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- Vitus Jonassen Bering (Behring, russisk ogsaa Iwan Iwanowitsch Bering (august 1681, Horsens - 19. december 1741, Øen Awatscha, Bering ø) var en marineofficer i russisk tjeneste og opdagelsesrejsende af dansk herkomst. Han bliver kaldt "Zarens danske Columbus" og beviste blandt andet, at Asien og Nordamerika ikke er forbundet.
Han var født og opvokset i Horsens, Jylland som dengang hørte til i kongeriget Danmark-Norge. Forældrene er toldembedsmand og kirkeværge Jonas Svendsen og Anna Petersdatter Bering, en slægt, som gennem flere hundrede aar havde talt mange præster og jurister. Vitus Bering bliver da ogsaa opkaldt efter sin onkel (morbroder), kgl. historiograf Vitus Pedersen Bering.
Han drog tidligt til søs til Ostindien og Vestindien, og mødte i 1703 i Amsterdam den russiske viceadmiral Cornelis Cruys, født i Stavanger og borger i Amsterdam, nu en af den unge, russiske flaades skabere. Følgerne af dette bekendtskab blev, at Bering som saa mange af hans unge, dansk-norske landsmænd, traadte ind som officer i den russiske marine 1704. Han blev hvervet til Peter den Stores flaade og deltog med hæder i Den store nordiske krig mod sit gamle og nye fædrelands fælles fjender. Efter krigen ønskede zaren at udforske og kortlægge Ruslands østlige egne og finde ud af, om der var en landfast forbindelse mellem Sibirien og Nordamerika, Vitus Bering blev udnævnt til leder af Den 1. Kamtjatka-ekspedition, der drog af sted i 1725.
I 1728 paaviste ekspeditionen, at der var et stræde mellem de to kontinenter, som senere er blevet opkaldt efter ham: Beringstrædet, men man fik ikke Amerika i sigte.
I 1733 drog han ud paa Den 2. Kamtjatka-ekspedition for at udforske og kortlægge Sibiriens ishavskyst. Denne gang naaede Bering Alaska, men blev tvunget tilbage i 1741 paa grund af knappe forsyninger og skørbug blandt ekspeditionens medlemmer. Berings skib maatte opgives, og besætningen gik i land paa en ubeboet ø. Næsten halvdelen af besætningen, herunder Vitus Bering selv, omkom.
Vitus Bering fik flere ting opkaldt efter sig: Beringshavet, Beringgletsjeren, Beringlandtangen, Beringstrædet, Bering Ø og Vitus Bering parken i Horsens.
Hans grav blev i 1991 fundet af danske arkæologer.
Vitus Jonassen Bering var en slægtning til latindigteren Vitus Bering (1617-1675). Til gengæld var storkonspiratoren Magnus Bering Beringskjold ikke i familie med de to Vitus'er.
- Vitus Jonassen Bering (also, less correctly, Behring) (August 12, 1681 in Horsens, Denmark – December 8, 1741, Bering Island, Russia) was a Danish navigator in the service of the Russian Navy, a captain-komandor known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich. He is noted for being the first European to discover Alaska and its Aleutian Islands. The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge bear the explorer's name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitus_Bering
- University of Copenhagen
Arrested in riot
Sentance: 15 years service as customs collector, Tranquebar, India
Shipped out 1696
Vitus shiped with him as ship's boy Bering: the Russian discovery of America By Orcutt William Frost pp. 21
- Bering was born on August 12, 1681. He was born in the city of Horsens in Denmark.
After a voyage to the East Indies, he joined the fleet of the Russian Navy as a sublieutenant in 1703, serving in the Baltic Fleet during the Great Northern War. In 1710–1712 he served in the Azov Sea Fleet in Taganrog and took part in the Russo-Turkish War. He became engaged to a Russian woman, and in 1715 he made a brief visit to his hometown, never to see it again. A series of explorations of the northern coast of Asia, the outcome of a long-reaching plan devised by Peter the Great, led up to Bering's first voyage to Kamchatka. In 1725, under the auspices of the Russian government, he went overland to Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and established the ship Sviatoi Gavriil (St. Gabriel). Aboard the ship, Bering pushed northward in 1728, until he could no longer observe any extension of the land to the north, or its appearance to the east.
In the following year he made an abortive search for mainland eastward, rediscovering one of the Diomede Islands (Ratmanov Island) observed earlier by Dezhnev. In the summer of 1730, Bering returned to St. Petersburg. During the long trip through Siberia along the whole Asian continent, he became very ill. Five of his children died during this trip. Bering was subsequently commissioned to a further expedition, and returned to Okhotsk in 1735. He had the local craftsmen Makar Rogachev and Andrey Kozmin build two vessels, Sviatoi Piotr (St. Peter) and Sviatoi Pavel (St. Paul), in which he sailed off and in 1740 established the settlement of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. From there, he led an expedition towards North America in 1741. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at Kayak Island or in the vicinity. Under the command of Aleksei Chirikov, the second ship discovered the shores of the northwestern America (Aleksander Archipelago of present-day Alaska). These voyages of Bering and Chirikov were a major part of the Russian exploration efforts in the North Pacific known today as the Great Northern Expedition.
Bering was soon forced by adverse conditions to return, and he discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back. One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands, and the group was named after him (as the Shumagin Islands). Bering became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group (Komandorskiye Ostrova) in the southwest Bering Sea. December 19, 1741 Vitus Bering died at Bering Island, near the Kamchatka Peninsula, from scurvy, along with 28 men of his company. This island bears his name. A storm shipwrecked Sv. Piotr, but the only surviving carpenter, S. Starodubtsev, with the help of the crew managed to build a smaller vessel out of the wreckage. The new vessel had a keel length of only 12.2 meters (40 ft) and was also named Sv. Piotr. Out of 77 men aboard Sv. Piotr, only 46 survived the hardships of the expedition which claimed its last victim just one day before coming into home port. Its builder, Starodubtsev, returned home with governmental awards and later built several other seaworthy ships.
The value of Bering's work was not fully recognized for many years, but Captain Cook was able to prove Bering's accuracy as an observer. Nowadays, the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge bear the explorer's name.
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1681 - 1741 (60 år)
