Far North · Modernised and illustrated edition
Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742
Modernized, illustrated English edition of Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742 (Reise von Kamtschatka nach Amerika) by Georg Wilhelm Steller (1741-1742).
Shipwrecked at the end of the world, he describes the last sea cow just before it vanishes.
Read more ↓- about 190 pages
- Paperback
- English
- 18th century
Countries covered: Russia · United States
About this book
June 1741: Vitus Bering's St. Peter leaves Avacha Bay, in Kamchatka, to find America. On board is a physician and naturalist from Franconia, Georg Wilhelm Steller, whom the naval officers will never take seriously.
On 16 July the coast finally appears, bristling with snow-covered mountains. The crew rejoices; the commander merely shrugs. Ten years of preparation, ten hours on an island: that is all Steller will get of the New World. He brings back smoked fish, arrows, a wooden fire-striker and an armful of plants.
Then comes the return. Scurvy, the brackish water of the Shumagin Islands, the meeting with men in kayaks, the autumn storms. In November a coast that the officers swear is Kamchatka takes shape on the horizon, and the half-dead crawl onto the deck to see it.
Day by day, Steller observes and records: the sea otter, the strange sea monkey, the fearless blue foxes, the sea cow. He heals, he loses his temper, he passes judgment. His journal, published by Pallas in 1793, is that of a clear-sighted scholar caught up in an adventure that no one controls any longer.
On this unknown land, who will see Kamchatka again?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- Far North
- The author
- Georg Wilhelm Steller
- Date of the journey
- 1741-1742
- Modern edition by
- Hélène Garnier
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- about 190
The author
Georg Wilhelm Steller
Georg Wilhelm Steller was born in 1709 in Windsheim, in Franconia, and studied theology, then medicine and botany. He went to Russia in 1734 and became an adjunct of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. Physician and naturalist on Vitus Bering's 1741 expedition to America, he was shipwrecked on Bering Island, where he described the sea otter and the sea cow. His journal, published by Pallas in 1793, made him known; he died at Tyumen in 1746.
All books by Georg Wilhelm Steller →The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
-
James Cook et James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1776-1780)
In the spring of 1778, thirty-seven years after Bering, James Cook in his turn follows the coast of Alaska in search of a passage to the Atlantic.
Our edition → -
Jean-Baptiste Barthélemy de Lesseps, Journal historique du voyage de M. de Lesseps (1787-1788)
In September 1787, La Pérouse calls at Avacha Bay and lands his young interpreter, Jean-Baptiste Barthélemy de Lesseps, charged with carrying the expedition's journals to France.
Our edition → -
Martin Sauer, An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia (1785-1794)
Secretary of Joseph Billings's expedition, commissioned by Catherine II to survey the coasts between Asia and America, the Englishman Martin Sauer spends nearly ten years in eastern Siberia.
Read a free edition → -
Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff, Bemerkungen auf einer Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1803 bis 1807 (1803-1807)
A German physician and naturalist, Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff sails on Krusenstern's Nadezhda for the first Russian circumnavigation.
Read a free edition →
The modern editor
