Aleksei Chirikov
Russian explorer
Aleksei Ilyich Chirikov (Russian: Алексе́й Ильи́ч Чи́риков; 1703 – November 14, 1748) was a Russian navigator and captain who, along with Vitus Bering, was the first Russian to reach the northwest coast of North America. He discovered and charted some of the Aleutian Islands while he was deputy to Vitus Bering during the Great Northern Expedition.
Biography
Early life
Little is known about Chirikov's early life other than that the Russian was born in 1703. There is a claim, which originated in 1941, that he was the son of one of Peter the Great's master carpenters.
It is known that Chirikov began his service in the Russian Imperial Navy in 1716, and later in 1721 he graduated from the Naval Academy with the rank of Sub-lieutenant.
Exploration
In 1725–1730 and 1733–1743, he was Vitus Bering's deputy during the First and the Second Kamchatka expeditions, having been made a captain in 1733.
In June 1741 Chirikov in the St Paul and Vitus Bering in the St Peter, who he was serving under, left Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and headed east. Some time after 20 June they were separated by a storm and never saw each other again. On 15 July 1741 Chirikov saw land at Baker Island off Prince of Wales Island at the south end of the Alaska Panhandle. This was about 450 miles southeast of Bering's landfall near Mount St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aleksei Chirikov” as russian explorer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q32765. VIAF identifies the subject as 52493128. The Library of Congress control number is n92112371. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1703, 1748, 1941 and 1716.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aleksei Chirikov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.