Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition

Bown (White Eskimo) asserts that Captain Vitus Bering (1681–1741) and the Great Northern Expedition should be regarded as one of the world's greatest explorers and expeditions. In the 1720s, Peter the Great wanted to prove Russia's might by sending surveyors across Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula and onward to America. The journey was an effort to gather cartographic, geographic, and cultural information, while exerting political power over fur-flung territories. Bering was chosen to head the expedition for his logistical and administrative skills and experience with the difficult land route across Siberia. A group left St. Petersburg in 1733 and reached Kamchatka in 1740. Two ships were constructed and 150 men sailed east in 1741. Lacking fresh water, one of the ships was beached on a remote Aleutian island where 31 men, including Bering, died from scurvy. The blue foxes that inhabited the island were both a blessing (food) and a curse (thievery). Survivors constructed a smaller ship from the wreckage and sailed home in 1742. To chronicle this epic adventure, the author uses official Russian documents, ship logs, journals, and correspondence.