This autumn the Commander Islands celebrated 275 years since their discovery by the Second Kamchatka Expedition. For 20 crewmen of St. Peter packet boat the islands became their final resting place. Nevertheless, the long and tough journey was not in vain.
In April 1732 the Senate of the Russian Empire issued an order to start the greatest research project, which was later called the Great Northern Expedition. Marine journey to the American coasts is just a small part of the expedition. The main activities took place in 1733-1743 all along the Arctic Ocean coast and seas of the Far East. The principal goals were exploration and mapping of the Northern and North-East Siberia shores, search of a marine rout from Okhotsk to the Kurils and Japan, marine voyage to the American coasts. Captain Commander Vitus Bering and his assistants – Alexey Chirikov and Martyn Shpanberg – were responsible for this expedition.
To the end of summer 1740 in Okhotsk two packet boats St. Peter and St. Paul were constructed. These ships had 14 guns and two masts each and had good nautical properties. On June 4, 1741 the ships left for America, but as early as on June 20 they lost each other in thick fog and followed separate ways. St. Paul, directed by Alexey Chirikov, reached the western coast of the American continent on July 15 and St. Peter, directed by Vitus Bering, came there two days later. Chirikov managed to come back to Kamchatka in autumn 1741. Bering’s crew was captured by a number of autumn storms and had another destiny.
On November 5 St. Peter’s crew finally spotted land in the mist. Half-dead sailors and officers went on deck to see with their own eyes the imagined Kamchatka. But the longer they stared at the unknown coast, the more doubts they had. They saw no forest, but a lot of unfrightened see otters. They decided to land and send messengers to find dog sled.
They disembarked in groups. Naturalist and ship’s doctor Georg Steller was the first, later Steller and Plenisner supplied the sick with meet and heeling herbs. On November 10 Captain Commander disembarked and on November 15 other sick crewmen were transported on land. One of the last one was Sven Vaxel. They were in horrible conditions: “The whole coast looked dreadful. Arctic foxes gnawed the unburied dead and were not scared to smell the helpless sick ones, which lay on the coast without any shelter. Some were cold, some were hungry or thirsty, and some were crippled by Barlow’s disease and couldn’t eat because of acute pain: their gums turned black and became swollen so that no teeth were seen.” Soon the “barracks” were ready – relatively spacious partly underground dwellings for common use of many people – and the sick were sheltered there. The barracks were narrow. People covered with some cloth lay right on the ground and tried to support each other with good words, as they had no strength for anything else.
Sophron Khitrov had proposed to spend the winter on board the ship, as it was warmer there, but soon he rejected this idea. The expedition set camp at the foot of a bald peak in sandy hills. Five hastily made dugouts were in fact shallow pits with reinforced walls and with sailcloth on top. Steller compared it to graves. The crew spent more then nine months in these dwellings.
On November 21 Bering gave an order to organize a counsel to save the packet boat. The ship was moored and storms could break the mooring or cast the ship ashore, or even sweep the ship out to the sea. To avoid it, the crew decided to wait for a day with favorable winds and carry the ship out to the sandbank. Such day was on November 26 and Khitrov wanted to execute the plan, but there were only four men to help him, who had lost a lot of strength during that month. The wind changed soon and the plan was rejected. On November 28 “a great storm … carried out the ship to the sandbank… it was planned to be carried to.” All the supplies were saved, but the ship was damaged a lot.
The first months were the hardest. 20 crewmen died on the island and near its coasts, 14 of which were buried on land and 6 were buried in sea according to the marine tradition.
The crewmen overcame many troubles and hardships. It can be seen in Steller’s notes:
“In spring the snow subsided and we could freely travel on the island… but not without accidents, which nearly killed a third of the team. As usual, on April 1 Subkonstaapel Rasilius, Surgeon and medical assistant Betgue, Midshipman Sindt and one Kossack went hunting. Toward evening a huge Northwest storm came. It was impossible just to stand or see anything a step away. In one night snow banks became a fathom higher. …The hunters… were close to death. They spent the night under the snow and hardly came back the other day… Only had we cleared the entrance to the dwelling, three of the hunters came. They were in a close group. We had a feeling that they had lost their mind and speech. They had become numb with cold and medical assistant had even lost his sight. We undressed them quickly, covered with feather beds and gave them hot tea. After that they recovered. In an hour tree of our men found and got home the fourth one – the cadet – who was in even worse shape and was wandering aimlessly along the coast.”
In the beginning of April Yushin and several crewmen went hunting. “A new storm made them to search for shelter in a split in a rock, one of which was right near the sea. Because of high water level, they were separated and had no supplies or wood for seven days. They came back home only after nine days, when we were sure that they had drowned or had been buried in a snow avalanche, brought from the mountains.”
Another trouble was the arctic fox. The crewmen had to fight with the animals without any rest: “They sneaked into our dwellings at night and in daytime to steal anything they could, including things they had no need of like knives, sticks, sacks, boots, socks, headwear and so on. They grew more and more insolent. If we sat still, arctic foxes could come that close that they started to bite off some of the straps on our self-made pink of fashion boots and even the boots itself. … During our first days on the island, when we were digging graves, arctic foxes bit off noses, fingers and toes of the dead and even attacked the weak and sick of us with such fury, that we hardly managed to stray them away.”
Despite all the hardships, the crewmen split into groups and explored the area systematically. Soon they realized that it was an island.
The ship was badly damaged and it was impossible to fix it, so on April 9, during a general meeting, the crew decided to “build some sort of ship out of the packet boat.” In the beginning of May a new ship was started – hooker St. Peter. The construction was directed by lieutenant Vaxel and Krasnoyarsk Kossack and carpenter Savva Starodubtsev. On August 9 the ship was floated out and on August 13 the crew said their final good-bye to the island. St. Peter left for Kamchatka. On August 27, 1742 the hooker was successfully moored in Avachinskaya Bay.
