Imagine traveling halfway around the world overland, building a ship, then being the first to navigate an unknown sea . . . only to have your sponsors disbelieve you. That was the fate of Cmdr. Vitus Jonassen Bering, the Danish seafarer whose name lives on in those of the Bering Sea, the Bering Straits, Bering Island and the Commander Islands . . . but who had to go back and do it all again before he was believed!

Born in 1681 in Jutland, Bering joined the newly formed Russian navy in the early 1700s. Distinguished in battle, he was promoted to commander. Then, in 1724, he was selected by Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) to lead the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725-30) across Siberia to the Pacific, thence to determine whether or not the Asian and American continents were connected.

Reaching Okhotsk (today a small, grimy, isolated settlement on the north shore of the Sea of Okhotsk; back then no doubt tinier and grimier, and certainly more isolated) entailed a two-year journey for Bering, who left St. Petersburg on Feb. 5, 1725. However, Okhotsk was only another starting point for him. There he built a ship for the crossing to Kamchatka.