Okhotsk > Ochotsk Khabarovskiy Kray Russia

Okhotsk, located at the mouth of the Okhota River on the Sea of Okhotsk, at the eastern end of the River Route from the Urals, is the first Russian settlement on the Pacific Coast, established as a wintering camp in 1643 by Cossacks under Semyon Shelkovnikov.

This is within the traditional lands of the Lamuts —a term meaning "ocean people" in Even, by which name they are known today.

The Evens, or Eveny, practice shamanism and support themselves by reindeer-breeding, hunting, fishing and trapping.

The Russian colonizers at the site of present Okhotsk construct the fort of Kosoi Ostrozhok in 1649.

The Lamuts burn Okhotsk in 1653.

The first Russians to enter the Kamchatka Peninsula had had to travel overland from the north.

Peter the Great sends a party of shipbuilders to Okhotsk in 1714 to allow faster access to the furs of Kamchatka.

They build the Vostok in 1715, and Kozma Sokolov sails it to Kamchatka in 1716-17.

It is clear from at least 1715 that Okhotsk is a poor site.

In addition to the difficult track inland, the harbor is poor, though usable, and the short growing season and lack of arable land to plow means that food has to be imported.

Despite these drawbacks, Okhotsk will for the next one hundred and fifty years be the main Russian seaport on the Pacific, supplying Kamchatka and other coastal settlements.

The Bering expedition, after leaving Ust-Kut when the river ice melted in the spring of 1726, had rapidly traveled down the River Lena, reaching Yakutsk in the first half of June.

Despite the need for hurry and men being sent in advance, the governor had been slow to grant them the resources they needed, prompting threats from Vitus Bering.

Bering’s lieutenant Martin Shpangberg had left on July 7, with a detachment of two hundred and nine men and much of the cargo; pprentice shipbuilder Fyodor Kozlov had on July 27  led a small party to reach Okhotsk ahead of Spangberg, both to prepare food supplies and to start work repairing the Vostok and building a new ship (the Fortuna) needed to carry the party across the bay from Okhotsk to the Kamchatka peninsula.

Bering himself had left on August 16, while it was decided that Aleksei Chirikov would follow the next spring with fresh supplies of flour.

The journeys had been as difficult as Bering had worried they would be.

Both men and horses had died, while other men (forty-six from Bering's party alone) had deserted with their horses and portions of the supplies as they struggled to build roads across difficult marshland and river terrain.

If Bering's party (which reached Okhotsk in October) had fared badly, Shpangberg's had fared far worse.

His heavily loaded boats could be tugged at no more than one mile a day‚ and they had some six hundred and eighty-five miles to cover.

When the rivers froze, the cargo was transferred to sleds and the expedition continued, enduring blizzards and waist-high snow.

Even provisions left by Bering at Yudoma Cross could not fend off starvation.

Shpangberg and two other men, who had together formed an advance party carrying the most vital items for the expedition, reach Okhotsk on January 6, 1727; ten days later, sixty others join them, although many are ill.

Parties sent by Bering back along the trail from Okhotsk rescue seven men and much of the cargo that had been left behind.

Okhotsk's inhabitants describe the winter of 1726-27 as the worst they can recall; Bering has seized flour from the local villagers to ensure that his party too can take advantage of their stocks; consequently the whole village had soon faced the threat of starvation.

The explorer will later report how it was only the arrival of an advance party of Chirikov's division in June with twenty-seven tons of flour that ensured his party (by then diminished in numbers) could be fed.

The Vostok is readied and the Fortuna built at a rapid pace, with the first party (forty-eight men commanded by Shpangberg and comprising those required to start work on the ships that will have to be built in Kamchatka itself as soon as possible) leaving in June 1727.

Chirikov himself arrives in Okhotsk soon after, bringing further supplies of food.

He had had a relatively easy trip, losing none of his men and only seventeen of the one hundred and forty horses with which he had set out.

The two vessels are by July 1729 back at Okhotsk, where they are moored alongside the Vostok; the party, no longer needing to carry shipbuilding materials makes good time on the return journey from Okhotsk, and by February 28, 1730, Bering will be back in the Russian capital.

He will be awarded 1000 rubles in December 1731 and promoted to captain-commander, his first noble rank (Shpangberg and Chirikov will be similarly promoted to captain).

The long and expensive expedition has cost fifteen men and soured relations between Russia and her native peoples, but it has provided useful new (though not perfect) insights into the geography of Eastern Siberia, and presented useful evidence that Asia and North America are separated by sea.

Bering had not, however, proved the separation beyond doubt.

The Russians in 1731 create the Okhotsk Military Flotilla under its first commander, Grigoriy Skornyakov-Pisarev, to patrol and transport government goods to and from Kamchatka.

Okhotsk is moved in 1736 two miles downstream to a spit of land at the mouth of the Okhota, converting the ostrog into a proper port.

Okhotsk is ill-suited to be a permanent port, but things are little better for the second Bering expedition than they had been at Yakutsk; the expedition’s administrator, Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev, despite having been resident here for four years, has been slow to construct the buildings needed.

Bering’s lieutenant and fellow Dane Martin Shpanberg is, however, able to ready the ships the expedition needed.

The Gabriel has been refitted by the end of 1737; in addition, two new ships, the Archangel Michael and the Nadezhda, have been constructed and are rapidly readied for a voyage to Japan, a country with which Russia has never had contact.

Bering in the same year takes up residence in Okhotsk.

It is the fifth year of the expedition, and the original cost estimates now look naive compared to the true costs of the trip.

The additional costs (three hundred thousand rubles compared to the twelve thousand that had been budgeted) bring poverty to the entire region.