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Discovering Alaska with Steller - O'Hanlon Heroes (Season 2)

4,015 views · Published 5 April 2018 · 54:31 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: vpro world stories · 2018 · Travel & Events

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O'Hanlon travels in the footsteps of German explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller. Steller heard that in the Petersburg of the Tsar Peter the Great, a certain captain Bering was preparing for a huge journey. The goal was to see where the Russian empire ended in Siberia.

Did it stop somewhere or was Russia attached in the east to the freshly founded America? Could you walk overland from Petersburg to New York? The ambitious Steller wanted to be part of this expedition at all cost. But that was not allowed. While Bering traveled through Siberia with a huge team of scientists and researchers and took almost ten years to reach the east coast of Siberia, Steller stayed in his neighborhood.

In Kamchatka he got a chance to board. Together with Bering he crossed over to the yet undiscovered Alaska. As soon as Bering saw the coast he wanted to turn around in order to be home before the winter storms. After a huge fight Steller disembarked, for a brief moment:just for ten hours. He collected loads of plants, shot a bird from the sky and saw some tools from an Indian. That was his discovery of America. The Russians would still exploit Alaska for a century and a half as a colony. On the way back Bering and a large part of the crew died from scurvy.

No one believed in Steller's advice to eat plants and vegetables. After a year they built a smaller ship from the wood of the wreck, with which they reached the coast of Siberia. Steller would die on his way to Petersburg, half-drunk frozen to death on a sledge. For a long time his name threatened to fall into oblivion. The Russians claimed the discovery of Alaska and did not want to give that honor to a German. Later his papers still remained.

O'Hanlon's Heroes is a series of documentaries in which the British writer Redmond O'Hanlon follows in the footsteps of his heroes: naturalists, explorers and adventurers from the 19th century.

Presented by: Redmond O'Hanlon
Camera: Jackó van 't Hof
Research: Adelheid Kapteijn
Production: Nicole Frints en Nina Huisman
Direction: Roel van Broekhoven
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