Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're looking
at a set of sources you sent over about one of
the most ambitious and just logistically insane
sagas in exploration history. We're talking about
the two massive Russian expeditions led by Vitus
Jonas and Bering. And our mission really for
this Deep Dive is to get into the sheer audacity
of it all. I mean, Bering's name is everywhere,
right? The Bering Sea, the Strait. Bering Island.
But his fame, it isn't just about the sailing.
It's about the unbelievable human and financial
machine he had to build just to get his ships
into the water in the first place. He's the one
who basically defined the boundary between Asia
and North America for the rest of the world.
But here's the real hook, I think. He was a Danish
guy, a naval officer for Russia, chosen by Tsar
Peter I. And the prep for his journeys, it meant
moving thousands of men and tons of supplies
across 6 ,000 miles of... You know, total wilderness.
The logistics completely dwarfed the actual exploring
part. Exactly. And that's the thing. To understand
why such a gargantuan effort was even necessary,
we have to look at the man himself. You know,
what kind of person do you even pick to lead
what was essentially a national obsession that
went on for more than a decade? OK, so let's
unpack that. Bering. He's born in Horsens, Denmark
in 1681. He starts super young, becomes ship's
boy at just 15, sailing all the way to India
and the Dutch East Indies. Then he gets his naval
training in Amsterdam, which positions him perfectly
for a power like Russia that's, you know, on
the rise. Right. Peter the Great was modernizing
his navy at a breakneck pace and he needed skilled
foreigners. Bering was perfect. He joins the
Russian Navy in 1704 as a sub -lieutenant and
spends years in these... Well, kind of unglamorous
logistical roles during the Great Northern War.
But that's probably what shaped his entire command
style, you know. By 1720, he's a second captain.
But this next part, this is where you see the
man, this sort of shrewd operator he was. In
1724, he gets promoted to first captain. And
then what does he do? He immediately retires.
And the reason why? It's not because he was tired
of the sea. No, not at all. It's this fantastic
bit of social climbing. Bering's wife, Anna,
she was connected to a powerful naval family,
and her younger sister marries a rear admiral
who had less time in service than Bering. That
was a huge slight back then. So Bering basically
leverages his own retirement to get the higher
rank of first captain, save face, and protect
his wife's social standing. So he quits out of
social embarrassment. And then just rejoins the
Navy a few months later, but keeps that higher
rank. I mean, that kind of strategic thinking,
that ability to work the system, it suggests
he was the perfect guy to handle the Washington
bureaucracy he was about to face. He absolutely
needed it. And he rejoined just in time. Leet
1724, Tsar Peter I signs the orders for the first
Conchotka expedition. The mission seems simple
on paper. Sail north from Conchotka, keep land
on your left, and see if it eventually turns
west. Prove Asia and America are separate. Right.
And here's the question I kept asking myself.
Why start in St. Petersburg? If you're sailing
from Kamchatka, why this 6 ,000 -mile land journey
first? Why not just send a ship around the Cape?
Because they just didn't know. The maps of the
time were... Well, they were rudimentary at best.
The Russian government didn't know for sure where
the Pacific ended or where Kamchatka even was
on a global map. They had to chart the overland
route first to make sure they could transport
all the heavy gear, the naval specialists, the
iron fittings for the ships they knew they'd
have to build from scratch when they got there.
So he leaves in February 1725. The initial party
is just 34 men, including his two lieutenants,
Spanberg and Chirikov. But that number seems
low. It was a fantasy. As soon as they started
moving east, they had to take on more men, more
supplies, draft laborers. The party just kept
swelling. We have records where they request
60 carpenters just for small repairs along the
way. This wasn't a hike. It was a small army
on the move. And the land itself was just monstrous.
They're crossing rivers using sledges, literally
building roads across marshland. I mean, the
pace of the journey alone tells you how hard
it was. Spanberg's supply boats, which were loaded
down and going upstream, were moving at about
one mile a day, sometimes less. You're spending
years just fighting the terrain, blizzards, waist
-high snow. It's a constant battle. And the trip
to the port of Okhotsk took years. It led to
some really desperate, tragic moments. Yes. By
the time they get to Okhotsk... His men are starving.
And this is where the mission's logistics just
brutally collide with reality. To save his men,
to stop the whole mission from collapsing, Bering
had to seize flour from the local villagers.
Which solved his problem in the short term. But
it caused starvation for the people who actually
lived there. It's a really stark reminder that
these grand imperial projects were often built
on the suffering of the local people whose lands
they crossed. Definitely. So by the time Bering
finally gets to the lower Kamchatka Post, he's
already spent three years traveling 6 ,000 miles.
Just to get to the starting line. The logistics
were the main event. Okay, so after all that,
they build the ship, the St. Gabriel, and they
finally set sail in July 1728. They go northeasterly,
enter the strait we now call the Bering Strait.
And they see the land turn west. So, mission
accomplished, right? Almost, but not quite. On
August 13th, the ice is moving in fast, and Bering
makes this critical decision to turn back. He
correctly figured that there was open sea between
the continents, which fulfilled Peter's literal
instructions. But we never actually saw America.
Exactly. He didn't deliver that visual, undeniable
proof. So he gets back in 1730. He's awarded
1 ,000 rubles, promoted to Captain Commodore.
which is a big deal. But that lack of definitive
proof just sets the stage for something much,
much bigger. And that something much bigger is
the Great Northern Expedition. It basically turns
the first mission into a practice run. Bering
immediately proposes a second voyage. This time,
the goal is explicit. Find North America, map
the Arctic coast. And this is where the scale
goes from staggering to just insane. It really
does. The initial core staff was supposed to
be around 600 people. But once you add in all
the support staff... The laborers, carpenters,
blacksmiths, soldiers, the number balloons to
nearly 3 ,000 people. This wasn't an expedition
anymore. It was a mobile town crossing Siberia.
And with that size comes a massive scope creep.
Suddenly the goals are, you know, map the whole
Arctic coast, find a route to Japan, explore
trade with Spanish America. The cost must have
been astronomical. If you look at the numbers,
the difference is just stunning. The initial
budget for the second expedition was set at 12
,000 rubles. The final true cost, 300 ,000 rubles.
300 ,000. To put that in context, that single
expense was probably equal to the entire annual
cost of several major naval ships combined. I
mean, it was a financial black hole. Yeah. The
sources say it caused widespread poverty in the
whole region they were moving through. It did.
And the logistics became political. The delays
just kept mounting because the scale was overwhelming.
Bering himself gets bogged down in a place called
Yakutsk until 1737, just dealing with supplies
and the political fallout from the cause. It
even hit him personally. His own salary was cut
in half because the timeline had just completely
gone out the window. But because of that scale,
they also attracted some of the best minds. Yeah.
Right. There was a whole academic wing to this
expedition. They had a natural historian. And
they weren't just along for the ride. Their job
was to systematically map everything, record
the climate, catalog plants and animals, document
the local peoples. They were basically running
a mobile university in the middle of a war -level
logistical effort. It was an incredible scientific
undertaking. And while Bering is stuck in that
bureaucratic mud in Yakutsk, his subordinates
are still out there making history. That's where
Spanberg comes back in. He leads this key detachment
that sails south, builds three ships, and makes
two voyages that result in the first Russian
landing in Japan. So the Great Northern Expedition
wasn't just one thing. It was this coordinated
imperial push happening on multiple fronts at
once. Incredible. So finally, the main event,
the mission to America, is ready. Spring of 1741,
Bering leaves from Avaca Bay in Kamchatka. He's
on the St. Peter, his second -in -command. Jerikov
is on the St. Paul, and they even named the new
settlement they founded there Petropavlovsk -Kamchatsky.
after their two ships. And the breakthrough comes
pretty fast. They achieve their main goal on
July 16, 1741. Bering cites the huge volcano
Mount St. Elias and makes a landing on what was
probably Kayak Island, America. They found it.
But then, almost immediately, it all goes wrong.
A storm separates the two ships, and now you
have two different tragic stories unfolding.
Cherkov, on the St. Paul, discovers the coast
of Northwest America near the Alexander Archipelago.
But Bering's return journey is just a complete
nightmare. It is. But before the disaster, we
have to mention the science. On that landing,
the naturalist Georg Steller was. Well, he was
a force of nature. He was documenting everything
like a madman, identifying species no European
had ever seen. The Stellar Sea Cow, the Stellar's
Jay. They're named after him for a reason. But
Stellar's journals also show us the darker side
of this, right? They give us these really difficult
insights into the human cost. Yeah, Stellar was
a very ethical scientist for his time. And his
writings record the horrifying treatment of the
native people they encountered. He specifically
documents his own detachment, torturing captured
Koriak people. He even lodged formal complaints
about it. And those complaints, just like earlier
complaints about the expedition's delays, were
just suppressed by the command. It really shows
the tension, doesn't it? It's officially a mission
of science and discovery, but underneath it's
often just brutal imperial expansion. And the
return voyage is where the tragedy is really
sealed. Baring himself gets incredibly sick.
The thinking at the time was scurvy, but later
analysis suggests it was probably heart failure
from all the stress and malnutrition. He eventually
has to pass command to Sven Waxel. He's still
technically in command, though, when he names
the Schumann Islands after a sailor who died
and was buried there. A grim way to make the
map. Very. In November 1741, the St. Peter is
wrecked on an uninhabited island in the Commander
Islands. Bering dies there on December 19th at
60 years old, along with 28 of his men. The island
is now, rightly, called Bering Island. But the
story doesn't end there, which might be the most
incredible part. Of the 77 men on that ship,
46 survived the wreck. And what they did next
is just a testament to their skill. They spent
months on this desolate island, and they built
a new, smaller boat from the wreckage of the
St. Peter, and they dailed it home in August
1742. Only to find out the most agonizing truth.
Chirgov had actually mounted a rescue mission
for them, but had missed them by just a few miles.
A profound sacrifice after all that effort. So
we come back to the legacy. Bering's name is
famous, but he wasn't the first to do these things.
Semyon Dezhnev went through the strait 80 years
earlier. Another explorer sighted North America
in the 1730s. So what makes Bering different?
It's the scale, like we've been saying. It's
the system. Those earlier voyages were individuals
or small groups. Bering's expeditions were systematic,
government -funded, massive undertakings that
confirmed the geography for the world. Exactly.
His work gave us comprehensive, systematic mapping
of eastern Siberia, the North Pacific, and that
final confirmation of the separation of the continents.
That enormous organizational effort and the huge
body of knowledge it produced. That's why his
name is on the map. It's a story of just incredible
human effort, massive ambition, and astronomical
cost that redrew the map of the world. The cost
was devastating, but the geographical truth was
delivered. And here's a final thought for you
to take away. Despite all this incredible scientific
work, the charts, the catalogs, Steller's detailed
records bearings reports were initially classified.
They were jealously guarded by the Russian government.
They locked the knowledge away. For over a century.
The full story of the Great Northern Expedition
wasn't shared with the world. So imagine how
different the history of Arctic exploration would
be if all that critical knowledge had been available
immediately. So their fundamental knowledge,
gathered at such immense cost, might still be
locked away by nations today, preventing all
of us from getting a more complete picture of
our own world.