Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
Audiobook10 hours
Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition
Written by Stephen R. Bown
Narrated by Steven Crossley
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told.
The immense eighteenth-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this ten-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history."
The immense eighteenth-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this ten-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history."
Author
Stephen R. Bown
Stephen R. Bown has been writing about adventurers, travelers, and explorers for many years. He is the author of 1494: How a Family Feud in Medieval Spain Divided the world in Half; Madness, Betrayal and the Lash; Scurvy; A Most Damnable Invention; and Merchant Kings. He lives in the Canadian Rockies with his wife and two children.
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Reviews for Island of the Blue Foxes
Rating: 3.937500125 out of 5 stars
4/5
16 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I love learning about slices of history that often go untold. I didn't know anything about this event until I read Island of the Blue Foxes. Brown combines history, science, and maritime to bring this expedition to life.