All routes

Vitus Bering: The Kamchatka Expeditions

In 1725 a Russian naval captain set out across a continent to answer one question: are Asia and America joined? Vitus Bering's two Kamchatka expeditions, the second of them part of the Great Northern Expedition, took years of hardship to answer it. The route follows seven places from the Tsar's order in Saint Petersburg to Bering's death on an uninhabited island in 1741. The stops are not one continuous line, so they are shown as separate markers. Dates are Old Style (Julian), as Russian records of the time kept them; the modern calendar runs 11 days ahead.