Russia at the turn of the 19th centuryTravel and discovery

Billings–Sarychev expedition

The Northeastern Geographical and Astronomical Expedition, fitted out by decree of Catherine the Great under the command of Joseph Billings, an Englishman in Russian service. Over nine years it surveyed the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Aleutian Islands, part of the coast of Alaska and Chukotka.

Date: 25 October (5 November) 1785 – March 1794start: exact date; end: month known · duration: ≈ 8 yearsJulian calendar (Old Style); the Gregorian date (New Style) is in brackets
Place: Okhotsktoday: Okhotsk, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia · Central and Northern Asia
Route: Saint Petersburg → Irkutsk → Yakutsk → Okhotsk → Nizhnekolymsk (mouth of the Kolyma) → Yakutsk → Okhotsk → Petropavlovsk Harbour (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) → Unalaska (Aleutian Islands) → Kodiak Island → Prince William Sound → Petropavlovsk Harbour (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) → Unalaska (Aleutian Islands) → Seward Peninsula → St. Lawrence Bay (Chukotka) → Kolyuchin Bay → Nizhnekolymsk → Yakutsk → Irkutsk → Saint Petersburg
Participants: Russian Empire, Joseph Billings, Gavril Sarychev, Catherine the Great
Threads: Russia at the turn of the 19th century
Also known as: Северо-восточная экспедиция; Экспедиция Биллингса

The expedition left St. Petersburg on 25 October (5 November) 1785 and spent several years preparing in Yakutsk and Okhotsk. It failed to sail around Chukotka either from the west, from the mouth of the Kolyma (1787), or from the east. In 1790, however, the ship Slava Rossii (“Glory of Russia”) sailed along the Aleutian Islands to Kodiak and Prince William Sound, and in 1791 to the coasts of Alaska and Chukotka; in the winter of 1791–1792 Billings and a small party crossed Chukotka by reindeer from St. Lawrence Bay to Nizhnekolymsk.

The main scientific result was the maps and surveys of Gavril Sarychev, to whom Krusenstern later gave most of the credit for the expedition’s success. Its members gathered information about the Chukchi and the Aleuts and reported to St. Petersburg on the oppression of the Aleuts by Russian fur traders. The expedition returned to the capital in March 1794; the route on the map is simplified.

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Related events

Adam Laxman’s embassy to Japan13 (24) September 1792 – 8 (19) September 1793 · East Asiathe 1791 decree on the embassy to Japan allowed one of the Billings expedition’s ships to be used for it