Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)

Well written history of an unbelievable journey of exploration and discovery. Difficult to imagine. The strength of these amazing men.

I have read a lot of books about Arctic and Antarctic exploration. This was a story I had not heard about, so it was definitely worth purchasing, but the book is a little slow and confusing. Would love to have more maps and more character development.

A good story of exploration, but the book is misnamed. The blue foxes don't come into play until near the end of the expedition. And even then they only serve to terrorize the visiting humans. But it's still a good story. Read it.

Like the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish Empires, the Russian Empire also had ambitions to expand globally and attain prominence through discovery, conquest as well as research and findings. This was largely inspired and promoted by Czar Peter I aka Peter the Great in the 17th Century. The result was to send an expedition starting in European Russia and eventually sailing from Kamchatka in Siberia in hopes of discovering land across the north Pacific, hence, North America. And what a tough undertaking that turned out to be in the 1740s. First, the expedition, which consisted mostly of Russians,but also had a number of leading prominent naval officers from Denmark (most famous of which was Vitus Bering) and scientists from present-day Germany, had to travel thousands of miles across uninhabitable and largely unchartered Siberia, build two ships from scratch and sail to what later became Alaska, not knowing where they were going or how long the journey would take. Throughout the journey, the men battled a brutal climate, deteriorating ship conditions, hostile wildlife, disease, starvation, as well as interpersonal conflict. A very fascinating adventure about a little known chapter in Russian history well written by Stephen Brown in Island of the Blue Foxes.

I really enjoyed this book. It was recommended after I finished reading The Company (Hudson Bay Company history). Both books were about exploration into the unknown. The Company moved West for economic reasons but the sailors, captains, etc... Sailed off in the unknown in the hopes of expansion for Imperial Russia.

It is amazing to me that this story has been ignored for so long, but in part it appears that it was Russian historical secrecy that prevented details from coming to light. It is not only a tale of one of the great exploratory expeditions ever, but a tale of how the Russian government's incompetent and clueless oversight of the expedition not only impeded its execution and progress, but actually killed a number of men in the process. The book is worth reading for the history alone, but unfortunately Bown's poor writing style is a severe impediment to true enjoyment. Coincidentally, I read Hampton Sides' The Wide Wide Sea before this book, and there is no comparison. Bown makes classic rookie mistakes such as too-long sentences, paragraph breaks that make no sense, spoiler revelations regarding future events, and so on. Perhaps he did not have good editors - the book could have been so much better. It is almost too bad that Sides or a similar good writer did not take on this project. So, an interesting tale, but poorly written compared to many other historical accounts.

Highly recommend this book. True story told in such a descriptive and creative way that it kept me riveted and left me in awe!

I served in the Coast Guard on Kodiak island in the 80s. I learned then of the Russian history in the North Pacific. But I have never read an account of the exploits of Bering and expedition until now. It’s really unimaginable the feats and accomplishments, the pain and suffering these explorers experienced. I enjoy reading survival stories and this has to be the most epic one of all.

The book's description says it all `...adventure and historic achievement, shipwreck, endurance and...tragic and ghastly suffering.' Tsar Peter attempted to drag Russia into the second millennium and one of his scheme was a great expedition to investigate its furthest reaches: Siberia (nominally in Peter's empire, but a lawless wilderness), and its northern pacific coast. Behring's expedition of 1733 was partly intended to show the world that Russia wasn't the country of barbaric peasants they believed it to be (rightly); but Behring was instructed to explore, find routes discover resources, set up trading posts, found industries and educate the natives and all this before building ships to navigate the stormy and freezing waters of the Pacific and survey the unknown North American coast, now known as Alaska. The only settlements on the route were little more than villages, quite incapable of supporting such a huge party and instead of three years the few survivors arrived back 10 years later after some amazing strokes of luck but also after months of starvation, shipwreck, and scurvy, only to find a new government that had turned its back on Peter's reforms and which did what it could to conceal the results the expedition. A readable account of an almost forgotten group of heroes.

Very interesting and well written and documented story of a part of history I knew little about. Other histories of explorers and their trials that I've read do not make the hardships endured such a part of the story; as this book does. Amazing that any of them survived. Would like to know more about Russia's 'exploitation' of their new territory in the years before Alaska's sale to the U. S. of A. and why it came about. But that's another story.

Sometimes it reads like a list of bare facts, but then it tells an absorbing tale of the conditions those guys had to put up with; the complete lack of understanding that the government (in the East) had of the way things worked and what was possible in Siberia. Then brings home to the reader how little was really known, in 1730, about geography of the world, human health, and other such (to us) simple things...

A superbly written account of Vitus Bering in his search for Alaska, along with all the historical events charting his steps to achieve Peter the Great of Russia’s goal to put Russia on the map, so to speak. So sad that Bering was never sooner recognised for his achievements - partly because he was Dutch and not Russian! Peter the Great, if he had lived to see it would not have had this bias, as he instructed Bering to take on the voyage in the first place. Enjoy the book.