Vitus Bering: Danish-born Explorer in Russian Service

Early life and Russian service

Bering trained as a seaman and is widely described as a skilled seafarer. In 1704 he entered the Russian navy, where he was commissioned as an officer and recorded as holding the rank of second lieutenant early in his career. During the Great Northern War he served with distinction; that conflict, the Great Northern War, provided opportunities for promotion and experience, and Bering was subsequently promoted to higher command and eventually recognized as a commander within the Russian naval establishment.

Major expeditions

Bering led two principal voyages that define his historical reputation. The First Kamchatka Expedition (1725–1730) aimed to map the northeastern shores of Asia and to determine whether Asia and North America were connected. The later and far larger Second Kamchatka Expedition (often called the Great Northern Expedition, begun in the 1730s) assembled numerous ships and scientific personnel to chart the Arctic and North Pacific coasts, to collect natural history specimens, and to test Siberian sea routes.

Discoveries, outcomes and death

On his second major voyage Bering sailed north from Kamchatka into the Bering Sea and reached the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands and the coast of what is now Alaska, providing European navigators with direct seaborne evidence of the separation between the continents. The expedition produced charts, natural history collections and reports that expanded European knowledge of the North Pacific. Bering himself died in 1741 on an island later named Bering Island; many members of his crew suffered from scurvy and hardship on the return journeys.

Legacy and namesakes

Bering's name is attached to several major features of the North Pacific region, including the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait and Bering Island. His voyages were important in the history of Russian exploration and in the eventual Russian presence in North America. Modern historians note both the scientific contributions of the expeditions and the difficult human costs of long, poorly supplied voyages of the era.

Further reading

• Biographical and Russian-language sources
• Documents on Russian naval service
• Accounts of North Pacific exploration