Vitus bering biography summary form

Vitus Bering (), a Dane in Russian employ, led two major exploratory expeditions that significantly expanded knowledge of the northern Pacific region.

Vitus Bering was born in the Danish town of Horsens in the summer of He became a lieutenant in the Russian navy in , and during the Great Northern War he served in both the Black and Baltic seas. In January Peter I asked Bering to command the first Kamchatkan expedition, the aim of which was to determine the extent of the Siberian mainland and its relationship to North America.

Bering led the expedition over 6, miles of wilderness and reached Okhotsk on the Pacific coast on Sept. 30, , nineteen months after leaving St. Petersburg. The group built ships and sailed to the Kamchatka Peninsula. The ship Gabriel was built there, and on July 14, , Bering began his first exploration. The Gabriel sailed northward, rounding East Cape on August Since the Asiatic coast trended westward and no land appeared to the north,

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Vitus Jonassen Bering

Danish Explorer

One of the most celebrated endeavors of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century utforskning was the search for the Northwest Passage, a route between Europe and Asia via the fryst seas north of Canada. Less famous was the quest for the Northeast Passage, or a means of navigating between the furthest eastern extremities of Asia and the western tip of North amerika. Perhaps the greatest figure in the search for the Northeast Passage was Danish navigator Vitus Bering. Sent on two expeditions by the Russian czars, he explored Russia's Far East and the offshore islands of Alaska, and proved the existence of a del between Asia and North America.

Born in Horsens, Denmark, in , Bering grew up around the sea, and as a ung man joined the Dutch navy. At that time Holland had a vast international empire, and his work gave the ung Bering an opportunity to see the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). Eventually he joined the Russian navy, then

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The name Beringiaoriginates from the name of Captain-Commander Vitus Jonassen Bering, a Danish-born navigator in service to the Russian Navy in the 18th Century.

From and Bering headed the First and the Second Kamchatka Expeditions. During these expeditions, the vessels commanded by Bering and Aleksey Chirikov, Bering's deputy, captain, and navigator, explored the waters of the North Pacific between Asia and North America.

In the summer of , Bering sailed north from the Kamchatka Peninsula aboard the ship Gabriel. The expedition rounded the East Cape (also known as Cape Dezhnev) and sailed through the strait that now bears his name and lies between the Chukotka and Seward Peninsulas.

In June , two packet ships, Sv. Pyotr(St. Peter) and Sv. Pavel(St. Paul), departed Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy on the Second Kamchatka Expedition. During this expedition Bering's vessel Sv. Pyotrreached the shores of Alaska where they spotted Mount Saint Elias and landed at Kayak Island. R