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Preparations

Bering soon proposed a second Kamchatka expedition, much more ambitious than the first and with an explicit aim of sailing east in search of North America. The political situation in the Russian Empire was difficult, however, and this meant delays. In the interim, the Berings enjoyed their new-found status and wealth: there was a new house and a new social circle for the newly ennobled Berings. Bering also made a bequest to the poor of Horsens, had two children with Anna and even attempted to establish his familial coat of arms. The proposal, when it was accepted, would a significant affair, which involved 600 people from the outset and several hundred added along the way. Though Bering seems to have been primarily interested in landing in North America, he recognised the importance of secondary objectives: the list of which expanded rapidly under the guidance of planners Nikolai Fedorovich Golovin (head of the Admiralty); Ivan Kirilov, a highly ranked politician with an interest in geography, and Andrey Osterman, a close adviser of the new Empress, Anna Ivanovna. As Bering waited for Anna to solidify her grip on the throne, he and Kirilov worked to find a new, more dependable administrator to run Okhotsk and to begin work on improving the roads between Yakutsk and the coastal settlement. Their choice for the post of administrator, made remotely, was Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev; possibly the least bad candidate, he would nevertheless turn out to be a poor choice. In any case, Skornyakov-Pisarev was ordered in 1731 to proceed to Okhotsk, with directions to expand it into a proper port. He did not leave for Okhotsk for another four years, by which time Bering's own expedition (in time for which Okhotsk was supposed to have been prepared) was not far off.

In 1732, however, Bering was still at the planning stage in Moscow, having taken a short leave of absence for St. Petersburg. The better positioned Kirilov oversaw developments, eyeing up not only the chance of discovering North America, but of mapping the whole Arctic coast, finding a good route south to Japan, landing on the Shantar Islands and even making contact with Spanish America. On 12 June the Senate approved resources to fund an academic contingent for the expedition, and three academics – Johann Georg Gmelin (a natural historian), Louis de l'Isle de la Croyère (an astronomer), and Gerhard Friedrich Müller (an anthropologist) – were selected by the Academy of Sciences. Owen Brazil, a Moscow native but of Irish descent, was selected as the expedition's quartermaster and was placed in charge of packaging and storing supplies, such as fudge, sausages and biscuits. Bering was wary of this expansion in the proposed size of the whole expedition, given the food shortages experienced on the first voyage. Proposals were made to transports goods or men to Kamchatka by sea via Cape Horn, but these were not approved. Other than a broad oversight role, Bering's personal instructions from the Admiralty were surprisingly simple. Given on 16 October 1732, they amounted only to recreating his first expedition, but with the added task of heading east and finding North America (a feat which had in fact just been completed by Mikhail Gvozdev, though this was not known at the time). The suggestion was made that Bering share more of his command with the Chirikov, suggesting that the 51-year-old Bering was slowly being edged out. Elsewhere, instructions were sent ahead to Yakutsk, Irkutsk and Okhotsk to aid Bering's second expedition – and thus, the naivety of the first expedition in assuming compliance was repeated. Further follies included plans to send ships north along the rivers Ob and Lena towards the Arctic.