Russian Discoverers of America of the Eighteenth Century

Russian Discoverers of America of the Eighteenth Century – the discovery of the territories of North American continent by Russian sailors began during the First Kamchatka Expedition of Vitus Bering (1725) undertaken on behalf of Peter I, which resulted in the discovery of a strait separating Asia from America later named after Bering. In 1732, the Siberian explorer Mikhail Gvozdev on board of the ship “St. Gabriel” left to conquer the Chukchi who populated the east coast of Siberia, reached the “Great Land” (Alaska) in the area of the modern Gulf of Norton Sound, and landed with his team in one of the islands of St. Diomede (previously discovered by V. Bering), which were called since then the Gvozdev Islands, but nowadays are known as the Island of Ratmanov and the Island of Krusenstern. As a result of Gvozdev’s research, the coast of the Bering Strait was shown in the map for the first time. In 1733, at the initiative of the Russian government and the St. Petersburg Academy of...