Wanderlust World Wanderlust World The first documented European to reach Alaska was the Danish-born Russian naval officer Vitus Jonassen Bering, commanding the Great Northern Expedition commissioned by Tsar Peter the Great and continued under Empress Anna and Elizabeth.
In 1741, Bering's two ships—St. Peter (Bering's flagship) and St. Paul (under Aleksei Chirikov)—sailed from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky across the Bering Sea. Chirikov's crew made the first European landfall in Alaska (likely near Sitka) in July, but Bering's ship continued northwest, sighting Mount Saint Elias on July 16 and anchoring near Kayak Island. Bering's naturalist, Georg Wilhelm Steller, conducted the first European scientific observations of Alaskan flora, fauna (including the now-extinct Steller's sea cow), and indigenous peoples.
The return voyage became a tragedy. Scurvy decimated the crew. Bering's ship wrecked on an uninhabited island (now Bering Island in the Commander Islands) in November 1741. Bering died there on December 19, 1741, along with 28 crew members. Survivors built a vessel from the wreckage and reached Kamchatka in 1742, bringing news of the discovery—and sea otter pelts that sparked the Russian fur rush, leading to permanent Russian settlement in Alaska (1784) and eventually the 1867 U.S. purchase.
Bering's legacy endures in the Bering Strait, Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Land Bridge, and Vitus Bering (crater on the Moon). His expedition opened the North Pacific to European geography and commerce.