Island of the Blue Foxes

by Stephen R. Bown

  And then, only moments from destruction, a huge wave lifted the battered ship over the reef and deposited it in a shallow lagoon near the shore, “as in a placid lake all at once quiet and delivered from all fear of stranding.” It was suddenly calm, and when the sailors dropped the final remaining anchor overboard, it stuck in four fathoms of water with a sandy bottom, approximately six hundred yards from shore. The reef was behind them, locking the ship into the small bay. Steller noted how his nemesis Khitrov seemed to shrink from the responsibility and the terror: “He who until now had been the greatest talker and advice-giver” slunk belowdeck until the danger had passed and then emerged and “began valiantly to preach courage to the men, though he himself was as pale as a corpse.” Nevertheless, it was now calm, the danger had passed, the night was again pleasant, and the sailors, wasted by scurvy and believing they were somewhere in Kamchatka, collapsed into slumber.

  THE BEACH WAS NARROW and bounded by bluffs. Grass-covered dunes stretched back to a base of low snow-covered mountains. This was the view that greeted the sailors when they woke the next day and stared from the deck of the ship toward land. So far, twelve men had died from scurvy, and forty-nine out of sixty-six survivors were officially on the sick list. No one was at full strength, except perhaps Steller, his friend Plenisner, and his servant, Lepekhin. These three were free from scurvy only because of the antiscorbutic herbs collected on Shumagin Island. The St. Peter was now safely in calm water, but it was trapped between the shore and the reef. November was the storm season in a stormy part of the world. The next spell of rough weather was inevitable, and it would either push the ship ashore or drag it onto the reef. Waxell called their placement in this tiny patch of safe water “God’s miraculous, merciful assistance.”

  On the morning of November 7, the sea was so strong that it was eleven o’clock before they could get the longboat lowered to go ashore and inspect the land for a place to set up a camp, get freshwater to replace the brackish water remaining in the six barrels on board, hunt for fresh meat, and search for antiscorbutic plants. Steller, Plenisner, Lepekhin, Waxell, and his young son, Laurentz, along with three sailors and several of the sick, were the first party to be rowed ashore to explore. They brought along some sundry equipment and a large sail to be used as a tent. One of the first “strange and disquieting” things that Steller noted as they closed on the beach was a cluster of sea otters slowly approaching them curiously and a line of small foxes on the bluff—why were these animals on shore in such numbers, and why were they so seemingly unafraid of the boatload of armed men?

  Once ashore they split up. The oarsmen stayed with the sick on the beach near the boat; Plenisner went off hunting along the beach in one direction, the three sailors in the other. Steller, Waxell, Lepekhin, and Waxell’s son hiked toward a nearby stream that was not ice covered and discovered it to be good, clear freshwater suitable for drinking. They saw no trees and no bushes, nothing that could be used for fuel, other than a scattering of driftwood that was difficult to see under the blanket of light snow that covered the beach. They searched for a suitable place for a settlement and found one in a series of sand dunes near the mouth of the stream and the bluff. The pits between the dunes could be used as the foundation of a camp to shelter the sick until a rescue party could arrive. The sand could be built up into walls for protection from the wind, and a sail could be stretched over them to keep off the snow and rain. Perhaps some driftwood could be collected to build up the sides and roof. An added bonus was that the urine from sick men unable to move would drain away easily through the sand.

  While Waxell and his son returned to the longboat to help the first batch of sick mariners move to their new home, Steller and Lepekhin wandered farther into the dunes to inspect the local flora for possible antiscorbutics. Steller collected some small plants that were commonly used in salads in northern Europe: bachbung, American brooklime, nasturtium-like herbs, and other crucifers still collectible beneath the snow. He then returned to help Waxell, whom he found “very weak and faint,” still waiting at the boat by the water’s edge. As they huddled on the beach below the treeless dunes, clasping cups of warm tea, Steller remarked, “God only knows if this is Kamchatka.” Waxell replied briskly, “What else would it be? We will soon send for post-horses and will have the ship taken to the mouth of the Kamchatka River by Cossacks. The most important thing now is to save the men.” Soon after this conversation, Plenisner strolled down the beach, clutching six large ptarmigan that he had shot. Waxell rowed back to the ship with several of the birds and Steller’s salad, specifically intended for Bering, while Steller made a soup from the remaining birds, boiled in a large pot. As it grew dark, the three other sailors returned, dragging two sea otters and two seals, “news which appeared quite remarkable to us.” It was easy to hunt here. The shore party slept that first night huddled under a sail propped up by some driftwood, while most of the men still lay suffering from scurvy on the ship.

  The next few days were filled with drizzle and snow. The shore party continued their investigations of the land and hunted animals for food, while the men on the St. Peter worked to secure the ship for the winter and tend to the sick. Over the next weeks, the few reasonably able-bodied men began ferrying the sick and supplies to the stony, mist-enshrouded shore and to enlarge the pits in the sand dunes so that they could be used as the foundation for tents. Getting the dozens of sick from the ship to the shore was the first priority. Many of the mariners who hovered at death’s door passed quietly away as soon as they were brought from the befouled interior of the ship into the clean air, others died on the boat ride to the beach, and others perished once they set foot on land. Waxell recorded that sailor Ivan Emelianov, cannoneer Ilya Dergachev, and Siberian soldier Vasili Popkov died on board before they could be moved ashore, while sailor Seliverst Tarakanov died as he was being landed. One man, upon being told he was going ashore in the next boat, became so excited he got up, dressed himself, and proclaimed, “God be praised that we are going ashore; there we will be able to manage better and even do something to help our own recovery.” He then dropped over on the deck, dead. Savin Stepanov, Nikita Ostvin, Mark Antipin, Andreyan Eselberg—the ship’s log records the near-daily deaths from scurvy, some on board the ship, others in the growing tent colony. Because all the men were enfeebled, the work of unloading the sick men and supplies from the ship progressed achingly slowly, especially when the rough water and unruly waves made rowing the longboat dangerous.

  Meanwhile, Steller, Plenisner, Lepekhin, and several other sailors continued to hunt and explore the new land, the land where they all now knew they would be spending the winter. Behind the beach beyond the bluffs, there was a stony scrub-covered slope with low snowy mountains extending in the distance. Steller began to have serious doubts that they had reached Kamchatka. His view was based primarily on observations of the natural world. The plants he collected were similar to those found on Kamchatka, but some were of the type he had seen and collected in Alaska during the summer. There were no trees and no familiar shrubs. Most tellingly, the animals seemed to have no experience with humans. The ptarmigan could be easily caught at close range; the sea otters floated close to shore and were easily shot, as were seals.

  Along the shore, he and Plenisner spied the huge slow-moving back of a whalelike animal that lingered offshore and undulated up every few minutes for a great breath of air that sounded like a horse snorting. Steller had never seen or heard of such an animal. It was not a whale and was much too large to be any other marine mammal he had ever seen or read about. His servant, Lepekhin, likewise concurred that no such creature existed in Kamchatka. “I began to doubt that this was Kamchatka,” Steller wrote, “especially as the sea sky overhead in the south indicated sufficiently that we were on an island surrounded by the sea.” It was the “water sky” common in the Arctic, where the open water could be seen darkly reflected in the bottom of clouds. When he quietly raised his suspicions with others, he was met no
t with the scorn that had often been directed his way before, but with denial. He again brooded on “the unjust conduct of various persons,” by whom he meant Waxell and especially Khitrov, his tormentor. Even his friend Plenisner would not accept the truth of their situation. Perhaps it was too awful to contemplate. If they were not on Kamchatka, then they were not anywhere known, not on any chart or map, and there would be no aid from nearby Russian outposts, not now, not ever.

  Steller suspected that they might not just be the only people on the island but perhaps the only people ever to have visited it. This time Steller’s speculations were correct. They had landed on what would later be known as Bering Island. The small bay was the only safe place a ship could have come ashore along the 140-mile coastline of the island. The entire island is surrounded by the shelving rocks of an encircling reef, except for this one inlet. Waxell wrote that “the place to which we had come was so narrow that had we been but 20 fathoms farther to the north or south, we would have become hung up on a shelf of rock and from there not one of us would have escaped.”

  THE SECOND NIGHT ASHORE, Steller, Plenisner, and Lepekhin had their first encounter with one creature that not only confirmed Steller’s theory that the local animals had not had contact with humans before, but would also be a defining presence of their winter: the blue foxes, a subspecies of the Arctic fox, Vulpes beringensis. There appeared to be unlimited numbers of them, and they weren’t shy. The two men shot eight of them right away, and Steller noted that “the number and fatness of which as well as the fact that they were not shy astonished me exceedingly.” As the three men sat around a small fire nursing cups of tea after a meal of ptarmigan soup, a blue fox brazenly strolled up and snatched away two ptarmigan “right before our eyes.”

  Within days of the mariners shambling up the beach to make camp in the dunes, they all became intimately familiar with the blue foxes of the island. When the men set about constructing shelter against the approaching winter by enlarging the series of burrows Steller and Waxell had found near the dunes and the river, a pack of snarling blue foxes rushed up and began tearing at the cloth of sailors’ pants and had to be driven away with kicks and shouts. Without knowing it, the sailors had chosen a contested spot for their camp: the dunes had been the temporary or seasonal burrows of the foxes. Having lived undisturbed for ages, the animals fought for their territory. This battle of the species was most violent and cruel in the first few weeks and dragged on for months. Steller later reported that the foxes had other dwelling places, and in the summer “they especially like to have their lairs up in the mountains or on the edges of the mountains.” For most of November and December, however, they were particularly drawn to the human camp in the sand dunes.

  The sailors dug out and enlarged the burrows and banged together a rude framework of driftwood to which they affixed fox hides and the remnants of the tattered sails. But the work progressed slowly, as even those who could rouse themselves could barely stand, let alone do heavy work. Men continued to die routinely, and there was no room in the makeshift shelters to house the corpses. Hordes of foxes swarmed about the makeshift camp, drawn down from the snow-covered hills by the scent of food. Becoming increasingly aggressive, they stole clothing and blankets and dragged away tools and utensils. In one three-hour period, Steller and Plenisner killed sixty, stabbing them and hacking at them with an ax, and used their dead frozen bodies to shore up the walls of the huts. The foxes “crowded into our dwellings and stole everything they could carry away, including articles that were of no use to them, like knives, sticks, bags, shoes, socks, caps.… While skinning animals it often happened that we stabbed two or three with our knives because they wanted to tear the meat from our hands.” They also came during the night, ripping clothes from the helpless sick, pulling at their boots until driven away. “One night when a sailor on his knees wanted to urinate out of the door of the hut, a fox snapped at the exposed part and, in spite of his cries, did not soon want to let go. No one could relieve himself without a stick in his hand, and they immediately ate up the excrement as eagerly as pigs.” The foxes would creep into the camp at any hour and defecate or urinate on garments or provisions, befouling them, or attempt the same on sleeping men. Most disturbing was Waxell’s report that the foxes “ate the hands and feet of the corpses before we had time to bury them.”

  To preserve themselves, the mariners were driven to mindless slaughter, bashing and hacking at the kits as well as the adults, torturing them when possible. “Every morning,” Steller wrote, “we dragged by their tails for execution before the Barracks our prisoners who had been captured alive, where some were beheaded, others had their legs broken or one leg and the tail hacked off. Of some we gouged out the eyes; others were strung up alive in pairs by their feet so they would bite each other to death. Some were singed, others flogged to death with the cat-o’-nine tails.” Nevertheless, the foxes persisted throughout the months, even returning after their torture, limping on three legs behind their comrades, snarling and barking just as loudly as the rest. The men sometimes skinned a dead fox and tossed it into a nearby ditch, whereupon dozens of others would rush in to devour their fallen comrade and then be clubbed to death themselves. Although Steller was usually very particular and specific in his observations of the natural world, when the subject of the pestiferous blue foxes comes up, a slight taint of disrespect creeps into his writing. “They stink much worse than the red foxes,” he stated. “In rutting time they buck day and night and like dogs bite each other cruelly for jealousy. Copulation itself takes place amid much caterwauling like cats.”

  But they dared not exterminate them, if indeed that would have been possible in their pitiful state, in case it should prove necessary to eat them later if the sea otters or seals disappeared. They all dreaded the “necessity of eating the stinking, disgusting, and hated foxes.”

  BY MID-NOVEMBER, STELLER had observed that the men ashore were dying less frequently than the ones on ship, recovering slowly on a diet that included some native plants as a salad and the fresh soup of sea otters and seals and ptarmigan. Shipboard, while Waxell and Khitrov continued to supervise the transfer of men and equipment and supplies ashore and worked to secure the ship to weather the winter, men were still dying nearly daily. The situation looked dire, with work progressing slowly, the weather getting more fierce, and the attacks of the foxes unrelenting.

  The quasi-military discipline that had structured relationships for the past years was weakened in the great hardships. Orders were not forcefully bellowed; there were no prompt salutes to authority or hierarchy. Mutiny may have been in the air, or at the very least efforts at self-preservation. But the officers were still the best managers and able to marshal whatever natural authority they possessed. Junior officers such Aleksei Ivanov, the boatswain’s mate, and Luka Alekseyev, the quartermaster, rose in estimation by force of character, while the authority of Khitrov and to a lesser extent Waxell diminished, as did the artificial authority of naval command. Waxell called Ivanov “a tower of strength when we were in trouble.” And although Waxell gave no specific example of this strength, or indeed any other information about the man, Ivanov may have been good at comforting and reassuring the sick and dying and organizing parties to build and maintain shelter and hunt and collect driftwood.

  Steller’s servant, Lepekhin, who was growing weak and sick with scurvy during the first week ashore, upbraided his erstwhile master for bringing him on the voyage and leading him to this miserable fate. Taken aback, Steller wisely chose a diplomatic response, what he called “the first step to our future companionship.” Instead of growing angry, he calmly said, “Be of good cheer. God will help. Even if this is not our country we still have hope of getting there; you will not starve; if you cannot work and wait on me, I will do it for you. I know your upright nature and what you have done for me—all that I have belongs to you also; only ask and I will divide with you equally until God helps.” This wisdom and insight during the shipwreck were
at odds with his caustic manners during the voyage. But Lepekhin was bitter and living in fear of scurvy. “Good enough,” he claimed slowly. “I will gladly serve Their Majesties, but you have brought me into this misery. Who compelled you to go with these people? Could you not have enjoyed the good times on the Bolshaya River?” Steller laughed at this show of disobedience or insubordination. “We are both alive!” he exclaimed and then assured Lepekhin that he could not have known the disaster would befall them and that he in any event now had a lifelong friend in Steller. “My intentions were good Thomas, so let yours be good also. You do not know what might have happened to you at home.”

  This conversation, previously unthinkable under the old regime where a servant never questioned a master, opened Steller’s eyes to something not fully apparent to everyone. In the face of starvation and death, nothing was the same, no one could expect special treatment, and no life was more valuable than another. He realized that “rank, learning, and other distinctions would be of no sustenance; therefore before being driven to it by shame or necessity, we ourselves decided to work with what strength we still had left, so as not to be laughed at afterward or wait until we were ordered.”

  The dozens of men now on the beach certainly had a shared purpose and goal: to survive. But with so many sick and no clear or obvious means of achieving this objective, Steller knew smaller groups could better respond to the needs of their members. Soon after landing, he had formed a small communal group with Plenisner and Lepekhin, and they invited the assistant surgeon, Berge, to join them. They pledged to share a dwelling and work toward their joint survival. The original group agreed to share everything, including survival tasks such as hunting and cooking. Their group soon grew by three Cossacks and two of Bering’s servants, with all decisions of the semi-independent band being made jointly. They began to call each other “more politely by their patronymics and given name,” in an effort to solidify group loyalty and help sustain their “miserable existence.” Soon, other members of the former ship’s company also organized themselves into distinct groups.