Why did vitus bering travel

Before he died on January 28, , he wrote out and signed detailed instructions for Bering, who was to travel with a crew from St. Petersburg with supplies to the Kamchatka Peninsula, some 6, miles away. Once there, they were to build several ships to explore the northern Pacific. The Czar was hoping to find out if Russia and America might be connected by land.

The crew carrying the supplies began their epic journey before Bering left St. Bering caught up with the crew in mid-March of It took more than three years to get all the supplies needed across mountains, rivers, and hostile land to the Kamchatka Peninsula. They carried ships' anchors, lumber, heavy tools, and a year or more of food supplies across some of the coldest and roughest land of northern Russia.

Where they could, they loaded materials on boats to float the rivers that all eventually emptied into the Arctic Ocean. Along the way, many died. Finally, in July, , they had completed one ship, the St.

Bering and his crew sailed north searching for a link between Russia and America. They sailed past an island Bering named Saint Lawrence and continued north. They saw no more sign of land.

The weather was bad and it was mid-August. They didn't want to get caught in winter storms. Despite the suggestion of his junior officer Alexei Chirikov, Bering made the decision to head back.

On their return, they saw another island they named Saint Diomede. In their hurry they sailed on instead of looking around.

If they had, they might have seen Alaska. They had charted new shores and explored thousands of miles, but they just missed America. Bering would not accept defeat. He traveled to St. Petersburg to give his report. He then proposed that he be sent back to continue exploration. He wanted to do more than just find America. Vitus Bering Vitus Jonassen Bering. School period Add photo.

Career Add photo. Achievements Add photo. Membership Add photo. Awards Add photo. Other Photos Add photo. Other photo of Vitus Bering Soviet postage stamp depicting Bering's second voyage and the discovery of the Commander Islands. Other photo of Vitus Bering The original burial site of Bering and his 5 companions on Bering Island was excavated in Connections Add photo. He 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.

More photos. View map. Born Vitus Bering facts for kids Kids Encyclopedia Facts. Vitus Bering's expedition being wrecked on the Aleutian Islands in All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles including the article images and facts can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Cite this article:. This page was last modified on 20 September , at Suggest an edit. Each ship had 14 cannons and was designed to carry 76 men.

Bering's team spent three years building ships and the entire port city that sprang up because of it. His wife Anna Christina joined him in Okhotsk in That same year Ivan Yelagin was sent by Bering to the east coast of Kamchatka to build a base with houses and supply depots at Avacha Bay, later named Petropavlovsk, in honor of the two ships.

From there he led an expedition towards America in On 4 June Bering sailed from Kamchatka aboard the St. Peter with Lieutenant Aleksey Chirikov commanding the St. First the two captains headed southeast in search of the mythical da Gama Land, which was a prominent feature on an earlier map. Unfortunately, by the time Bering had altered his direction to the northeast, they had sailed hundreds of miles south while missing the entire Aleutian chain.

Meanwhile, on 20 June the two vessels lost each other in heavy fog and were separated. Chirikov sent men ashore, but they were never seen again. On 26 July Chirikov wrote that he and his men spotted "some very high mountains, their summits covered in snow, their lower slopes, we thought, covered in trees.

This we thought must be America. But unable to go ashore Chirikov decided to return to Russia, unaware of the fate of Bering and his ship, and reached Petropavlovsk in October. After the separation Bering reached an island in the Alexander Archipelago, probably Prince of Wales Island, near Alaska's southeast coast. A naturalist and physician of German origin named Georg Wilhelm Steller, was recorded as the first European to step on Alaskan soil. As he later complained, it took him ten years to get to this new continent and he was only given ten hours to study it, as Bering was hurrying north while mapping the coastline.

Anxious to get the ship back to safety, Bering was able to reconnoiter only the southwestern coast of Alaska Bay, the Alaskan Peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands. Catching sight of a volcanic peak, he named it Mount St. Elias, the name it still bears today. One of the sailors died and was buried on an island that was later named after him Shumagin Island. With supplies running low, Bering decided on 10 August not to spend the winter in America, but to head back west.

Blown off course by fierce winter storms and with a crew so seriously afflicted by scurvy that only three men were able to work on deck, the St. Peter finally sailed within sight of land on 4 November With their sails and rigging already splitting apart from repeated storms, the exhausted crew so wanted this to be Kamchatka that many thought that they spotted the landmarks of the peninsula from which they had sailed over a year before.

The ship was hurled up on the only stretch of beach along a coastline otherwise dominated by rocky cliffs. Steller was sent ashore to gather plants that could be used to combat the scurvy. He soon deduced that the land they were anchored off was not Kamchatka as the local animals had no fear of man, indicating they must have never seen them before.

Steller returned to the ship and quietly told his dying and bedridden captain what he suspected. This could not be Kamchatka and they must have blundered across an undiscovered island.

Bering, not wishing to disappoint his men, took the news calmly and said simply, "It's too late to save our ship. God save the longboat!