July/August 2016
25
with whatever local plants he thought
might be antiscorbutic. Bering recovered
from his scurvy, but then Steller discovered
he suffered from congestive heart failure.
Bering died on December 8, 1741.
During one winter storm, the ship was
deposited high on the beach. While it made
it easier to get supplies ashore and water
aboard, it made it obvious the ship could
never sail again and a new ship would have
to be constructed. They had ready access to
the beached St. Peter for materials.
Unfortunately, all the ship’s carpenters had
died by the time the winter weather began
clearing, and none of the naval officers
seemed to be able to direct the remaining
men. Finally, on April 9, 1742, one of
the men who had worked in a shipyard
took on the job and began building a
smaller sturdier ship. With the coming of
spring, Steller was able to gather enough
antiscorbutic plants to treat the remaining
crew and they all recovered from scurvy.
Steller’s observations and studies have
stood the test of time and little or nothing
has been added to his descriptions of the
fur seal, the sea otter, the sea lion, the
sea cow, the blue fox, the sea eagle, and
the wide variety of plants and birds he
described. His work on what is now known
as Bering Island, coupled with his work on
Kayak Island, truly makes him Alaska’s first
and most significant naturalist.
21
The smaller ship was completed in early
August 1742, and on August 14, 1742, they
finally set sail for Kamchatka. The voyage
was uneventful, and they made landfall
on Kamchatka on August 26, 1742. Steller
immediately began to travel to the supply
base on the other side of Kamchatka
and arrived there about a week later. He
spent some time organizing and packing
his specimens and then resumed his
exploration of Kamchatka. In May 1743, he
left to explore the Kuril Islands. There, he
discovered what is now known as the Steller
Chiton and Steller’s Starry Flounder.
In the spring of 1744, the Itelmen revolted.
Steller thought their grievances were
justified and wrote the Senate in their
behalf. The local authorities wrote the
Senate accusing Steller of being a traitor
and inciting the revolt.
In August 1744, Steller began the long
trip back to St. Petersburg. By spring
1745, he had reached Irkutsk, where
he was arrested on the Senate charges
stemming from the complaints of the
local Kamchatka authorities. He was
tried locally and acquitted. However, the
report to the Senate was not sent for a
considerable period of time.
22
Steller continued on his way west. On
August 16, 1746, just east of the Urals,
he was arrested again by an agent of the
Senate and was forced to leave his entire
collection and accompany the agent back
to Kamchatka for trial. Steller wrote a letter
to the academy, willing them the entire
collection. Steller was forced to travel east
for six weeks before the matter was cleared
up, and he was finally released.
On his return trip west, Steller caught
what sounds like typhoid fever in Tobolsk.
Despite being seriously ill, he was anxious
to get to his specimens, and continued
traveling. On November 12, 1746, he
reached Tyumen in critical condition.
He died that evening. Because he was a
Lutheran, he couldn’t be buried in the local
(Orthodox) cemetery. Instead, he was buried
of a bluff over the Tura River with a boulder
marking his grave. Word of his death didn’t
reach the academy for several months.
With Steller’s death, science was dealt a
severe blow. He was never able to organize
or analyze his notes and specimens. He
had many ideas about migration and
demographics that were never explored,
and there is no doubt he was one of the
foremost thinkers in the field of natural
science at the time. His notes on scurvy
alone might have saved scores of lives.
His work was appropriated by Gmelin
and his assistants. Gmelin organized and
published Steller’s plant specimens in his
Plants of Siberia, and Krasheninnikov used
his notes for Description of the Land of
Kamchatka. As Steller had feared, much
of his work was scattered and almost
all appropriated by others, but in 1990,
Dr. Hinzche of the Francke Foundation
found most of Steller’s journals in the St.
Petersburg archives.
We in the Pacific Northwest can hardly
forget the man when we are surrounded
by Steller sea lion, Steller’s jay, Steller’s
eider, Steller’s albatross, Steller’s
wormwood, and numerous Latin genera
named after the man. It would be nice if
Steller’s sea cow had survived long enough
for us to have seen it.
The natives of Kamchatka, the Itelmen, still
revere Steller as their ardent supporter and
since the fall of the Soviet Union have used
Steller’s notes to revive some of their customs.
He was a physician worthy of note.
21. Steller had a very brief period to explore on Kayak. Bering only allowed him to remain ashore for the time it
took to take on water.
22. In most accounts, the delay was 4–6 weeks, but looking at the dates of his later arrest, a delay of 10–14
weeks appears possible and not that unlikely considering the nature of the Russian Bureaucracy of that period.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold A,
Sea Cows, Shamans, and Scur
vy:
Alaska’s First Naturalist: Georg Wilhelm Steller
(New York: Farrar, Straus and G
iroux, 2008).*
Fortuine R, “Georg Wilhelm Steller: Physician-
Nat
uralist on the Bering Expedition to Alaska.”
Alaska Medicine
, 1967; 9(1): 2–7.
Golder FA,
Bering’s Voyages
(New York:
American Geographical Society, 1922).
Keay J (ed),
The Mammoth Book of Travel
in Dangerous Places
, (London: Constable &
Robinson, 1993).
Stejneger L,
Georg Wilhelm Steller: Pioneer of
Alaskan Natural History
(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1936).**
*A youth book, but it covers the subject surprisingly well.
** This is by far the best source of information on Steller.
About the Author
Dr. Fillmore Buckner
is
a retired MD and JD. He
is a regular columnist for
The Bulletin
.
historical
