First Kamchatka Expedition
During 1729, it explored the southern shores of Kamchatka, mapping Avacha Bay, and by 28 February 1730 returned via Okhotsk to Saint Petersburg.
The expedition was highly praised, with its leader Vitus Bering being promoted to captain-commander, his first noble rank, whereas his assistants Martin Spanberg and Aleksei Chirikov were made captains.
[2] His lieutenants for the journey were the hardened fellow Dane Martin Spanberg and the well-educated but relatively inexperienced Russian Aleksei Chirikov, a respected naval instructor.
[2] In 1725, the construction of a 20-meter-long ship named Fortuna (Russian: Фортуна, "Fortune") began in Okhotsk in anticipation of the expedition.
It was completed in June 1727 under the guidance of Chaplin, and by August, a ship of similar size, Vostok (Восто́к, "East"), was brought from Kamchatka and repaired.
On 14 February they were reunited in Vologda and headed eastwards across the Ural Mountains, arriving in Tobolsk (one of the main stopping points of the journey) on 16 March.
He asked for 24 more from the garrison, before upping the request to 54 after hearing that the ship the party required at Okhotsk (the Vostok) would need significant manpower to repair.
As a result, the party ran behind schedule, reaching Surgut on 30 May and Makovsk in late June before entering Yeniseysk, where the additional men could be taken on; Bering would later claim that "few were suitable".
On 7 July, Spanberg left with a detachment of 209 men and much of the cargo; on 27 July apprentice shipbuilder Fyodor Kozlov led a small party to reach Okhotsk ahead of Spanberg, both to prepare food supplies and to start work repairing the Vostok and building a new ship (the Fortuna) needed to carry the party across the bay from Okhotsk to the Kamchatka peninsula.
When the rivers froze, the cargo was transferred to sleds and the expedition continued, enduring blizzards and waist-high snow.
An advance party of Chirikov's division arrived in June 1727 with 27 tons of flour, resupplying Bering's group, which by then had diminished in numbers.
[6] The lack of immediate food available to Spanberg's advance party slowed their progress, which hastened dramatically after Bering's and Chirikov's group arrived with provisions.
The rapidly advancing ice prompted Bering to make the controversial decision not to deviate from his remit: the ship would sail for a few more days, but then turn back.
[7] The expedition was neither at the most easterly point of Asia (as Bering had supposed) nor had it succeed in discovering the Alaskan coast of America, which on a good day would have been visible to the east.
The mission was at its conclusion, but the party still needed to make it back to St. Petersburg to document the voyage (thus avoiding the fate of Semyon Dezhnyov who, unbeknownst to Bering, had made a similar expedition 80 years previously).
In December 1731 he was awarded 1000 roubles and promoted to captain-commander, his first noble rank, whereas Spanberg and Chirikov were made captains.
It had been a long and expensive expedition, costing 15 men and souring relations between Russia and her native peoples, but it had provided useful insights into the geography of Eastern Siberia, and presented evidence that Asia and North America were separated by sea.
