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50 free Vitus Bering trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Vitus Bering trivia quiz covers the Danish-born officer of the Russian Navy who led two enormous expeditions across Siberia to the Pacific and gave his name to a strait, a sea, an island, a glacier and a vanished land bridge. The easy questions are ones most people can reason out: his nationality, the tsar who sent him east, the two continents his strait separates, the naturalist who sailed with him and the animal that was hunted to extinction within 27 years of being described on his voyage. The harder end is for exploration buffs: the Danish town where he was born, why he briefly retired from the navy in 1724, the ships he built at Okhotsk and on the Kamchatka River, the day in 1728 he turned back short of proving Asia and America were separate, the Cossack who had sailed the strait eighty years before him, the mountain his crew sighted in July 1741, the naturalist's ten hours ashore on Kayak Island, how many of the St. Peter's 77 men survived the winter, and the British captain who put Bering's name on the strait. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Bering, his expeditions and the places named after him before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Explorers, Alaska and Russian History quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was Vitus Bering born?
Denmark
Russians knew him as Ivan Ivanovich Bering.
Q 02In which Danish port town was Bering baptised in August 1681?
Horsens
He was named after a maternal great-uncle who had been a chronicler at the royal court.
Q 03Whose navy did Bering join in 1704?
Peter the Great's
He served under Norwegian-born admiral Cornelius Cruys and rose to second captain by 1720.
Q 04At what age did Bering first go to sea as a ship's boy?
15
Before joining Russia he had reached India and the Dutch East Indies and trained as an officer in Amsterdam.
Q 05Why did Bering briefly retire from the Russian Navy in 1724?
Embarrassment at his low rank
His wife's younger sister had just married a rear-admiral with a far shorter service record.
Q 06Which two continents was Bering ordered to determine were separated by sea?
Asia and North America
Peter signed the order in December 1724, weeks before his death.
Q 07Which two lieutenants accompanied Bering on the First Kamchatka Expedition?
Martin Spanberg and Aleksei Chirikov
They were paid 180 roubles a year to Bering's 480.
Q 08Which Pacific port town did Bering's party reach overland before sailing to Kamchatka?
Okhotsk
The route via the Lena tributaries was ruled out after the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk.
Q 09What was the ship Bering built on the Kamchatka River and sailed north in 1728?
St. Gabriel
It set sail on 13 July 1728, three years after the party had left St. Petersburg.
Q 10Which island did the ship's log record sighting in 1728?
St. Lawrence
Language barriers stopped Bering from asking local people about the geography.
Q 11Why did Bering turn back on 16 August 1728 without sighting Alaska?
Rapidly advancing ice
On a clear day the Alaskan coast would have been visible to the east.
Q 12Which islands did Bering sight on 16 August 1728, a saint's day that gave them their name?
Diomede
The two islands sit either side of the International Date Line, so one is nicknamed Tomorrow Island.
Q 13Which 17th-century Russian had sailed through the strait some 80 years before Bering?
Semyon Dezhnev
His 1648 voyage was so poorly documented that Bering knew nothing of it.
Q 21On which island did Steller land in July 1741, the first non-native footfall in Alaska?
Kayak
Steller found a cellar of dried fish and left gifts in exchange for what he took.
Q 22Roughly how long was Steller allowed ashore in Alaska in July 1741?
Ten hours
Bering wanted only enough time to take on fresh water.
Q 23Which large marine mammal, described by Steller in 1741, was extinct within 27 years?
Sea cow
Steller's sea cow reached about nine metres and eight to ten tonnes.
Q 24Which type of North American bird did Steller become the first European to describe?
Q 14What rank did Bering receive in December 1731 after the first expedition?
Captain-commodore
Spanberg and Chirikov were promoted to captain at the same time.
Q 15Which empress was on the Russian throne while Bering planned the second expedition?
Anna Ivanovna
Bering waited for her to secure her grip on power before proceeding.
Q 16Roughly how many people were involved in the Great Northern Expedition?
Over 3,000
It cost about 1.5 million roubles, roughly a sixth of Russian state income in 1724.
Q 17Which country did Martin Spanberg's ships reach in 1739, the first Russians to land there?
Japan
Russia had never before had contact with Japan.
Q 18Which Kamchatka city did Bering name after his two ships in 1740?
Petropavlovsk
Navigator Ivan Yelagin had laid the foundations a few months earlier on Bering's orders.
Q 19Which German naturalist did Bering recruit for the 1741 voyage to America?
Georg Wilhelm Steller
Steller was horrified when Bering's men tortured Koryaks in the hunt for murderers of Russians.
Q 20Which mountain did the St. Peter's crew sight on 16 July 1741?
Mount Saint Elias
At 5,489 metres it is the second-highest peak in both Canada and the United States.
A jay
Steller's jay bears his name, as does Steller's sea eagle, typically the heaviest eagle in the world.
Q 25Which island group did Bering discover on his way back and name after a dead sailor?
Shumagin Islands
Bering discovered several of the Aleutians during the same storm-battered return.
Q 26Who took command of the St. Peter when Bering became too ill from scurvy?
Sven Waxell
Waxell himself was still ill when the crew wintered on the island.
Q 27Where did Bering die on 19 December 1741?
On an uninhabited island off Kamchatka
Twenty-eight of his men also died there; the crew survived on sea otters, seals and sea cows.
Q 28How many of the St. Peter's 77 men survived the expedition?
46
The survivors built a new vessel from the wreck and reached Avacha Bay in August 1742.
Q 29How did Steller help cure his shipwrecked companions' scurvy?
He persuaded them to eat seaweed
Steller died on the journey home in 1746, aged just 37.
Q 30Which captain saw the Alaskan coast on 15 July 1741, a day before Bering's ship?
Aleksei Chirikov
Commanding the St. Paul, he got back to Petropavlovsk in October with water critically low.