Old postcards Command Islands

The Commander Islands are a treeless archipelago in the south-western Bering Sea. They are named after Captain-Commander Vitus Bering, whose expedition discovered them in 1741; Bering’s grave is on the largest of them, Bering Island. A 1979 card shows his monument there.

The other cards form a nature set from 1975, and its subjects are mostly marine mammals and seabirds: fur seal rookeries, gull colonies and a bird colony on the islet of Ariy Kamen. That islet is a rock about 50 m high, some 6 km west of Bering Island, with no fresh water at all. On Medny, the second largest island, the photographer captured cliffs along the shore of Preobrazheniya Bay.

Another card shows Steller’s Arch, named after Georg Steller, the naturalist of Bering’s expedition, who was shipwrecked with the rest of the crew in 1741 on Bering Island, where the arch stands. The set is rounded out by tundra lakes in the south-east of Bering Island, a sockeye salmon in spawning colours and “Blueberries, crowberries and lingonberries on the Commanders”.

Vintage postcards of the Commander Islands rarely include people; the seals, the birds and the ocean are the real subjects.