Having waited for the necessary paperwork to be completed, Bering and the remaining members of the expedition followed on 6 February.

Whilst Spangberg headed east to Okhotsk, Bering waited in Yakutsk, preparing two ships on the Lena ( one would be captained by Vasili Pronchishchev and the other first by Peter Lassenius and later by Dmitry Laptev ).

The Eskimo languages of Alaska are called Inupiatun, but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them Qawiaraq, or for some dialects, Bering Straits Inupiatun.

Human settlement of the New World occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 15, 000 to 20, 000-year layover on Beringia for the small founding population.

In 1648 the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was passed for the first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov.

The third winter saw Maud frozen in the western Bering Strait, before finally reaching Seattle for repairs in 1921.

In late spring and summer, for example, several hundred thousand Pacific walruses migrate from the Bering Sea into the Chukchi Sea through the relatively narrow Bering Strait.

In 1725, Emperor Peter the Great ordered navigator Vitus Bering to explore the North Pacific for potential colonization.

Bering reached Avacha Bay in late 1740 and laid the foundation stone for the harbor town, naming the new settlement " Petropavlovsk " ( Peter and Paul ) after his two ships, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, built in Okhotsk for his second expedition.

Having returned to Okhotsk with a much larger, better prepared, and much more ambitious expedition, Bering set off for an expedition towards North America in 1741.

Preparations for the trip had begun some years before, but with his health rapidly deteriorating, the Tsar had ordered that the process be hurried, and it was with this backdrop that Bering ( with his knowledge of both the Indian Ocean and the eastern seaboard of North America, good personal skills and experience in transporting goods ) was selected ahead of the experienced cartographer K. P. von Verd.

Despite the need for hurry and men being sent in advance, the governor was slow to grant them the resources they needed, prompting threats from Bering.

On 6 January 1727 Spangberg and two other men, who had together formed an advance party carrying the most vital items for the expedition, reached Okhotsk ; ten days later sixty others joined them, although many were ill. Parties sent by Bering back along the trail from Okhotsk rescued seven men and much of the cargo that had been left behind.

Sailing further north, Bering entered for the first time the strait that would later bear his name.

Reaching a cape ( which Chirikov named Cape Chukotsk ), the land turned westwards, and Bering asked his two lieutenants on 13 August 1728 whether or not they could reasonably claim it was turning westwards for good: that is to say, whether they had proven that Asia and America were separate land masses.

The rapidly advancing ice prompted Bering to make the controversial decision not to deviate from his remit: the ship would sail for a few more days, but then turn back.

In 1732, however, Bering was still at the planning stage in Moscow, having taken a short leave of absence for St. Petersburg.

Soon catching the main party, Bering and Chirikov led the group eastwards, descending on Tobolsk for the winter.

Bering and a small advance party left Tobolsk in later February, stopping at Irkutsk to pick up gifts for the native tribes they would later encounter ; it arrived at Yakustsk in August 1734.

Over the winter, Bering recruited for the trip ahead naturalist Georg Steller and completed the report he had promised to send.

Consequently, Bering's name has since been used for the Bering Strait ( named by Captain James Cook despite knowledge of Dezhnev's earlier expedition ), the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge.

After serving with the navy in significant but non-combat roles during the Great Northern War, Bering resigned in 1724 to avoid the continuing embarrassment of his low rank to Anna, his wife of eleven years.

On 8 October 1713, Bering married Anna Christina Pülse ; the ceremony took place in the Lutheran church at Vyborg, only recently annexed from Sweden.

Shortly after, the family – Bering, his wife Anna, and two young sons – moved out of St. Petersburg to live with Anna's family in Vyborg.

Bering also made a bequest to the poor of Horsens, had two children with Anna and even attempted to establish his familial coat of arms.

Though Bering seems to have been primarily interested in landing in North America, his recognised the importance of secondary objectives: the list of which expanded rapidly under the guidance of planners Nikolai Fedorovich Golovin ( head of the Admiralty ); Ivan Kirilov, a highly-ranked politician with an interest in geography, and Andrey Osterman, a close adviser of the new Empress, Anna Ivanovna.

Following them, on 29 April Bering followed with Anna and their two youngest children – their two eldest, both sons, were left with friends in Reval.

In August 1740, with the main, America-bound expedition almost ready, Anna Bering returned to St. Petersburg with her and Vitus ' younger children.

Vitus Bering was born in the port town of Horsens in Denmark to Anne Pedderdatter Bering and her husband Jonas Svendsen ( a " customs inspector and churchwarden "), being baptised in the Lutheran church there on 5 August 1681.

The language belongs to the Eskimo-Aleut language family and includes three dialect groupings: Eastern Aleut, spoken on the Eastern Aleutian, Shumagin, Fox and Pribilof islands ; Atkan, spoken on Atka and Bering islands ; and the now extinct Attuan dialect.

Siberian Yupik reside along the Bering Sea coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in Siberia in the Russian Far East and in the villages of Gambell and Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska.

They used the boats to hunt on inland lakes, rivers and coastal waters of the Arctic Ocean, North Atlantic, Bering Sea and North Pacific oceans.

In sharp contrast, the Red-legged Kittiwake has a very limited range in the Bering Sea, breeding only on the Pribilof, Bogoslof and Buldir islands in the United States, and the Commander Islands in Russia.

* Full Circle with Michael Palin ( Travel 1996 / 97 ; Programme release 1997 ): in which he circumnavigated the lands around the Pacific Ocean anti-clockwise ; a journey of almost 50, 000 miles ( 80, 000 km ) starting on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait and taking him through Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

* The Steller's sea cow, discovered on Bering Island in 1741, is driven to extinction.

Alaska pollock generally spawn in late winter and early spring on Southeast Bering Sea.

It was made by the Russian maritime explorer and navigator Ivan Fedorov from sea near present day Cape Prince of Wales on the eastern boundary of the Bering Strait opposite Russian Cape Dezhnev.

Between 1850 and 1853 the majority of the fleet focused their efforts on bowheads in the Bering Strait region.

Vitus Jonassen Bering ( baptised 5 August 1681 in Horsens, Denmark – 8 December 1741 on Bering Island, Russia ) was a Danish-born navigator in the service of the Russian Navy as ( eventually Captain-Komandor ) Витус Ионассен Беринг, known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich Bering.

Having obtained a promotion on his retirement to the level of first captain, Bering kept this rank when he decided to rejoin the Russian navy later the same year.

Adverse conditions forced Bering to return, and he discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back.

Bering himself became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to seek refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group ( Komandorskiye Ostrova ) in the southwest Bering Sea.

On 19 December 1741 Vitus Bering died on the island, which was given the name Bering Island after him, near the Kamchatka Peninsula, reportedly from scurvy ( although this has been contested ), along with 28 men of his company.

By 2 October 1724, Bering ( retaining the rank of first captain he had secured earlier in the year ) was back on the sea, commanding the ninety-gun Lesnoe.

The final papers from Peter before his death on 28 January made it clear to Bering that he should proceed to the Kamchatka peninsula, build one or two ships there, and, keeping the land on his left, sail northwards until the land turned westwards, making it clear that there existed sea between Asia and North America.