The Easy Pickings
Posted March 20, 2018 by Michael Batnick
The Great Northern Expedition was one of the largest exploration endeavors in human history. The grueling state sponsored trip, which lasted ten long years (1733-1743) and covered thousands of miles, cost one-sixth the annual income of Russia.
During this campaign, the St.Peter, led by Danish cartographer Vitus Bering, was shipwrecked on what would later be known as Bering Island. With resources running low, the men set out to find food, which was relatively easy at first. In The Island of the Blue Foxes, Stephen Bown wrote:
The men would sneak up on sleeping or unsuspecting animals, pounce upon them, and club them…Soon the otters became attuned to this new predator, man, and became wary of approaching humans. The easy hunting of the early days soon became very challenging. The men had to organize nocturnal scouting expeditions even through ferocious and unpredictable snowstorms to get close enough to attack beached otters. Before the year was over, they had to hike four to six miles to get enough food, and by February 1742 they had to hike as far as twenty miles down the beach.
What once was easy turned into something quite difficult.
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