Vitus Bering

Vitus Bering
(1681-1741)
Vitus Ionassen Bering (Russian name - Ivan Ivanovich Bering) is a famous Russian sailor-tourist, commander of the Russian fleet. Originally from Denmark, he spent most of his life in Russia. Although another Russian traveler, Semyon Dezhnyov, proved the existence of the strait between Asia and North America in 1648, Vitus Bering entered the history of world geographical research as a tourist who discovered this strait.Vitus Bering was born in 1681 in Horsens, Denmark. As a young man, he made two voyages to India as part of a team of Dutch ships. After graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps in Amsterdam in 1703, he was enlisted as a lieutenant in the Russian Baltic Fleet. In 1710, Captain Lieutenant Bering enlisted in the Azov Fleet, where he took part in Peter I's 171st Prut voyage. V. Bering, well versed in the naval profession, commanded various ships in the Russian Baltic Fleet in 1712-1723. W. Bering, who voluntarily resigned from the fleet in February 1724, was re-admitted to the fleet in August of this year by order of Peter I in the rank of first-class captain (naval colonel).V. Bering led the first and second Kamchatka expeditions carried out by the Russian fleet in 1725-1730 and 1732-1742. The main task of the first Kamchatka expedition was to find an answer to the question "Is Asia connected with America or is there a sea between them?" For this purpose, on June 8, 1728, the tourist set sail from the port of Nizhny Novgorod on the ship "St. Gabriel". During July and August 1728, he mapped the Pacific coast of Northeast Asia, including the Gulf of Kamchatka, Karagin and Krest, Bay of Providence, and St. Lawrence Island.The expedition crossed the Bering Strait during a swim in the Chukotka Sea and reached a latitude of 67 ° 24 'north. But Bering did not see the American coast because of the thick fog. Therefore, he did not realize that he had unknowingly crossed the strait between Asia and America, and went back. In the summer of 1729, Bering managed to swim 200 km east of Kamchatka, but was forced to retreat due to strong winds and thick fog. While exploring the Pacific coast of Northeast Asia, Bering discovered the Gulf of Avachin and the bay. He was the first to map 3,500 kilometers of the west coast of an unknown sea called the Bering Sea.Two months after his return to St. Petersburg, in April 1730, Bering proposed a plan to explore the northern coast of Asia and find a sea route through it to Japan and America. For this purpose, in 1732, preparations for the Second Kamchatka Expedition began.The expedition has long explored various parts of Eastern Siberia and Kamchatka. However, in June 1741, two ships, the second Kamchatka expedition, set out to find the main goal of the expedition - to find the strait between Asia and America. The sailors left the Gulf of Avachin and headed southeast to find the island of Juan da Gama, which is depicted on some 18th century maps between 46 ° and 50 ° north latitude. After sailing for a week on the high seas, the sailors began to sail northeast when they realized that there was not even a small piece of land in the North Pacific. However, on June 20, 1741, the two ships lost each other, and Bering spent three days searching for a second ship on St. Peter's. During the search, the ship first sailed 400 km south, then northeast and was the first to cross the central part of the Gulf of Alaska.On July 17, 1741, sailors saw a high mountain range 58 ° north latitude. It was North America. On July 20 of that year, tourists arrived on the island of Kayak, where the expedition geographer Steller and the ship stormed the shore. But food shortages forced the expedition to retreat the next day.After mapping the Bering Strait, the tourist swam west along the coast and observed the high Chugach Mountains as the fog spread. At the same time, Bering Tumanli (Chirikov) discovered the five-island Yevdokeev Islands, the "Great Earth" (Aleut Peninsula) snow-capped mountains (Aleut Mountains) and discovered the Shumagin Islands on the outskirts of the Aleut Peninsula, where he met the local Aleutians. . Swimming toward Yearb, Bering sometimes observed land (Aleut chain islands).On November 4, 1741, the ship arrived on an unknown island later named Bering. It was here that Bering and many crew members died of disease. The remaining 46 members of the expedition, after a very hard and heavy winter, built a smaller ship out of the wreckage, sailed long without sails, and reached August 1842 in Petropavlovsk (now Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia).The expedition's report became a golden page in the history of world geographical research, making Bering world famous. The English tourist James Cook was the first to acknowledge the accuracy of Bering's geographical research.It was J. Cook who suggested naming the strait between Chukotka and Alaska Bering. His contribution to geographical research has been credited to the Pacific Ocean, island, glacier, armpit, landlocked (Beringia), ash, river, and peninsula tourist, which in ancient times connected Asia and North America. . A statue of a Pacific tourist has been erected on the island of Bering, where he died.Recently, Semyon Dezhnyov and Vitus Bering have proposed to build a road bridge or underwater tunnel connecting Eurasia and North America through the 86 km wide Bering Strait. But there are different opinions on this issue. Some say that the visibility of such facilities is higher than modern capabilities, while others consider the island of Ratmanov (42-43 km from both shores) in the middle of the strait, while the length of the project is the Swiss Alps. The 57-kilometer Gothard or 53.9-kilometer-long Seikan underwater tunnels connecting the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido are said to be slightly shorter and easier to implement.

FACTS
1. In honor of Bering is named not only the Command Islands, the sea, the capa, the village, the strait, the glacier and the island, but also the vast biogeographic region. Beringia includes eastern Siberia, Kamchatka, Alaska, and many islands.