3 Stars
"During the Age of Sail scurvy was indirectly responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, combat, shipwreck, and all other diseases combined and was in fact the cause of shipwrecks when men who were too ill and weakened to haul ropes or climb the rigging allowed a ship to be driven on the rocks or flounder and be swamped by mighty waves."
Reasons I read this book:
1) Feral blue foxes attack!
2) Kamchatka, my prior knowledge only consisted of the need to acquire and hold it in order to win Risk, the game that never ends.
3) Boats, boats... BOATS
Honestly, there was so much stupidity, bad judgment, and poor leadership that a good portion of the participants deserved to die. Driven by the capricious punishments meted out by the various emperors/empresses that oversaw the Great Expedition an atmosphere of caution blossomed. This affected all persons in power, but ultimately the greatest responsibility lay with Captain Bering, the expedition leader. The need to placate the multitude of subgroups during the arduous land journey labeled the Captain as overly cautious and the other naval officers began to lose confidence even before they built the ships, let alone set sail. This was a monumental endeavor that was poorly planned and like all things depended on supply chain management to succeed, which they had none of. Essentially, the politicians and academics in the cozy city of Moscow had zero understanding of the existing conditions and how ridiculous their expectations were. Nonetheless, as the responsible party, Bering's life was on the line, not just fortune, but he also stood a good chance of being imprisoned if he failed.
What did we get from the Great Expedition? Outrageous debt and provinces that were driven into the ground trying to "host" the multi-thousand person process, opening of the east in a Wild West atmosphere of the tens of thousands of exiled malcontents from Moscow that led to indigenous abuses, and extinctions of animals that only exist in Stellar's records but were abundant when they visited.
And the promise of knowledge that would prove Russia as enlightened, Peter the Great's vision, was stifled so that economic factors could be exploited before a mad rush would ensue.
The story was a bit slow, but excellent documentation, if limited sources, provided by the quotes taken from personal logs. This is well suited to someone coming to it with no knowledge. The first fifty pages was basic Russian history explaining Peter the Great and the impetus for the expedition itself. Other czars/czarinas are mentioned in terms of the court atmosphere and how the changes affected the expedition and its participants, mostly notably, at the onset foreigners were welcomed and fulfilled many positions with the Academy, but by the end most had been turned out.
It was interesting, but the foxes didn't start until page 170 :/
Yes, I am the kind of person that makes Donner Party jokes.
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