Vaksel, Sven

Date of birth unknown; died 1762. Officer in the Russian Navy; member of V. Bering’s second Kamchatka expedition. Of Swedish nationality.

In 1726, Vaksel’ began serving in the Russian Navy as a navigator. In 1741 he completed a voyage to the northwestern shores of America aboard the packet ship St. Peter, under the command of Bering. In August 1742, after Bering’s death, he sailed from Bering Island with the surviving members of the expedition and reached the coasts of Kamchatka. His accounts and map of the voyage of the St. Peter are valuable sources for the study of this expedition. In 1751 he began sailing on the Baltic Sea.