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SOME might call it ambitious, others madness. The Great Northern Expedition, dreamed up by Peter the Great in 1724 and completed five Russian rulers later in 1743, was the biggest, longest scientific expedition in history – undeniably ambitious, then. Thousands of people trekked 8000 kilometres from St Petersburg on Russia’s western coast to Okhotsk on the Pacific, a terrible journey through the roadless and lawless wilds of Siberia. Those who then went on to sail in search of the Great Land (Alaska), endured scurvy and shipwreck. Only the overly optimistic could have believed it anything but madness.
In Island of the Blue Foxes, Stephen Bown has drawn on journals, logs, letters and official reports to piece together a story never fully told before. And what a story: adventure and discovery, misery and death, and a