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Biography of Vitus Bering
Name: Vitus Bering
Birth Date: 1681
Death Date: December 8, 1741
Place of Birth: Horsens, Denmark
Nationality: Danish
Gender: Male
Occupations: explorer
Vitus Bering
Vitus Bering (1681-1741), a Dane in Russian employ, led two major exploratory expeditions that significantly expanded knowledge of the northern Pacific region.Vitus Bering was born in the Danish town of Horsens in the summer of 1681. He became a lieutenant in the Russian navy in 1704, and during the Great Northern War he served in both the Black and Baltic seas. In January 1725 Peter I asked Bering to command the first Kamchatkan expedition, the aim of which was to determine the extent of the Siberian mainland and its relationship to North America.Bering led the expedition over 6,000 miles of wilderness and reached Okhotsk on the Pacific coast on Sept. 30, 1726, nineteen months after leaving St. Petersburg. The group built ships and sailed to the Kamchatka Peninsula. The ship Gabriel was built there, and on July 14, 1728, Bering began his first exploration. The Gabriel sailed northward, rounding East Cape on August 14. Since the Asiatic coast …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…and America, was discovered; the Siberian coast from the White Sea to the Kolyma River was charted; and the coast of America from Prince of Wales Island to the Komandorskie Islands was entered on the map. Further Reading The most authoritative and interesting work on Bering is F. A. Golder, Bering's Voyages: An Account of the Efforts of Russians to Determine the Relation of Asia and America (2 vols., 1922-1925). Peter Lauridsen, Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Strait (1889), is an apologia and strongly biased, but it is valuable as one of the first Western accounts to use Russian sources. Robert Murphy, The Haunted Journey (1961), is a popular work. An account of the expedition by the man who succeeded Bering is in Sven Waxell, The American Expedition, with an introduction and notes by M. A. Michael (1952). A short account is in Clarence C. Hulley, Alaska, 1741-1953 (1953; rev. ed. entitled Alaska, Past and Present, 1958).
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