Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)

The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history." "The story of the Great Northern Expedition, an epic tale of shipwreck and survival from the Age of Sail. The Great Northern Expedition was the most ambitious and well-financed scientific expedition in history. Lasting nearly ten years and spanning three continents, its geographical, cartographical and natural history accomplishments are on par with James Cook's famous voyages, the scientific circumnavigations of Alessandro Malaspina and Louis Antoine de Bougainville, and Lewis and Clark's cross-continental trek. Conceived by Peter the Great in the 1730s and led by Danish mariner Vitus Bering, the enterprise involved a cavalcade of nearly three thousand scientists, secretaries, interpreters, artists, surveyors, naval officers, mariners, soldiers and labourers, all of whom had to be brought across five thousand miles of roadless forests, swamps and tundra, along with tools, supplies, libraries and scientific implements--as well as the clavichord belonging to Bering's wife, Anna. Scientific objectives included investigating flora, fauna and minerals as well as outlandish rumours about the Siberian peoples. After the expedition reached the eastern coast of Asia, Bering oversaw the construction of two ships, the St. Peter and St. Paul, and sailed for America with one hundred and fifty men, including the German naturalist and surgeon Georg Steller. The voyage was plagued by ill fortune--a supply ship failed to arrive, officers quarrelled and the ships were separated in a storm. While St. Paul reached Alaska and reported back to Russia, Bering's ship, St. Peter, was wrecked on a desolate island in the Aleutian Chain inhabited by feral foxes. Island of the Blue Foxes is an incredible true-life adventure story, a story of personal and cultural animosities, unimaginable Gothic horrors and ingenuity in the face of adversity."-- Provided by publisher The immense eighteenth-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering, the ten-year voyage, which included scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and, thanks to the brilliant naturalist Georg Steller, discovered dozens of New World plants and animals. The story of the expedition is a tale not only of adventure and historic achievement, but also of shipwreck, endurance, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history.""--Dust jacket