Читать книгу Vitus Bering: the Discoverer of Bering Strait - Peter Lauridsen - Страница 8

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Vitus Bering was a son of Jonas Svendsen and his second wife, Anna Bering of Horsens, at which place he was born in the summer of 1681. On the maternal side he descended from the distinguished Bering family, which during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries flourished in various parts of Denmark, and included a very respectable number of ministers and judicial officers.[1]

Our hero passed his childhood in a Christian family of culture in the Jutland seaport town of his birth. Here for a series of years his father filled several positions of trust, and was closely associated with the leading men of the place, as his wife's sister, Margaret Bering, had married two consecutive mayors. He was, however, far from being considered well-to-do. He had many children. One of his sons had caused him much trouble and expense, and was finally sent to the East Indies. In the probate record of his estate, made in 1719, there is a deed of conveyance from himself and wife in which the following appears: "We are old, miserable, and decrepit people, in no way able to help ourselves. Our property consists of the old dilapidated home and the furniture thereto belonging, which is of but little value." It was his share of this inheritance, with accrued interest, all amounting to 140 rigsdaler, that Vitus Bering later presented to his native town to be used for the benefit of the poor.

From inclination, and forced by the circumstances of his humble home, Bering went to sea, and on the long expeditions that he made, he developed into an able seaman. From an East India expedition in 1703 he came to Amsterdam, where he made the acquaintance of Admiral Cruys, a native of Norway. Soon afterwards, at the age of twenty-two, he joined a Russian fleet as a sub-lieutenant. What Norwegian and Danish seamen accomplished at this period in the service of Russia, has been almost entirely forgotten. In the company of intelligent foreigners that Czar Peter employed for the transformation of his kingdom, the Danish-Norse contingent occupies a prominent place. This is due principally to Peter himself, and was a result of his experiences in Holland. After having, on his first extensive foreign trip, learned the art of ship-building—not in Zaandam, as it is usually stated, but at the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam—he was much dissatisfied with the empirical method which the Hollanders used, and he wrote to Voronetz, his own ship-yard, that the Dutch ship-builders there should no longer be permitted to work independently, but be placed under the supervision of Danes or Englishmen.

Peter retained his high regard for Danish-Norse ship-building during his whole life, and it was on this account that Danes and Norwegians were enabled to exert so great an influence in St. Petersburg. This is the reason, too, that Danish-Norse[2] seamen were received so kindly in Russia even long after the death of the great Czar.

Next to Peter, Norwegians and Danes had the greatest share in the founding of the Russian fleet, and among them the place of honor belongs to the Norseman Cornelius Cruys, who in 1697 was assistant master of ordnance in the Dutch navy, where he was held in high regard as a ship-builder, a cartographer, and as a man well versed in everything pertaining to the equipment of a fleet. Peter made him his vice-admiral, and assigned to him the technical control of the fleet, the building of new vessels, their equipment, and, above all, the task of supplying them with West European officers.

Weber assigns Cruys a place in the first rank among those foreigners to whom Russia owes much of her development, and remarks that it was he, "the incomparable master of ordnance, who put the Russian fleet upon its keel and upon the sea." He belonged to the fashionable circles of St. Petersburg, owned a large and beautiful palace on the Neva, where now tower the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, and was one of the few among the wealthy that enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the Czar on festive occasions. He became vice-president of the council of the Admiralty, was promoted, after the peace of Nystad, to the position of admiral of the Blue Flag, and made a knight of the order of Alexander Nevsky.

In Peter the Great's remarkable house in St. Petersburg there is preserved, among many other relics, a yawl which is called the grandfather of the fleet. With this, Peter had begun his nautical experiments, and in 1723, when he celebrated the founding of his fleet, he rowed down the Neva in it. Peter himself was at the rudder, Apraxin was cockswain, and Admiral Cruys, Vice-Admiral Gordon, Sievers and Menshikoff were at the oars. On this occasion the Czar embraced Cruys and called him his father.

During his whole life Cruys preserved a warm affection for his native land; hence it was natural that the Scandinavian colony in St. Petersburg gathered about him. His successor as vice-president of the council of the Admiralty, and as master of ordnance, was the former Danish naval lieutenant Peter Sievers, who likewise elevated himself to most important positions, and exerted a highly beneficial influence upon the development of the Russian fleet. At the side of these two heroes, moreover, there were others, as Admirals Daniel Wilster and Peter Bredal, Commander Thure Trane, and also Skeving, Herzenberg, Peder Grib, "Tordenskjold's[3] brave comrade in arms," and many others.

For a long time Vitus Bering was one of Cruys's most intimate associates, and these two, with Admiral Sievers, form an honorable trio in that foreign navy. Bering was soon appointed to a position in the Baltic fleet, and during Russia's protracted struggles, his energy found that scope which he before had sought on the ocean, and at the same time he had the satisfaction of fighting the foes of his native land. He was a bold and able commander. During the whole war he cruised about in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, and in the Baltic and other northern waters. Some of the most important transport expeditions were entrusted to him. The Czar prized his services very highly, and when, after the misfortune at Pruth in 1711, he laid a plan to rescue three of the best ships of his Black Sea fleet by a bold run through the Bosporus, Vitus Bering, Peder Bredal, and Simon Skop were chosen for the task. Whether the plan was carried out, it is difficult to determine. Berch says that it was not, and adds, "I cite the incident simply to show that even at that time Bering was looked upon as an excellent commander." In various West European authorities, however, it is distinctly stated that Sievers conducted the ships to England, and in a review of Bering's life published by the Admiralty in 1882, it is stated that Bering was in 1711 appointed to conduct the ship Munker from the Sea of Azov to the Baltic, and as the Admiralty would hardly in a condensed report have taken notice of plans which had never been carried out, it seems most probable that Berch has been incorrectly informed.

In 1707 Bering was promoted to the position of lieutenant, in 1710 to that of lieutenant-captain, and in 1715 to that of captain of the fourth rank, when he assumed command of the new ship Selafail in Archangel to sail it to Copenhagen and Kronstadt. In 1716 he participated in an expedition of the united fleets to Bornholm under the command of Sievers. In 1717 he was made captain of the third, and in 1720 of the second rank, and took part, until peace was concluded, in the various manœuvers in the Baltic under the command of Gordon and Apraxin.[4]

After the peace of Nystad in 1721, however, his position became somewhat unpleasant. Although he was a brother-in-law of Vice-Admiral Saunders, he had, according to Berch, powerful enemies in the Admiralty. The numerous promotions made after the conclusion of peace, in no way applied to him. In the following year younger comrades were advanced beyond him, and hence in 1724 he demanded promotion to a captaincy of the first rank, or his discharge. After protracted negotiations, and in spite of the fact that Apraxin repeatedly refused to sign his discharge, he finally obtained it, and then withdrew to his home in Viborg, Finland, where he owned an estate, and where, no doubt on account of the Scandinavian character of the city, he preferred to stay. During the negotiations for his discharge, the Czar was in Olonetz, but some time afterwards he informed Apraxin that Bering was again to enter the navy, and with the desired promotion. This occurred in August, 1724, and a few months later Bering was appointed chief of the First Kamchatkan Expedition, the object of which was to determine whether Asia and America were connected by land.