Vitus Bering

And among the most compelling cryptid in the sea is Steller's sea ape.

In the year 1740, after a two-year overland journey from Moscow to Okhotsk, the naturalist George William Steller boarded the St. Peter and joined Captain Vitus Bering on the Great Northern Expedition.

This expedition would define Europe's relationship to the Northern Pacific for the next three centuries.

It marked the European discovery of Alaska, expanded the Russian Empire, and put to rest legends of a northeast passage.

Cryptozoologists point to this extended account to argue that it's unlikely that Steller would so badly misidentify a species that he himself described, and I tend to agree.

In order to unravel the mystery of Steller's sea ape, we need to turn not to biology and ecology, but rather history.

In particular, the history of Vitus Bering, George Steller, and the ill-fated voyage of St. Peter.

Though a public success, the Great Northern Expedition was a brutal, gruesome slog through the uncharted North Pacific.

And among the most compelling cryptid in the sea is Steller's sea ape.

In the year 1740, after a two-year overland journey from Moscow to Okhausk, the naturalist George William Steller boarded the St. Peter and joined Captain Vitus Bering on the Great Northern Expedition.

This expedition would define Europe's relationship to the Northern Pacific for the next three centuries.

It marked the European discovery of Alaska, expanded the Russian Empire, and put to rest legends of a northeast passage.

Cryptozoologists point to this extended account to argue that it's unlikely that Steller would so badly misidentify a species that he himself described, and I tend to agree.

In order to unravel the mystery of Steller's sea ape, we need to turn not to biology and ecology, but rather history.

In particular, the history of Vitus Bering, George Steller, and the ill-fated voyage of St. Peter.

Though a public success, the Great Northern Expedition was a brutal, gruesome slog through the uncharted North Pacific.

In the earlier part of the eighteenth century, the part that the Russians took in Arctic discovery must not be omitted.

In 1728, Peter the Great sent out an expedition under the command of Vitus Bering, a Dane, in which Bering Strait and other discoveries were made.

And although it is impossible to mention them in detail, the contributions that the Russians made in revealing the New World to the old were most creditable to them as a nation.

In 1773, Captain Phipps conducted an expedition which now derives its chief interest from the fact that Horatio Nelson, then a young midshipman, took part in it.