In honor of whom are the Commander Islands named? The expedition of Vitus Bering

The Commander Islands are an archipelago, which includes 4 large and 10 small islands. They are located in the south-west of the Bering Sea. It is located in the north of the Pacific Ocean. The Bering Sea on the map should be sought between the Far Eastern part of Russia and the American Alaska. According to the administrative division, the archipelago is located in the Kamchatka region of the Russian Federation. Few people know, in honor of whom the Commander Islands are named.

They closely intertwined Russian and Aleutian cultures. The largest formation is the Bering Island, which has an elongated form from north to south. It has an area of 1660 square kilometers. Of all four island formations, people live only on it. The rest of the Commander Islands remain uninhabited. Russia has many territories with low population density. These islands belong to them.

In the village of Nikolskoe on the island of Bering there are approximately 700 inhabitants. To get to the mainland, they need to overcome several hundred kilometers. On the plane, the flight is 3 hours, and another way of moving is practically absent. In the winter, the island falls asleep with snow and blows with strong winds. In the summer, warmth pleases the locals only occasionally. Basically, raw weather prevails, abundant fogs, rains often occur. It is characterized by a sharp change in weather conditions.

The first expedition of Vitus Bering

It all began with a Russian tsar who "cut through a window to Europe". At the end of his reign, Peter the Great took an active part in the creation of measures to open new northern and eastern territories, as well as the laying of sea routes to American and Indian lands. At the beginning of 1725, exhausted from serious illnesses, the Russian Tsar developed an instruction on the preparatory work of the "Siberian Expedition," whose goal was to reach America through the northern seas, to study the shores that were there and to put them on the map.

The head of the expedition was Vitus Bering, whose discoveries will become amazing in the future. The choice in favor of the Dane fell, first of all, because of his repeated attempts to reach the American shores. However, he failed to pass through the strait, which was later named in his honor, as a result of which he returned to St. Petersburg in 1730.

The second expedition of Vitus Bering

In the capital of the Russian Empire, Bering reported on his trip to the government of Anna Ioannovna, and also demonstrated a plan for new research, arguing the importance of studying the northern territories and the Siberian coasts so that it could trade with Northwest America and Japan.

The Danish navigator's plan was supported, as a result of which considerable funding was provided for its implementation. That is why Russia has secured everything that Bering discovered. Particular diligence in the implementation of the project was made by the Senate, the Admiralty and the Academy of Sciences. In 1732, the Senate issued a decree on the preparation of the Second Kamchatka Expedition. It went down in history as the Great Northern Expedition. In the text of the decree it was stated that the expedition was the most distant, with considerable difficulties, first realized.

The Great Northern Expedition began in 1733 and ended in 1743. After studying its results, you can find out in honor of whom the Commander Islands are named. The expedition consisted of 7 detachments, which were independent of each other. There were 580 people on 10 ships. The task of each detachment was to survey a certain area.

Tasks of units

The first detachment, led by the lieutenants Stepan Muraviev and Mikhail Pavlov, took his way from Arkhangelsk. He intended to study the coastal zone between Pechora and Obskaya Bay.

The second detachment, which departed from Tobolsk, was commanded by Lieutenant Dmitry Ovtsin. He needed to explore the shore east of the Ob Bay to the northern end of the Taimyr Peninsula or to Khatanga.

Lieutenant Vasilii Pronchishchev was in charge of the third detachment, whose task was to study the coast, which is to the west of the mouth of the Lena. Together with a Russian officer, his wife Tatyana set out on a voyage. She became the first woman to participate in the polar expedition.

The head of the fourth detachment was Lieutenant Peter Lasinius, after the death of which Dmitry Laptev was appointed responsible. The task of this group of researchers was to study the eastern coast, which stretched from the mouth of the Lena to the modern Bering Strait.

At the head of the fifth detachment was directly Bering himself. It is the merits of this person in the future that will be the answer to the question: "In honor of whom are the Commander Islands named?". The fifth detachment was intended to study Kamchatka, North-West America and the existing islands in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean.

The sixth detachment under the leadership of Martyn Shpanberg needed to find out about the Kuril Islands and the Japanese coast. The tasks of the seventh detachment, which was called Academic, included the study of the internal terrain of Siberia. Its head was appointed Professor Gerhard Miller. The work of the researchers was held in a classified mode.

Achievements of the first order

The first detachment spent 4 years moving from Arkhangelsk to the mouth of the Ob River. The researchers did not achieve any particular success (in comparison with what Bering discovered), a rather small region of the coast, the Ugra Shar, as well as the islands of Matveyev, Dolgiy and Mestnyi were described. In many respects this is due to the appearance of scurvy, which began to mow the participants of the expedition almost from the first days of travel.

There were problems with discipline among the sailors, for the achievement of which cruel punishment by rods was applied. In the leadership of the first detachment there were disagreements, and in the winter time the local population experienced harassment from the forwarders, on the basis of which they began to receive complaints. After that there was a change of leadership, Lieutenant Stepan Malygin became the commander of the group, who subsequently completed the mission of the first detachment.

Achievements of the second order

The expedition of Vitus Bering in the part of the second detachment was able to achieve great success in comparison with the first group. During the mission, the detachment of officer Ovtsyn fulfilled the assigned tasks, which concerned the study of the coast from the mouth of the Ob to the Yenisei. After arriving in St. Petersburg, the head of the group was demoted after three years from the beginning of the trip, based on a political decision. He was credited with a close relationship with Prince Dolgoruky, who was in exile.

After that, the leaders of the second detachment were Fedor Minin and Dmitry Sterlegov. During the first voyage Minin managed to reach only the mouth of the Yenisei. Then in the summer months of next year he moved east. But after passing a series of small islets, faced with ice, Minin decided to stop his journey. Steregov overland crossed the distance northeast from the mouth of the Yenisei to the cape, which later will get his name. Kamchatka expedition of Vitus Bering of the second detachment ended this.

However, there were disagreements between the new leaders of the second detachment. After returning from the expedition, a lawsuit arose, following which Minin was demoted to sailors for 2 years.

Achievements of the third order

The third detachment on the ship "Yakutsk" from the mouth of Lena kept its way to the west. After they reached the mouth of Olenek, the head of the group Pronchishchev decided to winter. After that, the detachment continued the expedition, overcoming heavy ice. Having reached the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula from the east, the researchers returned to the mouth of Olenek in connection with the inability to continue the journey.

After the death of Pronchishchev in 1736, Khariton Laptev became the head of the detachment. The freight forwarders have completed the study of the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula through land.

Achievements of the fourth order

The fourth detachment suffered considerable human losses due to scurvy, which led to the death of its head, Peter Lasinius, and 35 members of the expedition. Dmitry Laptev became the new leader, who successfully surveyed the shores between Lena and Kolyma. Under his command, the fourth detachment made efforts to bypass the Chukchi Peninsula and get to the sea by road to Kamchatka, but without success.

Achievements of the fifth order. The discovery of the Commander Islands

The fifth detachment, led by Bering on postal vessels "St. Peter "and" St. Pavel "headed for North America. July 15, 1741 saw the first shore of the captain of "St. Pavel "Alexei Chirikov. A few days later, a ship headed by Bering approached the mainland. Due to the storm "St. Peter "was on a desert island, on which the captain-commander died of scurvy. Burials of the dead expedition members were found in 1991.

So, in honor of whom are the Commander Islands named? In honor of Commander Vitus Bering. But not only the names of the islands are associated with it. The strait and the Bering Sea on the map in the North Pacific are also named the great commander.

The achievements of the Sixth and Seventh Squads

Thanks to the sixth and seventh detachments, useful information was obtained in the geographic, geological, ethnographic sphere of the north and east of Siberia, and the range of the Kuril Islands and northern Japan was discovered and studied.