Time to read: 14 minutes(s)

Author: Sergey Tashevsky

Is it enough to be famous if three mountains (on Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and Hokkaido), three capes jutting out into the sea, a lake, three islands in two oceans, and a strait in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk are named after you? For a professional sailor, not always. The name of the Dane Martin Spanberg (or Morten Spangsberg in Russian, or Martyn Petrovich Spanberg in Russian) is known to few. It was lost in the background against the backdrop of his famous contemporary and compatriot Vitus Bering, with whom Shpanberg took part in the first and second Kamchatka expeditions.

In essence, Bering was his boss. He became a celebrity, and Shpanberg, who led the “southern” part of Bering’s expedition and on June 18, 1739, was the first to reach the shores of Japan under the Russian flag, was unfairly slandered and almost executed. But some historians believe that in some parallel universe, where court intrigues are shuffled a little differently, everything could have happened the other way around, and leadership of the entire second Kamchatka expedition was planned to be transferred to Martyn Shpanberg. Probably, then his fame could well have eclipsed that of Bering. What kind of man was he, where did he come from?

No one knows for sure. The Danish Biographical Encyclopedia categorically asserts that "his life is unknown until he joined the Russian navy as a lieutenant in 1720." Other, less reliable sources say he was born on December 31, 1696, in Ribe (Danish Holstein), joined the Danish navy at the age of 14, and "was there the entire time during the war that was going on." This refers to the Great Northern War, in which Russia and Denmark were allies.

It ended in 1719, and in 1720 Shpanberg was already hired into the naval service of His Imperial Majesty as a prime lieutenant and soon became commander of a small packet boat that carried mail and goods between Kronstadt and Lübeck, Germany.

He must have proven himself well, since in 1725 he was included in the first Kamchatka expedition, conceived by Peter I. The expedition was led by Vitus Bering, also a Dane, but 15 years older than Spanberg (that is, he could have been his father). Moreover, Bering had spent more than two decades in the service of the Russians and had already risen to the rank of captain of the first rank, so the Emperor trusted him. According to Peter, the main goal of the Kamchatka expedition, in addition to exploring the eastern coast of Russia (about which little was known at the time), was to check whether there was a strait between Asia and America or whether there was an isthmus connecting the continents?

Of course, 80 years before, the merchant Semyon Dezhnev had already sailed in those places on his flimsy kochs and had not found any isthmus, but this now had to be verified by professional sailors. True, Peter himself never learned of the results of these searches, since in 1725, when the expedition set out from St. Petersburg, he had already passed away. But Catherine I did not interfere with the orders of her late husband, and the expedition continued successfully.

In general, Bering's Kamchatka expeditions, which lasted a total of just over 15 years, set a record of sorts, having "outlived" five Russian rulers during the era of upheavals: from Peter I to Biron and the infant Ivan VI, and ending during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna. Most of the new heads of the Russian state couldn't care less about the progress of these studies. And even if not, the distances from St. Petersburg to the expedition members were great, and orders from the capital reached Bering with the same efficiency with which the bitten-off head of a diplodocus could control its tail. Who knows, maybe this is the reason why things were going quite well. Although slowly.

The first Kamchatka expedition travelled from St. Petersburg to Okhotsk in two years, from January 1725 to January 1727. They traveled through Siberia on horses, sometimes rafting down rivers on riverboats. Shpanberg had a special task, on which, in essence, the entire success of the expedition depended: it was under his leadership that ships for transporting cargo were built on the Lena, and then at the mouth of the Kamchatka River he built the expedition’s main seagoing vessel, the boat “Saint Gabriel.” It was on this strait that Bering and Spanberg sailed north and northeast along the continent in the summer of 1728 and entered the Chukchi Sea through the strait, which would later be called the Bering Strait. Many thousands of kilometers of coastline were mapped, and numerous bays and islands were discovered. But no “bridge” between the continents was discovered, and Bering, considering the task completed, went to report to St. Petersburg.

He arrived just in time for the death of Peter II, who, as the chroniclers cautiously wrote, “did not have time to show interest in state affairs” (although who knows whether this is good or bad?). Now everything was ruled by Anna Ioannovna, the niece of Peter I, who, in addition to her love of good times, champagne and fireworks, adored the navy and everything related to navigation. She felt it was her historical mission to continue her uncle’s work and build on the successes of Russian shipbuilders. Therefore, it was not difficult for Bering to persuade her to continue the expedition. It was also necessary to find two routes beyond Kamchatka: a road to America and a route to Japan. This was the purpose of the second Kamchatka expedition, which started in 1733.

During the two years it took her to prepare, Shpanberg somehow settled in St. Petersburg, even got married and started a family. He had two sons. His career also went well - he was promoted to captain of the third rank. And at court, despite his rather prickly character, he apparently made some connections. However, he also made a lot of enemies, which, frankly speaking, is not at all surprising. They say he was a tough, irritable person, “extremely demanding of his subordinates, and intractable with his superiors.” Frankly speaking, his relationship with Bering (even though they were compatriots) was not going well either, but by that time, the two of them were considered the best captains who could be trusted to sail off the coast of Kamchatka.

Perhaps it was for this reason that officials at the Admiralty decided to split the second expedition into two detachments. One, under the command of Bering, was to search for a route to the American coast, and the second, under the command of Shpanberg, was sent in search of the Japanese coast. Formally, the entire expedition was led, as before, by Bering, but Shpanberg now had his own detachment and his own ships. Or rather, he had to build the ships himself in Okhotsk. It took three years.

In 1737, he and his men launched the single-masted brigantine Archangel Michael and the less seaworthy but more capacious double-hulled boat Nadezhda. Plus, they repaired the boat "Saint Gabriel," which had survived the first Kamchatka expedition, and the old boat "Fortuna," which had been lying on the shore for ten years already (in maritime terms, "shitik" means a flat-bottomed boat sewn together with leather straps, no anglicisms there, but the quality of this vessel really turned out to be questionable - it fell apart as soon as it left the shore, and the crew barely escaped). One way or another, Spanberg still had a small flotilla at his disposal, with which he decisively set out to sea at the end of June 1738. He himself led the best ship, the brigantine Saint Gabriel, and the other ships were also commanded by foreigners - captains Walten, Shelting and Ert. At that time, Russia had no other discoverers of new Russian lands.

The first voyage along the western side of the Kuril ridge was successful, and several dozen islands were discovered and mapped (some, as it turned out later, several times, because they were sometimes hidden in the fog, then reappeared from it). But the same fog did not allow us to move further, and at the end of August we had to return to Kamchatka, to Bolsheretsk, where an improvised expedition base was set up. There, during the wintering period, another ship was built, a sloop, logically named "Bolsheretsk". At the beginning of the summer of 1739, the flotilla under the command of Spanberg again went to sea, this time moving along the eastern side of the Kuril ridge. The number of ships has increased, but, judging by everything, there is less discipline.

During the winter, the demanding Spanberg's relationship with almost all the captains in the squadron worsened, especially with William Walton, an Englishman in Russian service who commanded the Saint Gabriel. And, having barely reached the first strip of fog, Walten resolutely went his own way, breaking away from the main detachment. Soon he saw land, which turned out to be one of the Japanese islands, and even spotted a large village. On June 18, the sailors sent ashore entered into negotiations with the Japanese, who behaved in an extremely friendly manner, but they were unable to find a common language with them - and the cautious Walten, noticing armed men on the shore, considered it best to weigh anchor and continue on his way. By the end of the summer, he had safely returned to Bolsheretsk, considering himself the first captain to pave the way from Kamchatka to Japan.

But absolutely synchronously with it (and perhaps a few hours earlier), the ships of the main flotilla also reached the shores of Japan, and arable land, fields, villages, and a boat dock opened up before them. Japanese boats came out to meet them, and the rowers gestured for the sailors to come ashore. However, Spanberg also exercised caution, and, hearing the gong strikes on the shore, decided to weigh anchor as night fell. Who knows what signals they signal there? Perhaps they are calling the people to deal with the aliens? However, he gradually became convinced of the friendliness of the Japanese. The ships moved slowly along the coast, and from village to village they were met with an increasingly warm welcome. Soon, trade in goods from boats began: the Japanese brought rice, tobacco, vegetables, and fish. In return, the sailors gave them wine, clothes, coins and playing cards (the Japanese long considered these pieces of paper received from the Russians to be something like banknotes).

Finally, on June 22, official Chiba Kanshichiro arrived from the prefectural capital, Sendai. Accompanied by other Japanese, he boarded Spanberg's ship, and contact between Russia and Japan finally became an officially confirmed fact. True, the conversation didn’t work out—no one on the ship knew Japanese. Therefore, the dialogue took the form of ritual bows, in which both sides were so diligent that everyone at the meeting began to have lower back pain. To consolidate his success, Shpanberg treated the Japanese to vodka, gave them furs and coins, and showed them Russia on a map. He wrote about his guests in his report:

"The Japanese are of medium to small stature. Their clothing resembles Tatar clothing. They go barefoot and wear no trousers or underpants. They shave their hair from the crown of their heads to their foreheads. At the back, their hair is gathered into a bun. Some Japanese are fair-skinned, but most are dark-skinned. Their eyes are small, their hair is black. Their moustaches are worn curved downwards."

Shpanberg returned to Bolsheretsk and then to Okhotsk as a winner. His reports, sent to St. Petersburg, initially became a sensation. Of course, the first task of the expedition has been accomplished, the way to Japan is open! Bering was just about to set off for the shores of America, but Shpanberg was already sending maps of the Kuril Islands and the Japanese coast to the Admiralty! In St. Petersburg they even considered appointing Shpanberg as head of the entire expedition (after all, Bering was almost 60 years old, and his energy was fading before their eyes). They say that at the beginning of 1740, a corresponding decree was even prepared and sent from St. Petersburg, which stated that command of the Kamchatka expedition was being transferred to him, and Bering was ordered to immediately appear in St. Petersburg “for some deliberation.” But this decree was suddenly revoked halfway through.

And in general, towards the end of 1740, something strange began to happen in Spanberg’s fate. He wanted to quickly build on his success and prepare a new voyage to the shores of Japan in 1741, but for this new ships were needed. They were built in Okhotsk, but Bering laid claim to them. An attempt to negotiate with him led to nothing but a scandal. And soon an order suddenly came from St. Petersburg to cancel Spanberg’s expedition until further notice. Someone wrote a denunciation that he had not been off the coast of Japan at all, but had mistaken the Korean coast for it. Who? It is not known exactly, but under Anna Ioannovna, denunciations were a common thing in Russia; they were taken out of thin air, out of nothing.

But an investigation began that lasted a year. Hardly had it ended, and Shpanberg's rightness had been proven, when a new denunciation followed - this time, navigator Petrov, who had been on the voyage on the Archangel Michael, spoke in the Yakutsk voivode's office "word and deed on point 2" against Shpanberg, that is, accused him of mutiny or treason. Here too, everything was clear: the navigator had accumulated grievances against the demanding captain, as many sailors testified to. But while this and that was going on, Shpanberg himself, who was already on his way to St. Petersburg to personally explain himself “in high offices,” was ordered to remain in place. In Yakutsk, where the investigation took place. That is, now he could neither prove his innocence nor prepare a new expedition. Just sit and wait.

This, of course, was completely out of character for him, and in 1745 Spanberg disobeyed the order by appearing in person at the Admiralty. There he was immediately captured and sentenced to death. He spent two years in prison awaiting execution, but good captains were still needed in Russia, and in 1747 he was pardoned, demoted to the rank of "lieutenant of the navy." A year later, he again stood on the captain's bridge. True, after the death of Anna Ioannovna, the Russian authorities' interest in geographical discoveries temporarily dried up, and the Kamchatka expeditions ceased.

Moreover, at the end of 1741, Vitus Bering, who successfully found a sea route to America and found a grave on one of the islands off the southern coast of Alaska, died (and was forgotten for several decades). However, the Russian state still needed ships for the war, and in the summer of 1749, Shpanberg was entrusted with an important mission: to take the newly built battleship Varakhail from the Solombala shipyard in Arkhangelsk to the White Sea. The task was important and complex; the newly built ship had five treacherous shoals and a tidal current on its way. Shpanberg took all this into account. But he had no idea that the mouth of the Northern Dvina in this place was literally filled with the skeletons of sunken ships. The tidal current picked up the battleship, and its stern rested against the “skeleton” of one of the sunken ships. As a result, the Varakhail capsized and sank. That is, the Russian warship under the command of Shpanberg resolutely headed to a known address, and he, as a man who had been on trial twice, clearly could not expect leniency now.

At the very least, he faced being sent to “galley labor for life”—that was the punishment the court demanded for the already aging captain. But fate once again proved that human merits and sins are not so important to it. At court, one of Anna Ioannovna’s former favorites, who had once favored Shpanberg, gained influence. And in 1752 he was not only released from all charges, but his rank of captain of the first rank was also restored to him. So he met his old age not in prison or in hard labor, and not in a stormy sea, like Bering, but in the bosom of his family, in a St. Petersburg apartment. You could say he was lucky. True, his name is now known only to historians and those captains who often have to sail along the islands of the Kuril ridge, past Cape Spanberg, passing Spanberg Bay, orienting themselves towards the summit of Spanberg. And all this is often hidden in the fog.