Alaska (20 page)

Against Zhdanko's vigorous protests, Bering decided to land on the western shore at a lonely, wind-swept spot called Bolsheretsk, a settlement of fourteen mean huts, and there, as summer waned, this indomitable Dane, now forty-seven years old, launched an operation which stunned his men and staggered the imagination of those seafaring men and explorers who heard of it later. He decided that he could not afford to waste a fourth winter in idleness, so he ordered all the gear, including the timbers to be used for building the ships, to be transported by dogsled across the entire peninsula and over mountains that would be covered with snow. He did this so that he could build on the eastern shore and thus be ready to sail directly north when winter ended.

Zhdanko, seeing the first of the heavily burdened men start out, shuddered when he visualized what lay ahead, and when, as planned, he brought up the rear with some of the most valuable equipment, he gritted his teeth and told his men: 'They have a hellish blizzard in the mountains ahead. Called the purga, and when it rages, each man to dig his own hole!'

He and his cadre were on the highest hills in February when the temperature dropped to minus-fifty, and despite the fact that winds usually did not blow at that temperature, a dreaded

purga

roared down from northern Asia, whipping snow and sleet ahead of it like bullets.

Although Zhdanko had never before been caught in such a storm, he had heard of them, and shouted to his men: 'Dig!' and with fury they scooped out ten and fifteen and twenty feet of snow on the 131

lee side of some huge rocks, and into these holes they crept while snow piled over the openings.

Zhdanko had to go down eighteen feet before he hit a solid base, and at that depth he feared he would be so totally covered as to be lost, so that as the storm raged, he constantly pushed himself up through the falling snow and sleet, and when dawn broke and the storm abated, he was able to break clear and begin to search for his companions. When they dug out of their burrows two of the men began urging that they return to their starting point, and others would have supported them had not Zhdanko, with that fierce pride which motivated so much that he did, lashed out with his right fist and knocked one of the men backward into the snow. Seeing him fall, he leaped like a mountain cat upon the man and started bludgeoning him about the head with his powerful hands, and it was obvious that he was going to kill the defenseless man, but one of the others who had said nothing quietly interceded: ”Trofim, no!'

and the big man fell back, ashamed of himself, not for having rebuked the man but for having done so to such an excess.

Chastened, he reached down, helped the man to his feet, and said jocularly: 'You've worked hard enough today. Bring up the rear.' Then he added: 'But don't try to run back. You'll not make it.'

That journey across the peninsula in dead of winter was one of the most hellish in the history of exploration, but Bering held his men together, and when they reached the eastern shore, he immediately put them to clearing away snowdrifts so that they could start building. It was a forlorn spot that had been chosen for this improvised shipyard, but never in his adventurous life did Vitus Bering show to greater advantage.

He seemed to build the ship himself, appearing at every danger spot whenever needed.

He spent eighteen hours a day in the long spring twilights, and whenever an aspect of the plans drawn up in St. Petersburg seemed incomprehensible, he deciphered them or made up his own rules on the spot. And his gift for improvisation was incredible.

Tar for caulking the ships had been lost somewhere en route, and it was no use blaming any individual. Somewhere in the six thousand miles from the capital perhaps on one of the handmade boats plying some unnamed river, or in the dreadful stretch east of Yakutsk, or during the two great blizzards in the Kamchatka mountain passes the tar had been lost, and the St. Gabriel,

as they decided to call their ship, could not go to sea, for if left uncaulked, the open seams in her sides would admit enough water to sink her in twenty minutes.

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For the better part of a day Bering studied this problem, then gave a simple order: 'Cut down those larch trees,' and when a huge pile had been assembled, he had the trees cut into lengths and from their bark he distilled a kind of sticky substance which, when mixed with a heavy grass, made a passable caulking, and the shipbuilding proceeded.

However, it was with another invention that he gained popularity with his men. Telling them: 'No man should sail a ship that has no spirits for a cold night,' he directed them to collect various grasses, roots and herbs, and when he had an ample supply he set up a fermentation process which, after many false starts, finally produced a strong beverage that he designated brandy, and of which his enthusiastic men laid in a copious amount. More immediately practical, he set other men to boiling seawater to obtain extra supplies of salt, and he directed Zhdanko to catch all the fish possible so that an oil could be made to take the place of butter. Larger fish were cured to serve instead of meat, which was not available, and he directed men to weave strong grasses together to make substitute ropes to be used in an emergency. In ninety-eight days4 April through 10 July this energetic man built himself a seagoing ship in which to make one of the world's premier voyages of exploration, and after only four days'

rest, he sailed forth. Then came one of the mysteries of the sea: the daring man who had braved so much, who had already spent three and a half years in this quest, sailed north for only thirty-three days, saw another winter approaching, turned about, and scurried back to his Kamchatka base, arriving there after a total cruise of only fifty-one days out and back, despite the fact that the St. Gabriel

carried a year's provisions and medical supplies for forty men.

Once again on land, with heavy snows about to descend, the men huddled in improvised huts and passed the winter . of 1728-29 accomplishing nothing. Bering did interrogate a group of Chukchis, who told him that in clear weather they had often seen a mysterious shore across the sea, but for Bering the weather remained so foul that he did not see this land.

When spring brought good weather, he launched the St. Gabriel again, sailed boldly east for three days, became disheartened, and sailed back to Okhotsk. This time, ironically, he did go south, as Trofim Zhdanko had suggested two years ago, and he did easily round the southern tip of Kamchatka. Had he followed that easy route the first time, he would have had months of cruising time in the North Pacific and would also have avoided that fearful crossing of the peninsula during the blizzards.

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It was time to go home, and since he now knew the good parts and bad of the Siberian road-and-river system, he made it to St. Petersburg in a rapid seven months and four days. He had been absent on his heroic travels for more than five years but had been at sea on his explorations slightly over three months, and about half that was spent on return trips.

But since the instructions handed him had been vague, it cannot be said that his voyage was a failure. He did not, of course, confirm Peter's conviction that Asia and North America were not joined, nor did he sail far enough to encounter Spanish or English settlements. He did, however, excite both Russian and European interest in the North Pacific and he had taken the first tentative steps in making this bleak area a part of the Russian Empire.

Virus BERING, THE STUBBORN DANE, HAD BEEN BACK IN the capital less than two months when, despite the criticism and rebuke ringing in his ears because of his failure to sail either west to join the Kolyma River or east to prove that Asia was not joined to North America, he had the temerity to propose to the Russian government that he lead a second expedition to Kamchatka, and that instead of using about a hundred men, as he did the first time, he would now do it on a scale that would ultimately require more than three thousand. With his recommendation he submitted a careful budget in which he proved that he could accomplish this for ten thousand rubles.

The grandeur of his behavior in this negotiation was that he blandly refused to admit that he had failed the first time, and when critics assailed him for his supposed deficiencies he smiled at them indulgently, and pointed out: 'But I did everything the tsar ordered me to do,' and if they said: 'You didn't find any Europeans,' he replied: 'There weren't any,' and he maintained pressure on the government to send him back.

But the sum of ten thousand rubles was not to be spent lightly, and as Bering himself admitted, the expedition he now had in mind could run to as much as twelve thousand, so the government officials began a careful reexamination of his qualifications, and after interviewing his senior assistants, they came to the cossack Trofim Zhdanko, who had seen nothing wrong with Bering's conduct of the first expedition and who, having no family or pressing business in western Russia, was prepared to go east again.

'Bering is a fine commander,' he assured the experts. 'I was in charge of troops and can tell you that he kept his men 134

working and happy, and that isn't easy. Yes, I'd be proud to work with him again.'

'But what about the fact that he didn't go far enough north to prove that the two continents don't touch?' they asked, and he surprised them with his answer: 'Tsar Peter himself once told me . . .'

Their jaws dropped: 'You mean, the tsar consulted with you . . . ?'

'He did. Came to see me the night I was about to be hanged.'

The interrogators ended the meeting at this point to ascertain whether Tsar Peter had actually gone to a waterfront prison to conduct a midnight talk with a cossack prisoner named Troflm Zhdanko, and when Jailer Mitrofan verified that indeed the tsar had come on just such a mission, they hurried back to question Zhdanko further.

'Peter the Great, may his honored soul rest in peace,' Zhdanko began solemnly, 'was already thinking about the expedition in 1723, and what we discussed he must have told Bering later. He already knew that Russia did not touch America, but he was very eager to know more about America.'

'Why?'

'Because he was the tsar. Because it was proper for him to know.'

The learned men hammered at the cossack for the better part of a morning, and all they learned was that Vitus Bering had failed in no commission that the tsar had given him, except the finding of Europeans, and that Zhdanko was eager to sail with him again.

'But he's fifty years old,' one scientist said, to which Trofim replied: 'And able to do the work of a man twenty.'

'Tell me,' the head of the committee asked abruptly, 'would you trust Vitus Bering with ten thousand rubles?' and Zhdanko replied truthfully: 'I trusted him with my life, and I'll do it again.'

That interrogation, and others like it, took place in 1730, when Trofim was twenty-eight, and in the years that followed, an energetic debate developed as to whether such an expedition should be made entirely by sea, which would be both quicker and cheaper, or by land-and-sea, which would enable the St. Petersburg government to learn more about Siberia on the way. No decision was reached for two years, and it was not until 1733, when Bering was fifty-three, that he was able to leave St. Petersburg on the overland route.

Once more he and Zhdanko were immobilized for two dreary winters by the snows of central Russia, and once again

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he was held in Okhotsk, and then his real troubles began, because bookkeepers back in St. Petersburg submitted a devastating report to the Russian treasury: 'This Vitus Bering, who assured us that his expedition would cost ten thousand rubles or twelve at most, has already spent more than three hundred thousand before leaving Yakutsk.

Nor has he placed his foot aboard his two ships. How could he? They haven't been built yet.' And the nervous accountants added a shrewd prediction: 'So a foolish experiment budgeted at ten thousand may ultimately cost two million.'

In a kind of dull and futile rage the authorities cut Bering's pay in half and refused him the promotion to admiral that he sought. He made no complaint, and when he fell a full four years behind schedule, he merely tightened his belt, strove to maintain the spirits of his men, and went ahead with the building of his ships. In 1740, seven years after leaving the capital, he finally launched the St. Peter, from which he would command, and the St. Paul, which his able young assistant Alexei Chirikov would captain, and on 4 September of that year he led the two ships forth for their great exploration of the northern waters and the lands that bordered them.

They sailed bravely across the Sea of Okhotsk, rounded the southern tip of Kamchatka, and put in at the recently established seaport town of Petropavlovsk, which would become so crucially important in the next century and a half. It lay at the head of a remarkable bay, protected on all sides and facing south away from storms. Long arms of land safeguarded ships at anchor and comfortable houses for officers and bunks for crew lined the shore. No civilians lived here yet, but it was a splendid maritime installation and in time would be an important place. Here Bering and Zhdanko settled down for their eighth winter, 1734 through 1741.

Among the men stationed in the houses hugging the shore was a thirty-two-year-old German naturalist of unusual ability, Georg Steller, who had been brought along with astronomers, interpreters and other scientists to lend the expedition intellectual dignity, and he better than any of the others was prepared to do just this. Avid for learning, he had attended four German universities Wittenberg, Leipzig, Jena, Hall leaving with a determination to extend human knowledge, so during the land part of the trip he had studied whatever materials were available on the geography, astronomy and natural life of Russia all the way from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and at the end of this tedious journey 136

and its protracted delays, he was hungry to get to sea, to visit unknown islands and set foot on the unexplored shores of North America. In his unflagging enthusiasm he told Zhdanko: 'With luck, I will be able to find a hundred new animals and trees and flowers and grasses.'