BERING, Wring,. Dun. pron. lia'ring, some times BEHRING, Virus (1680-1741). A Dan ish navigator, horn at ITorsen. in Denmark. He entered the service of Russia, and was employed on the great northern expedition planned by Peter the Great to determine the unknown lim its of Asia. On February 4, 1725, he started from Saint Petersburg to cross Siberia, with orders to discover whether Asia and America are connected. After three years of prepara tion at Okhotsk and Kamchatka, he made a seven-weeks' voyage as far as a point from which he could see no land toward the north or east. This northeasterly point of Asia had already been visited by Simeon Deshneff, a Cossack voyager, in 1648. Bering went back to Saint Petersburg in the spring of 1730. A year later a vessel commanded by Michael Gvosdeff was driven from Cape Szerde Kamen by a storm across to the Alaska coast, along which Grosdeff sailed for two days. The Empress Anne ordered Bering
to carry out his previous instruetions, and in the spring of 1733 he returned to Okhotsk. He delayed there until September, 1740, when he sailed to Petropavlovsk, where he stayed until June 15, 1741. He sailed eastward, and on July 26 his lieutenant, who had separated from the commander during a fog. reached the North American coast near Cross Bay. Bering made land north of Cape Saint Elias, .July 29. When he started to return, he was driven about by storms until November 16, when his vessel was wrecked on the desert island still known by his name. He (lied there of exposure and disappointment, December 19, 1741. Ilis companions built a ves sel, in which they returned to Kamchatka with more than 8100,000 worth of furs captured on the island. A life of Bering, by Lauridsen, was published in Chicago in 1890.