Exercises

HISTORY

OF RUSSIAN SEAFARING

Учебное пособие для студентов 1 курса

Владивосток

UNIT I

How Russian explorers reached the Pacific Ocean,

1636 – 1644

The advance of Russian explorers into Siberia began after the famous campaign of Yermak (1581 - 1584). Within a period of 55 years they covered a distance of 7,000 km from the Ural mountains up to the Pacific Ocean. They annexed Northern Asia to Russia, making it the biggest country in the world.

In 1636, a company of 50 Cossacks headed by Ataman Dmitry Kopylov set out for the Lena territory.

From the Lena settlement (later called Yakutsk) the Cossacks set out to collect yassak (government tax) from the natives living along the river Lena and its numerous tributaries. From them the Cossacks learned about the great lands and rivers lying beyond the mountains to the east, but the Cossacks were too small in number to proceed farther eastwards, and Kopylov decided to wait for reinforcements from Tomsk. After the arrival of the Tomsk Cossacks, Kopylov and his company started for the river Aldan.

The inhabitants of Aiven told the Cossacks that beyond the Djugdjur range lay the Lama, as they called the Okhotsk Sea, and told them how to get there. In spring Ataman Kopylov ordered Ivan Moskvitin to set out with 31 of his men to explore the new sea and the lands around it and find out what the people living there were like.

Our explorers first went up the river Aldan; they sailed for seven weeks up its tributary Maya; and it took them another six weeks to go up the latter's tributaries and reach the watershed. The journey was extremely difficult, as most of the way the boats had to be towed or punted upstream. So easier was crossing of the Djugdjur mountains, after which the Cossacks went down the river Ulya, finally reaching the Okhotsk Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

In the winter of 1639, at the mouth of the river Ulya, (not far from the present town of Okhotsk) the Cossacks built several huts, surrounding them with a fence and a moat. That was the first Russian settlement on the Pacific coast.

The Amur was reached five years later, in the summer of 1644, by Vasili Poyarkov and a company of 60 Cossacks.

In their reports to the governors the Cossacks scarcely mentioned the hardships they had suffered. A few lines only give an idea of what they endured: “On our way to the Lama (Okhotsk Sea) we had to eat the bark of trees, grass and tree roots, but in the Lama and the rivers there are fish in plenty”.

Such were the difficulties the Russians had to overcome when making their way to the Pacific Ocean.

Exercises

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