North Pacific Rim

The north Pacific Ocean is surrounded by a ring of fire, a chain of island volcanoes which still belch, steam, smoke and fire. The Kuril Archipelago in the Sea of Okhotsk between Japan and the Kamchatka Peninsula is no exception and foreshadowed the drama to come.

Between 1728 and 1741 the Danish navigator Vitus Bering commanded two expeditions on behalf of the Russian Navy to map the Siberian coast and establish if there was a sea passage between Russia and America. He built ships in Okhotsk and established Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka as a base. On his first trip he passed through what is now known as the Bering Strait but he was not fully aware of its significance. On the second expedition he and his fellow captain Chirikov discovered some of the Aleutian Islands and the coast of Alaska. He died in 1841 and was buried on what is now Bering Island.