Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter XIII.
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His charting of Yezo and Saghalin was left to a much
later day,—to La Pérouse, to Krusenstern, Golovnin, and
others. But Spangberg’s expedition nevertheless marks
great progress in our geographical knowledge, for not
only did he irrevocably banish the cartographical myths
of that region, and, on the whole, give a correct
representation of the Kurile islands clear to Iturup, the next
to the last of them, but he also determined the position
of North Japan, and fully accomplished his original
task, namely, to show the Russians the way to Japan,
and thus add this long disputed part of the Northeast
passage to the other explorations for the same purpose.
As was the case with that of all of his colleagues,
so Spangberg’s reputation suffered under the violent
administrative changes and that system of suppression
which later prevailed in Russia. His reports were never
made public. The Russian cartographers made use of
his chart, but they did not understand how to fit
judiciously his incomplete coast-lines to those already
known, or to distinguish right from wrong. They even
omitted the course of his vessel, thus excluding all
possibility of understanding his work. Hence
Spangberg’s chart never reached West Europe, and Cook found
it necessary to reinstate him as well as Bering.[1] After
that the feeling was more favorable, and Coxe,[2] for
instance, used his representation of the Kuriles; but new
and better outlines of this region appeared about this
time, and Spangberg again sank into complete oblivion.
Spangberg’s safe return was a bright spot in the
history of the Great Northern Expedition, and Bering
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