"The immense eighteenth-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering, the ten-year voyage, which included scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and, thanks to the brilliant naturalist Georg Steller, discovered dozens of New World plants and animals. The story of the expedition is a tale not only of adventure and historic achievement, but also of shipwreck, endurance, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history.""--Dust jacket.

"A Merloyd Lawrence book." "November 2017"--Title page verso.

Prologue : The Edge of the Wworld : Part one. Europe : The great embassy -- The First Kamchatka Expedition -- The best-laid plans -- Part two. Asia : St. Petersburg to Siberia -- Quarreling factions -- Phantom islands -- Part three. America : Bolshaya Zemlya, the Great Land -- Curious encounters -- The scourge of the sea -- Part four. Nowhere : Island of the blue foxes -- Death and playing cards -- A new St. Peter -- Epilogue : Russian America.