”: Jacob von Staehlin, Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great, 140.

  “with no considerable future”: Mini Curtiss, A Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovna and Her Era, 232.

  “since these regions are under Russian jurisdiction”: Bering’s Proposal, in Golder, Bering’s Voyages, 1:25. See also “A Statement from the Admiralty College to the Senate Concerning the Purpose of the Bering Expedition,” in Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 97–99.

  “genuine benefit to Your Majesty and to the glory of the Russian Empire”: Instructions from the empress, in ibid., 108.

  officially signed the order authorizing the Second Kamchatka Expedition: See Golder, Bering’s Voyages, 1:28–29; and Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 96–125.

  “act in mutual agreement with Captain-Lieutenant Chirikov”: Instructions from the Admiralty College, in Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, 102.

  infrastructure to accommodate him and his entourage: See James R. Gibson, “Supplying the Kamchatka Expedition, 1725–30 and 1742,” 101.

  “noteworthy in the manner of plants, animals and minerals”: Gerhard Friedrich Müller, Bering’s Voyages: The Reports from Russia, 79.

  “considerably more prudence and thought”: Sven Waxell, The American Expedition, 65.

  “the story of the journey”: Müller, Bering’s Voyages, 79.

  Golovin proposed something radical to the empress: See “A Proposal from Count Nikolai Golovin to Empress Anna Ivanovna,” in Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, edited and translated by Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, 90–95.

  “everything will be ready for him”: “A Statement from the Admiralty College to the Senate,” in ibid., 100.

  Part Two. Asia

  CHAPTER 4. ST. PETERSBURG TO SIBERIA

  “deported persons who were to work on board our vessels”: Waxell, The American Expedition, 50.

  “for after that had been done we had only very few run aways”: Ibid., 51.

  they were above the local Siberian hierarchy: See Peter Ulf Møller and Natasha Okhotina Lind, Until Death Do Us Part: The Letters and Travel of Anna and Vitus Bering, 109–123.

  the ultimate objective of the entire expedition: See T. E. Armstrong, “Siberian and Arctic Exploration,” in Bering and Chi
rikov, edited by Frost, 117.

  Such were the arbitrary decrees: See ibid., 117–126.

  “fallen to death’s sickle”: Waxell, The American Expedition, 55.

  “it must be anticipated that most of them will succumb”: Ibid., 59.

  “Yudoma Cross and Okhotsk is a complete wilderness”: Ibid., 66.

  “If a packhorse becomes mired there is no way to pull it out”: Stephen Petrovich Krasheninnikov, Explorations of Kamchatka: Report of a Journey Made to Explore Eastern Siberia in 1735–1741, by Order of the Russian Imperial Government, 351.

  “when large quantities of fish come into the river from the sea”: Waxell, The American Expedition, 70.

  “has a particularly pleasant taste”: Ibid., 71.

  “To put it briefly, this is an emergency harbour”: Ibid., 74.

  “a lying and malicious gossip”: Leonhard Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller: The Pioneer of Alaskan Natural History, 207.

  CHAPTER 5. QUARRELING FACTIONS

  cut short by his desire to understand the world: See ibid., 39.

  “an insatiable desire to visit foreign lands”: Steller, Steller’s Journal, 15.

  “I have entirely forgotten her and fallen in love with Nature”: Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 135.

  “accomplish something advantageous to science”: Ibid., 147.

  Artists were to sketch buildings, landscapes, and peoples: See “Instructions from Johann Georg Gmelin,” in Russian Penetration of the North Pacific, edited and translated by Dmytryshyn, Crownhart-Vaughan, and Vaughan, 104.

  “we have had to learn all these things by experience”: Stejneger, Georg Wilhelm Steller, 110.

  “and there was no way of stopping the madness”: Ibid., 109.

  “He bears only malice toward me for them”: Vasilli A. Divin, The Great Russian Navigator, A. I. Chirikov, 109.

  “Just what proportion of truth and falsehood these charges contain”: Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, 177.

  “and a delay in accomplishing the work assigned”: Directive from the Admiralty College, quoted in ibid., 174.