30 Facts About Vitus Bering

Vitus Bering is known as a leader of two Russian expeditions, namely the First Kamchatka Expedition and the Great Northern Expedition, exploring the north-eastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast on the North American continent.

The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, the Bering Glacier, and Vitus Lake were all named in his honor.

Vitus Bering was permitted to keep the rank as he rejoined the Russian navy later the same year.

Vitus Bering was selected by the Tsar to captain the First Kamchatka Expedition, an expedition set to sail north from Russian outposts on the Kamchatka Peninsula, with the charge to map the new areas visited and to establish whether Asia and America shared a land border.

One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands, and Vitus Bering named the island group Shumagin Islands after him.

Vitus Bering himself became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to seek refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group in the southwest Vitus Bering Sea.

Vitus Bering was named after a maternal great-uncle, Vitus Pedersen Bering, who had been a chronicler in the royal court, and was not long deceased at the time of Vitus Jonassen Bering's birth.

Vitus Bering however did not and instead signed on at age 15 as a ship's boy.

Between 1696 and 1704, Vitus Bering travelled the seas, reaching India and the Dutch East Indies while finding time to complete naval officer training in Amsterdam.

Vitus Bering would be repeatedly promoted in Peter the Great's rapidly evolving navy, reaching the rank of second captain by 1720.

At the war's conclusion in 1721, Vitus Bering was not promoted like many of his contemporaries.

Vitus Bering was accepted for a renewed period of active service the same day.

Vitus Bering was supplied with what few maps Peter had managed to commission in the preceding years.

At Tobolsk, Vitus Bering took on more men to help the party through the more difficult journey ahead.

The journeys were as difficult as Vitus Bering had worried they would be.

Okhotsk's inhabitants described the winter as the worst they could recall; Vitus Bering seized flour from the local villagers to ensure that his party too could take advantage of their stocks and consequently the whole village soon faced the threat of starvation.

Vitus Bering had had a relatively easy trip, losing none of his men and only 17 of the 140 horses he had set out with.

Translation problems hindered the exploration attempt as Vitus Bering was unable to discuss the local geography with locals he encountered.

The rapidly advancing ice prompted Vitus Bering to make the controversial decision not to deviate from his remit: the ship would sail for a few more days, but then turn back.

The delay was caused by a four-day journey Vitus Bering had embarked upon directly eastwards in search of North America, to no avail.

Vitus Bering soon proposed a second Kamchatka expedition, much more ambitious than the first and with an explicit aim of sailing east in search of North America.

Vitus Bering made a bequest to the poor of Horsens, had two children with Anna and even attempted to establish his familial coat of arms.

Vitus Bering did not leave for Okhotsk for another four years, by which time Bering's own expedition was not far off.

In 1732 Vitus Bering was still at the planning stage in Moscow, having taken a short leave of absence for St Petersburg.

Vitus Bering was wary of this expansion in the proposed size of the whole expedition, given the food shortages experienced on the first voyage.

Whilst Spanberg headed east to Okhotsk, Vitus Bering waited in Yakutsk where he partied for a long time, preparing two ships on the Lena.

Nevertheless, Vitus Bering soon found he was quickly bogged down in Yakutsk; two parties sent east to find a better route to the Okhotsk Sea were both failures, and yet this was information the expedition desperately needed.

Vitus Bering decided to prepare a similar land route to the one he had used on the first expedition instead, constructing huts along the route in advance.

Vitus Bering delayed, promising a partial report from Spanberg and a fuller report later.

Vitus Bering himself was forced by adverse conditions to return, and he discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back.