May 21 marks the day of the Russian Pacific Fleet. On this day in 1731, an edict by Empress Anna Ioannovna was issued in Moscow establishing the Okhotsk Military Flotilla based in Okhotsk, which became the first permanent naval unit of Russia in the Far East. The flotilla was engaged in patrol service and the protection of fishing grounds, coastlines, and islands discovered by Russian navigators and explorers.

The development of the military fleet in the Pacific received a new impetus in 1733 when, by the decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna and the Governing Senate, the Great Northern Expedition was organized. As part of this, in June 1740, two 14-gun packet boats, "Saint Peter" and "Saint Paul," each 23 meters long and displacing about 100 tons, were launched in Okhotsk. Captain-commander Vitus Bering and lieutenant commander A. I. Chirikov set sail for the shores of America and Japan. Although the expedition did not achieve all its goals, and Bering died in December 1741 on an island named after him, the collected scientific and cartographic materials partially justified the expenses.

In 1776, in Okhotsk, the Kursk merchant G. I. Shelikhov built a two-masted boat "Saint Paul," on which Russian industrialists set off for the Aleutian Islands and the shores of America. In August 1783, with funds from Shelikhov's company and his partner Golikov, three new ships were launched in Okhotsk. Shelikhov, leading the fishing flotilla, made successful voyages to the Aleutian Islands and the shores of Alaska, laying the foundations for Russian trading posts on American shores.

In 1787 and 1790, the first scientific research expedition of Captain Iosif Billings and Lieutenant Gavriil Sarychev on the vessel "Yasachnaya" surveyed the coastline of the Arctic Ocean east of the Kolyma River and established the possibility of a sea route along the Siberian coast to the Pacific Ocean. The second expedition of Billings and Sarychev on the ship "Glory of Russia" in 1790 and 1791 explored the coast of the Bering Sea.