34 BEGINNING OF SECOND EXPEDITION 



When the time came for his sea voyage he was pretty much dis- 

 couraged and worn out, his physical strength was gone, and with 

 it went the initiative and daring so necessary for a work of this 

 kind. On his death bed Bering complained ^^ that too much had 

 been expected from him — a man already advanced in years — and 

 that those who should have stood by him failed to do so. In that 

 great Russian world he stood alone, the target of the malcontents 

 and the envious. That he was not wholly to blame may be seen 

 from the orders of the Admiralty College to the local authorities 

 in Siberia threatening them with torture unless they gave Bering 

 more help. Finally, in 1739, the Admiralty commissioned two 

 officers on special duty to go to Siberia to take charge of the trans- 

 portation of the supplies, and with their assistance most of the 

 things needed for the voyage were deposited at Okhotsk in the 

 autumn of 1740. 



Preparation for the Sea Voyage 



Since coming to Okhotsk in 1737 Bering had been very busy 

 supervising the building of the two ships for his voyage to 

 America. In June, 1740, they were launched and named the 

 St. Peter and the St. Paul. Each measured 80 by 20 by 9 feet, 

 had two masts and was brig-rigged, and carried fourteen guns, 

 two and three pounders. All the needed supplies were loaded on 

 these two vessels and on two freight boats, and on September 4 

 this small squadron left Okhotsk for the Bolshaya River (Fig. 3) 

 in Kamchatka, where they anchored on Septem.ber 20. Here Ber- 

 ing left the two freight boats because they were not strong enough 

 to weather the autumn storms, and with the St. Peter and the 

 St. Paul he sailed away for Petropavlovsk harbor in Avacha Bay 

 (inset on PI. I) and made that port on October 6. Petropavlovsk 

 was a new harbor, having been surveyed and charted in 1740 by 

 one of Bering's officers; and, judging from the sketch which he 

 made (Fig. 7), Bering and his company constituted the whole 

 population of that village. At this uninhabited spot the winter 

 was spent in preparation for the great voyage. 



^6 See Steller's account in Volume 2 of the present work 



