Faddey Faddeevich Bellingshausen Antarctica. Russian expedition discovered Antarctica
Faddey Faddeevich Bellingshausen
Main events
Discovery of Antarctica
pinnacle of career
Order of Vladimir I class, Order of the White Eagle, Order of St. Alexander Nevsky with an award of diamond signs to him two years later, Order of St. George IV degree
Faddey Faddeevich Bellingshausen(at birth Fabian Gottlieb Tadeus von Bellingshausen, (German) Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen ; September 20, 1778 - January 25, 1852 (aged 73) - Russian naval figure, navigator, admiral (1843). In 1803-1806. participated in the first Russian round-the-world voyage on the Nadezhda ship under the command of Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern. Returning to Russia, he served in the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. In 1819-1821. he headed the round-the-world expedition on the sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny", during which on January 28, 1820, the "ice mainland" - Antarctica and a number of islands in the Pacific Ocean was discovered.
Biography
Childhood
From early childhood I wanted to connect my life with the sea: "I was born among the sea; just as a fish cannot live without water, so I cannot live without the sea." In 1789 he entered the Kronstadt Naval Cadet Corps. He became a midshipman and in 1796 sailed to the coast of England.
Service before circumnavigation
In 1797 he became a midshipman - received his first officer rank. In 1803-1806, Bellingshausen served, which became part of the expedition of I. F. Krusenstern and Yu. F. Lisyansky, who made the first Russian circumnavigation.
Bellingshausen's abilities were noticed by the commander of the Kronstadt port, who recommended it to Kruzenshtern, under whose leadership, in 1803-1806, on the ship "Nadezhda", Bellingshausen made the first circumnavigation of the world, compiling almost all the maps included in the "Atlas of Captain Krusenstern's trip around the world."
In 1810-1819 he commanded various ships in the Baltic and Black Seas.
Circumnavigation. Discovery of Antarctica
Route of Bellingshausen and Lazarev From the Atlas of the History of Geographical Discoveries and Research. 1959
In preparation for the second Russian circumnavigation, organized with the approval of Emperor Alexander the First, Krusenstern recommended that Bellingshausen be made its leader. The main goal of the campaign was designated by the Naval Ministry as purely scientific: "the discovery of the possible proximity of the Antarctic Pole" with the aim of "acquiring the most complete knowledge of the globe."
In the summer of 1819, Captain 2nd Rank Faddey Faddeevich Bellingshausen was appointed commander of the sailing sloop Vostok and head of the expedition to discover the sixth mainland. The second sloop - "Peace", was commanded by a young lieutenant Mikhail Lazarev.
Leaving Kronstadt on June 4, 1819, the expedition arrived on November 2 in Rio de Janeiro. From there, Bellingshausen first headed straight south and, rounding the southwestern coast of New Georgia Island, discovered by Cook, about 56 ° S. sh. discovered 3 islands of the Marquis de Traversay, examined the southern Sandwich Islands, went east along 59 ° S. sh. and twice went further south, as far as the ice allowed, reaching 69 ° S. sh.
"Vostok" and "Mirny" off the coast of Antarctica
In January 1820, the ships of the expedition approached the coast of Antarctica and explored the coastal ice shelf on their way to the east. Thus, a new continent was discovered, which Bellingshausen called “ice”. They discovered Antarctica by approaching it at the point 69 ° 21 "28" S. sh. and 2° 14" 50" W (the area of the modern ice shelf), on February 2 the coast was seen from the ships for the second time. And on the seventeenth and eighteenth of February, the expedition came close to the shore.
After that, in February and March 1820, the ships separated and set off for Australia (Port Jackson, now Sydney) across the waters of the Indian and Southern Oceans (55° latitude and 9° longitude), not yet visited by anyone. From Australia, the sloops of the expedition went to the Pacific Ocean, where a number of islands and atolls were discovered (Bellingshausen, Vostok, Simonov, Mikhailov, Suvorov, Russians and others), others visited (Grand Duke Alexander Island) when they returned to Port Jackson.
In November, the ships of the expedition again went to the south polar seas, visiting Macquarie Island at 54 ° S. sh., south of New Zealand. From there, the expedition went straight south, then east, and crossed the Arctic Circle three times. January 10, 1821 at 70°S sh. and 75° W. Navigators stumbled upon solid ice and were forced to go north, where they were open between 68 ° and 69 ° S. sh. the island of Peter I and the coast of Alexander I, after that they came to the islands of Nova Scotia. In August 1821, after a 751-day campaign, the expedition returned to Kronstadt.
Significance of the expedition
Bellingshausen's voyage is rightfully considered one of the most important and difficult ever made. Back in the 70s of the XVIII century, the famous Cook was the first to reach the south polar seas and, having met solid ice in several places, declared further penetration to the south impossible. They took his word for it, and for forty-five years there were no campaigns in the south polar latitudes.
Bellingshausen was able to prove the fallacy of this opinion and did a lot to explore the south polar countries in the midst of constant labor and danger, on two small sloops that were not suitable for sailing in ice.
Also, Bellingshausen tried to find the possibility of passage of sea ships into the Amur River. The attempt was unsuccessful. He could not find the fairway in the Amur Estuary. In addition, due to the weather, it was not possible to dispel La Perouse's erroneous opinion that Sakhalin is a peninsula.
In total, 29 islands and 1 coral reef were discovered in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans during 751 days of the expedition's voyage. 92.000 km have been covered. The expedition brought valuable botanical, zoological and ethnographic collections with them.
After the circumnavigation
Upon returning from the voyage, Bellingshausen was promoted to the rank of captain of the 1st rank, two months later to the rank of captain-commander and was awarded "for impeccable service, in officer ranks, 18 six-month naval campaigns" with the Order of St. George IV degree. In 1822-1825 he commanded the 15th naval crew, and then was appointed Zeichmeister General of the Naval Artillery and General of the Naval Ministry on duty. In 1825 he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir II degree.
After the accession to the throne of Emperor Nicholas I, Bellingshausen was appointed a member of the committee for the formation of the fleet and in 1826 was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral.
In 1826-1827 he commanded a detachment of ships in the Mediterranean Sea.
Commanding the Guards crew, Faddey Faddeevich participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 and was awarded the Order of St. Anna of the 1st degree for distinction in the capture of Messevria and Inada.
On December 6, 1830, he was promoted to the rank of vice admiral and appointed head of the 2nd division of the Baltic Fleet. In 1834 he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
In 1839, the honored sailor was appointed chief commander of the Kronstadt port and military governor-general of Kronstadt. Every year, during the naval campaign, Bellingshausen was appointed commander of the Baltic Fleet, for his services in 1840 he was awarded the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky with an award of diamond signs to him two years later. In 1843 he was promoted to the rank of admiral and in 1846 he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir I degree.
He died in Kronstadt at the age of 73.
In 1870 a monument was erected to him in Kronstadt.
Personal characteristics according to the memoirs of contemporaries
During the search for the leader of the second Russian circumnavigation of the world, Kruzenshtern recommended Captain 2nd Rank Bellingshausen with the following words: “Our fleet, of course, is rich in enterprising and skillful officers, but of all of them, whom I know, no one except Golovnin can equal Bellingshausen. "
Influence on descendants
Bellingshausen's book: "Double surveys in the South Polar Ocean and sailing around the world" (St. Petersburg, 1881) has not lost its relevance so far, although it has already become rare.
Perpetuation of memory (monuments, places, etc. named after the hero, etc.)
At the beginning of the XIX century. ships of the Russian fleet made a number of round-the-world trips. These expeditions have enriched world science with major geographical discoveries, especially in the Pacific Ocean. However, the vast expanses of the Southern Hemisphere still remained a blank spot on the map. The question of the existence of the southern mainland was not clarified either.
Sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny"
In 1819, after a long and very thorough preparation, the southern polar expedition set off from Kronstadt on a long voyage, consisting of two sloops-of-war, Vostok and Mirny. The first was commanded by Thaddeus Faddeevich Bellingshausen, the second - by Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev. The crew of the ships consisted of experienced, seasoned sailors.
The Naval Ministry appointed Captain Bellingshausen as head of the expedition, who already had extensive experience in long-distance sea voyages.
Bellingshausen was born on Ezel Island (Sarema Island in the Estonian SSR) in 1779. “I was born in the middle of the sea,” he later said about himself, “like a fish cannot live without water, so I cannot live without the sea ".
The boy was ten years old when he was sent to study at the Naval Cadet Corps in Kronstadt. As a cadet, young Bellingshausen sailed to the shores of England during summer practice. After graduating from the Naval Corps at the age of 18, he received the rank of midshipman.
In 1803-1806. the young sailor took part in the first Russian round-the-world voyage on the Nadezhda ship under the command of the talented and experienced navigator I.F. Kruzenshtern. During the expedition, Bellingshausen was mainly engaged in mapping and astronomical observations. These works have been highly commended.
The commander of the Mirny sloop MP Lazarev was born in 1788 in the Vladimir province. Together with his two brothers, he also entered the Naval Corps. During training, he first visited the sea and fell in love with him forever.
Mikhail Petrovich began his service in the Navy in the Baltic Sea. He participated in the war between Russia and Sweden and distinguished himself in a naval battle on August 26, 1808. In 1813, during the war for the liberation of Germany from the Napoleonic yoke, Lazarev took part in operations to land troops and bombard the city of Danzig, and in this campaign he recommended himself as a brave, resourceful and diligent officer.
After the end of the war, Lieutenant Lazarev was appointed commander of the Suvorov ship sent to Russian America. This circumnavigation of the Russians enriched geographical science with new discoveries. In the Pacific Ocean, Lazarev discovered a group of unknown islands, which he named after Suvorov.
In sailing around the world, which was a good practical school for Lazarev, he proved himself to be a talented organizer and commander. And it is not surprising that it was he who was appointed assistant chief of the new round-the-world expedition.
On July 16, 1819, the ships Vostok and Mirny, which made up the Southern Division (see p. 364, Northern Division), weighed anchor and left their native Kronstadt roadstead to the salute of coastal artillery batteries. There was a long journey to unknown countries. The expedition was given the task of how to fully penetrate further to the south in order to finally resolve the question of the existence of the southern mainland.
In the major English port of Portsmouth, Bellingshausen stayed for almost a month to replenish provisions, purchase chronometers and various nautical instruments.
In early autumn, with a fair wind, the ships headed across the Atlantic Ocean to the coast of Brazil. The weather was favorable for swimming. Rare and weak storms did not disturb the routine of life on ships. From the very first days of the voyage, scientific observations were made, which Bellingshausen and his assistants carefully and in detail recorded in the logbook. Daily under the guidance of Prof. Kazan University astronomer Simonov officers were engaged in astronomical observations and calculations of the geographical position of the ship.
After 21 days of navigation, the sloops approached the island of Tenerife. While the crews of the ships stocked up on fresh water and provisions, the officers explored the mountainous picturesque island.
Further navigation took place in the zone of constant northeast trade winds with a cloudless sky. The progress of sailing ships has accelerated significantly. Having reached 10 ° with. sh., the sloops entered a period of calm, common for equatorial places. Sailors measured air and water temperatures at different depths, studied currents, and collected collections of marine animals. The ships crossed the equator, and soon, with a favorable southeast trade wind, the sloops approached Brazil and anchored in a beautiful, convenient bay, on the banks of which the city of Rio de Janeiro stretches. It was a big, dirty city, with narrow streets filled with stray dogs.
At that time, the slave trade flourished in Rio de Janeiro. With a feeling of indignation, Bellingshausen wrote: “There are several shops here in which Negroes are sold: adult men, women and children. At the entrance to these vile shops, one sees several rows of sitting Negroes covered with scabies, the small ones in front, and the big ones behind ... The buyer, having chosen a slave at will, leads him out of the rows forward, examines his mouth, feels his whole body, beats with his hands but different parts, and after these experiments, confident in the strength and health of the Negro, he buys him ... All this produces disgust for the inhuman owner of the shop.
Stocking up on provisions and checking the chronometers, the ships left Rio de Janeiro, heading south into the unknown regions of the polar ocean.
In the temperate zone of the South Atlantic Ocean, a coolness began to be felt in the air, although the southern summer was already beginning. The farther south, the more birds were encountered, especially petrels. Whales swam by in large herds.
At the end of December 1819, the sloops approached South Georgia Island. The sailors began to describe and survey its southern coast. The northern side of this mountainous island, covered with snow and ice, was mapped by the English navigator James Cook. The ships moved slowly forward, maneuvering very carefully among the floating ice.
Soon Lieutenant Annenkov discovered and described a small island, which was named after him. Bellingshausen on the way forward made several attempts to measure the depth of the ocean, but the lot did not reach the bottom. At that time, no scientific expedition attempted to measure the depth of the ocean. Bellingshausen was many decades ahead of other researchers in this; unfortunately, the technical means of the expedition did not allow us to solve this problem.
Then the expedition met the first floating "ice island". The farther to the south, the more often giant ice mountains - icebergs - began to come across on the way.
In early January 1820, sailors discovered an unknown island, completely covered with snow and ice. The next day, two more islands were seen from the ship. They were also put on the map, naming the names of the expedition members (Leskov and Zavadovsky). Zavadovsky Island turned out to be an active volcano with a height of more than 350 m. Having landed on the shore, the members of the expedition climbed the slope of the volcano to the middle of the mountain. Along the way, we collected penguin eggs and rock samples. There were a lot of penguins here. The sailors took on board several birds that entertained the crews of the ships along the way.
Penguin eggs were found to be edible and were used as food. The open group of islands was named in honor of the then Minister of the Navy - the Traverse Islands.
On ships that made long voyages, people usually suffered from a lack of fresh fresh water. During this voyage, Russian sailors invented a way to obtain fresh water from the ice of icebergs.
Moving further south, the ships soon again met a small group of unknown rocky islands, which they called the Candlemas Islands. Then the expedition approached the Sandwich Islands discovered by the English explorer James Cook. It turned out that Cook took the archipelago for one large island. The Russian sailors corrected this mistake on the map.
Bellingshausen called the entire group of open islands the South Sandwich Islands.
Foggy, overcast weather made sailing very difficult. The ships were in constant danger of running aground.
With every mile to the south, it became more and more difficult to wade through the ice. At the end of January 1820, the sailors saw thick broken ice stretching to the horizon. It was decided to go around it, turning sharply to the north. Again the sloops passed the South Sandwich Islands.
On some Antarctic islands, sailors met a huge number of penguins and elephant seals. The penguins usually stood in tight formation, the seals were immersed in a deep sleep.
But Bellingshausen and Lazarev did not abandon their attempts to break through to the south. When the ships fell into solid ice, they kept turning to the north and hastily getting out of the ice captivity. Great skill was required to save ships from damage. Everywhere there were masses of perennial solid ice.
The ships of the expedition nevertheless crossed the Antarctic Circle and on January 28, 1820 reached 69 ° 25′ S. sh. In the foggy haze of an overcast day, the travelers saw an ice wall blocking the further path to the south. These were continental ice. The expedition members were sure that the Southern continent was hiding behind them. This was confirmed by the many polar birds that appeared above the sloop. And indeed, only a few miles separated the ships from the coast of Antarctica, which the Norwegians called the coast of Princess Martha more than a hundred years later. In 1948, the Soviet whaling flotilla Slava visited these places, and found that only poor visibility prevented Bellingshausen from clearly seeing the entire coast of Antarctica and even mountain peaks inland.
In February 1820, the sloops entered the Indian Ocean. Trying to break through to the south from this side, they approached the coast of Antarctica two more times. But heavy ice conditions forced the ships to move north again and move east along the ice edge.
In March, with the onset of autumn, the nights became longer, frost intensified, and storms became more frequent. Swimming among the ice became more and more dangerous, the general fatigue of the team from the continuous severe struggle with the elements affected. Then Bellingshausen decided to lead ships to Australia. In order to cover a wider band with the study, the captain decided to send the sloops to Australia in different ways.
On March 21, 1820, a severe storm broke out in the Indian Ocean. Bellingshausen wrote: “The wind roared, the waves rose to an extraordinary height, the sea seemed to mix with the air; the creaking of the parts of the sloop drowned out everything. We were left completely without sails to the mercy of a raging storm; I had several sailor's berths stretched out on mizzen shrouds, in order to keep the sloop closer to the wind. We were consoled only by the fact that we did not encounter ice in this terrible storm. Finally, at 8 o'clock they shouted from Baku: ice floes ahead; this announcement struck everyone with horror, and I saw that we were being carried onto one of the ice floes; immediately raised the fore-staysail 2 and put the rudder to the wind on board; but as all this did not produce the desired effect and the ice floe was already very close, we only watched how it brought us closer. One ice floe was carried under the stern, and the other was directly opposite the middle of the side, and we expected the blow that was to follow: fortunately, a huge wave that came out from under the sloop pushed the ice floe a few fathoms.
The storm continued for several days. The exhausted team, straining all their strength, struggled with the elements.
And albatross birds with outstretched wings swam between the waves as if nothing had happened.
In mid-April, the sloop "Vostok" anchored in the Australian harbor of the port of Zhaksoy (now Sydney). Seven days later, the Mirny sloop came here. Thus ended the first period of research.
During all the winter months, the sloops sailed in the tropical part of the Pacific Ocean, among the islands of Polynesia. Here, the expedition members carried out many important geographical works: they specified the position of the islands and their outlines, determined the height of the mountains, discovered and mapped 15 islands, which were given Russian names.
Returning to Zhaksoi, the sloop crews began to prepare for a new voyage to the polar seas. The preparation took about two months. In mid-November, the expedition again went to sea, keeping to the southeast direction. Soon, a leak opened in the bow of the Vostok sloop, which they managed to destroy with great difficulty. Continuing to sail south, * the sloops crossed 60 ° S. sh. On the way, floating ice floes began to come across, and then solid ice appeared. The ships headed east along the ice edge. The weather deteriorated noticeably:
the temperature was dropping, a cold gusty wind drove dark snow clouds. Collisions with small ice floes threatened to intensify the leak in the hull of the Vostok sloop, and this could have had disastrous consequences.
Suddenly, a violent storm broke out. I had to go north again. The abundance of floating ice and bad weather prevented progress to the south. The further the sloops moved, the more often icebergs were encountered. At times, up to 100 ice mountains surrounded the ships. Tacking between icebergs in strong winds and snowfall required enormous effort and great skill. Sometimes only the skill, dexterity and speed of the crew saved the sloops from inevitable death.
At the slightest opportunity, the ships turned again and again due south and went until solid ice blocked the way.
Finally, on January 22, 1821, fortune smiled on the sailors. A blackening spot appeared on the horizon.
“I knew at a glance through the pipe,” Bellingshausen wrote, “that I see the coast, but the officers, also looking into the pipes, had different opinions. At 4 o'clock I informed Lieutenant Lazarev by telegraph1 that we were seeing the shore. The Mirny sloop was then close to us astern and understood the answer ... It is impossible to express in words the joy that appeared on the faces of everyone when they exclaimed: “Shore! Coast!".
The island was named after Peter I. Now Bellingshausen was sure that there must be more dry land somewhere nearby.
Finally, his expectations came true. On January 29, 1821, Bellingshausen wrote: “At 11 o'clock in the morning we saw the shore; its cape, stretching to the north, ended in a high mountain, which was separated by an isthmus from other mountains. Bellingshausen called this land the Alexander Coast 1.
“I call this finding a shore because” because the remoteness of the other end to the south disappeared beyond our vision. This coast is covered with snow, but the scree on the mountains and the steep cliffs had no snow. The sudden change in color on the surface of the sea gives the idea that the coast is extensive, or at least does not consist of the only part that was before our eyes.
Land of Alexander 1 is still insufficiently explored. Upon its discovery, Bellingshausen finally convinced that the Russian expedition had approached the still unknown Southern Continent.
Thus, the greatest geographical discovery of the 19th century took place.
Having solved the centuries-old riddle, the sailors decided to go to the northeast to explore the South Shetland Islands. Having completed the work on surveying their southern coast, the sailors were forced to urgently leave to the north: every day the flow in the ships, battered by storms, intensified. And Bellingshausen sent them to Rio de Janeiro.
In early March 1821, the sloops anchored in the roadstead of Rio de Janeiro. Thus ended the second stage of a wonderful voyage.
Two months later, after a thorough repair, the ships went to sea, heading for their native shores.
August 5, 1821 "Vostok" and "Mirny" arrived in Kronstadt and anchored in the same place from which they left more than two years ago.
They spent 751 days at sea and traveled over 92,000 km. This distance is two and a quarter times the length of the equator. In addition to Antarctica, the expedition discovered 29 islands and one coral reef. The scientific materials she collected made it possible to form the first idea of Antarctica.
Russian sailors not only discovered a huge continent located around the South Pole, but also carried out the most important research in the field of oceanography. This branch of spiders was just in its infancy at that time. F. F. Bellingshausen was the first to correctly explain the causes that cause sea currents (for example, the Canary), the origin of the algae of the Sargasso Sea, as well as coral islands in tropical regions.
The discoveries of the expedition turned out to be a major achievement of Russian and world geographical science of that time.
The whole further life of Bellingshausen and Lazarev after returning from the Antarctic voyage was spent in continuous voyages and combat naval service. In 1839, Bellingshausen, in the chip of an admiral, was appointed chief commander of the Kronstadt port. Under his leadership, Kronstadt turned into an impregnable fortress.
Bellingshausen died in 1852 at the age of 73.
Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev did a lot for the development of the Russian navy. Already in the rank of admiral, commanding the Black Sea Fleet, he achieved a complete rearmament and restructuring of the fleet. He brought up a whole generation of glorious Russian sailors.
Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev died in 1851. Already in our time, the capitalist states sought to divide Antarctica among themselves. The Geographical Society of the Soviet Union expressed a strong protest against the unilateral actions of these states. In the resolution on the report of the late President of the Graphic Society, Acad. L. S. Berg says: “The Russian navigators Bellingshausen and Lazarev in 1819-1821 circumnavigated the Antarctic continent, approached its shores for the first time and discovered in January 1821 Peter I Island, Alexander I Land, the Traverse Islands and others. In recognition of the merits of Russian navigators, one of the southern polar moraines was named the Bellingshausen Sea. And therefore, all attempts to resolve the issue of the regime of Antarctica without the participation of the Soviet Union cannot find any justification ... The USSR has every reason not to recognize any such decision.
Vostok and Mirny left Kronstadt in the summer of 1819. The first ship was commanded by Thaddeus Bellingshausen, the second by Mikhail Lazarev. By that time, both of them had already established themselves as experienced sailors: Lazarev, for example, reached Sydney with the crew of the Suvovorov ship, and Bellingshausen participated in a round-the-world voyage. Now they faced a difficult task - finally the southern mainland, the existence of which the geographers of that time only guessed.
Assumptions that there should be a large piece of land near the South Pole began to appear among sailors as early as the 16th century. However, until the beginning of the 19th century, it was believed that it was virtually impossible to prove its existence due to incredibly difficult weather conditions. “The cold was so strong that none of our flotilla could bear it,” wrote the Florentine traveler Amerigo Vespucci, who allegedly ended up on the island of South Georgia, which lies one and a half thousand kilometers from Antarctica. The second reason why no one tried to reach Atlantis for a long time is that this land - for that time, quite naturally - was considered practically useless.
"Vostok" and "Mirny" before sailing to Kronstadt. (infourok.ru)
Nevertheless, certain attempts to explore the mainland were nevertheless made: the British, for example, sent an expedition led by James Cook to the Antarctic Circle. His ships, moving further south, collided with an impenetrable ice cover, which forced them to turn around. Cook then decided that no mainland in those lands simply does not exist.
In Russia, the idea of exploring the Antarctic Circle was primarily promoted by the famous traveler and navigator Ivan Kruzenshtern. There is even evidence that Kruzenshtern himself wanted to lead the expedition, but nevertheless refused this, citing his advanced age and health problems. In the government, the responsible ministers liked the idea of the first Antarctic expedition: in a hurry - it was impossible to allow other countries to get ahead of the Russian sailors - preparations for the voyage began.
The ship's crew examines the iceberg. (klin-demianovo.ru)
The ships "Vostok" and "Mirny", which Lazarev and Bellingshausen received at their disposal, were not intended for navigation in ice. Although these were relatively new vessels, the crews were constantly faced with leaks and hull breakdowns. The crew was formed exclusively from volunteers - by the way, there were a lot of them, about 200 people. Also on board were a university professor, an artist and a hieromonk.
The task of the expedition was formulated very briefly and precisely: the navigators were instructed to "continue their explorations to the remote latitude that can only be reached." "Vostok" and "Mirny", having passed through Portsmouth and Rio de Janeiro, reached the island of South Georgia - it lies at a distance of two thousand kilometers to the east of the Argentine coast. The team took up research and made an inventory of the coast, revealing another small island latently - it was later named after the navigator, one of the lieutenants of the Mirny ship Mikhail Annenkov. In general, members of the expedition made it a rule to name the discovered islands in honor of their comrades: in this way, several more volcanic islands they encountered were named after the names of the officers of the Vostok ship.
Sloops of war "Vostok" and "Mirny" off the coast of Antarctica. (rgo.ru)
“In this barren country we wandered, or, rather, wandered like shadows for a whole month; constant snow, ice and fog were the reason for such a long inventory, ”wrote Mikhail Lazarev to his friend. The expedition, indeed, was delayed, and the climatic conditions became more and more frightening. Small wooden ships made their way - often in pitch darkness or fog - through giant icebergs and ice floes. At the end of January 1820, the sailors nevertheless reached the shores of Antarctica, the next month they were able to come close to them, but they did not succeed in landing. Due to a lack of provisions and running out of firewood, the expedition decided to get to Australia to replenish all supplies.
After a break in Sydney, the team again set off to conquer the shores of the southern mainland: sailing up to it, the expedition unexpectedly stumbled upon an American boat - the people on it were engaged in hunting fur seals. The team of Vostok and Mirny mapped many new islands: they were named either in honor of the battles of the recently past Patriotic War of 1812, or in honor of the rulers of the Russian Empire - for example, the island of Peter I and the land of Alexander I appeared.
Ships "Vostok" and "Peace" in the open sea. (topwar.ru)
Since the sailors were never able to land on the shore and conduct full-fledged research, neither Bellingshausen nor Lazarev reported that they had discovered the mainland. Although it certainly was. The description of the entire journey, which lasted 751 days and forced the team to overcome almost 100,000 kilometers, prompted the researchers to come to grips with the study of Antarctica. The first Antarctic expedition led to the fact that over time, the sixth continent turned from a blank spot on the map into an arena of political battles - today, in addition to Russia, territorial claims to Antarctica are put forward by the United States, Chile, Argentina, Australia, Norway, Great Britain and other countries.
Antarctica is a continent located in the very south of our planet. Its center coincides (approximately) with the geographic south pole. Oceans washing Antarctica: Pacific, Indian and Atlantic. Merging, they form
Despite the harsh climatic conditions, the fauna of this mainland still exists. Today, the inhabitants of Antarctica are more than 70 species of invertebrates. Four species of penguins also nest here. Even in ancient times, there were inhabitants of Antarctica. This is proved by the remains of dinosaurs found here. A man was even born on this earth (this happened for the first time in 1978).
History before the expedition of Bellingshausen and Lazarev
After James Cook's statement that the lands beyond the Antarctic Circle are inaccessible, for more than 50 years not a single navigator wanted to refute the opinion of such a major authority in practice. However, it should be noted that in 1800-10. in the Pacific Ocean, its subantarctic strip, English sailors discovered small lands. In 1800, Henry Waterhouse found the Antipodes Islands here, in 1806 Abraham Bristow discovered the Auckland Islands, and in 1810 Frederick Hesselbrough came across about. Campbell.
Discovery of New Shetland by W. Smith
William Smith, another captain from England, sailing with cargo to Valparaiso in the brig Williams, was driven south by a storm off Cape Horn. In 1819, on February 19, he twice saw the land located further to the south, and took it for the tip of the southern mainland. W. Smith returned home in June, and his stories about this find were of great interest to the hunters. The second time he went to Valparaiso in September 1819 and moved out of curiosity to "his" land. He explored the coast for 2 days, after which he took possession of it, later called New Shetland.
The idea to organize a Russian expedition
Sarychev, Kotzebue and Kruzenshtern initiated the Russian expedition, the purpose of which was to search for the southern mainland. approved their proposal in February 1819. However, it turned out that the sailors had very little time left: the sailing was planned for the summer of that year. Because of the haste, the expedition included various types of ships - the Mirny transport converted into a sloop and the Vostok sloop. Both ships were not adapted for sailing in the difficult conditions of the polar latitudes. Bellingshausen and Lazarev became their commanders.
Biography of Bellingshausen
Thaddeus Bellingshausen was born in (now Saaremaa, Estonia) on August 18, 1779. Communication with sailors, the proximity of the sea from early childhood contributed to the fact that the boy fell in love with the fleet. At the age of 10, he was sent to the Naval Corps. Bellingshausen, being a midshipman, sailed to England. In 1797, he graduated from the corps and served as a midshipman on the ships of the Revel squadron sailing in the Baltic Sea.
Thaddeus Bellingshausen in 1803-06 took part in the voyage of Kruzenshtern and Lisyansky, which served as an excellent school for him. The sailor, upon returning to his homeland, continued his service in the Baltic Fleet, and then, in 1810, was transferred to the Black Sea Fleet. Here he commanded first the frigate "Minerva", and then "Flora". A lot of work has been done over the years of service on the Black Sea to refine the sea charts in the region of the Caucasian coast. Bellingshausen also carried out a series. He accurately determined the coordinates of the most important points on the coast. Thus, he came to lead the expedition as an experienced sailor, scientist and explorer.
Who is MP Lazarev?
To match him was his assistant, who commanded the Mirny, Lazarev Mikhail Petrovich. He was an experienced, educated sailor, who later became a renowned naval commander and founder of the Lazarevskaya Naval School. Lazarev Mikhail Petrovich was born in 1788, on November 3, in the Vladimir province. In 1803 he graduated from the Naval Corps, and then for 5 years he sailed in the Mediterranean and North Seas, in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Lazarev, upon returning to his homeland, continued his service on the Vsevolod ship. He was a participant in the battles against the Anglo-Swedish fleet. During the Patriotic War, Lazarev served on the "Phoenix", participated in the landing in Danzig.
At the suggestion of a joint Russian-American company in September 1813, he became the commander of the Suvorov ship, on which he made his first round-the-world trip to the shores of Alaska. During this voyage, he showed himself to be a determined and skillful naval officer, as well as a bold explorer.
Preparing for the expedition
For a long time there was a vacant post of captain of the "Vostok" and head of the expedition. Only a month before going to the open sea, F.F. was approved for it. Bellingshausen. Therefore, the work of recruiting the crews of these two ships (about 190 people), as well as providing them with the necessary for a long journey and re-equipment into the Mirny sloop, fell on the shoulders of the commander of this ship, M.P. Lazarev. The main task of the expedition was designated as purely scientific. "Mirny" and "Vostok" differed not only in their size. "Mirny" was more convenient and only lost to "Vostok" in one thing - in speed.
First discoveries
Both ships left Kronstadt on July 4, 1819. Thus began the expedition of Bellingshausen and Lazarev. The sailors reached about. South Georgia in December For 2 days they carried out an inventory of the southwestern coast of this island and discovered another one, which was named after Annenkov, lieutenant of Mirny. After that, heading southeast, the ships discovered on December 22 and 23 3 small islands of volcanic origin (Marquis de Traverse).
Then, moving to the southeast, the sailors of Antarctica reached the "Sandwich Land" discovered by D. Cook. It turned out to be an archipelago. With clear weather, rare in these places, on January 3, 1820, the Russians came close to South Tula, the land area discovered by Cook closest to the pole. They discovered that this "land" consists of 3 rocky islands covered with eternal ice and snow.
First crossing of the Antarctic Circle
The Russians, bypassing the heavy ice from the east, on January 15, 1820, crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time. The next day they met on their way the glaciers of Antarctica. They reached great heights and stretched beyond the horizon. The expedition members continued to move east, but they always met this mainland. On this day, the problem that D. Cook considered insoluble was solved: the Russians approached the northeastern ledge of the "ice continent" less than 3 km. After 110 years, the ice of Antarctica was seen by Norwegian whalers. They named this continent Princess Martha's Coast.
A few more approaches to the mainland and the discovery of an ice shelf
"Vostok" and "Mirny", trying to get around the impenetrable ice from the east, crossed the Arctic Circle 3 more times this summer. They wanted to get closer to the pole, but they couldn't get any further than the first time. Many times the ships were in danger. Suddenly, a clear day was replaced by a gloomy one, it was snowing, the wind was picking up, and the horizon became almost invisible. In this area, an ice shelf was discovered, named in 1960 in honor of Lazarev. It was marked on the map, however, much to the north of its current position. Nevertheless, there is no mistake here: as it is now established, the ice shelves of Antarctica are retreating to the south.
Swimming in the Indian Ocean and parking in Sydney
The short Antarctic summer is over. In 1820, at the beginning of March, "Mirny" and "Vostok" separated by agreement in order to better view the 50th latitude of the Indian Ocean in the southeastern part. They met in April in Sydney and stayed here for a month. Bellingshausen and Lazarev explored the Tuamotu archipelago in July, discovered a number of inhabited atolls here that were not mapped, and named them after Russian statesmen, naval commanders and generals.
Further discoveries
K. Thorson landed for the first time on the atolls of Greig and Moller. And the Tuamotu, located in the west and in the center, were called the Russian Islands by Bellingshausen. In the northwest, Lazarev Island appeared on the map. Ships from there went to Tahiti. On August 1, north of it, they discovered about. East, and on August 19, on the way back to Sydney, they discovered several more islands southeast of Fiji, including the Simonov and Mikhailov Islands.
New assault on the mainland
In November 1820, after stopping at Port Jackson, the expedition set off for the "ice mainland" and withstood a strong storm in mid-December. The sloops crossed the Arctic Circle three more times. Twice they did not come close to the mainland, but the third time they saw clear signs of land. In 1821, on January 10, the expedition moved south, but was forced to retreat again in front of the emerging ice barrier. The Russians, turning to the east, saw the coast in a few hours. The island covered with snow was named after Peter I.
Discovery of the Alexander I Coast
On January 15, in clear weather, the discoverers of Antarctica saw land in the south. From the "Mirny" a high cape opened up, connected to a chain of low mountains by a narrow isthmus, and from the "Vostok" a mountainous coast was visible. Bellingshausen called it the "Coast of Alexander I". Unfortunately, it was not possible to break through to it because of the solid ice. Bellingshausen turned south again and went out to discover New Shetland here, discovered by W. Smith. The discoverers of Antarctica explored it and found that it is a chain of islands that stretch almost 600 km to the east. Some of the South were named in memory of the battles with Napoleon.
Expedition results
On 30 January it was discovered that Vostok needed major repairs and it was decided to turn north. In 1821, on July 24, the sloops returned to Kronstadt after a journey of 751 days. During this time, the discoverers of Antarctica were under sail for 527 days, and 122 of them were south of 60 ° S. sh.
According to the geographical results, the perfect expedition became the greatest in the 19th century and the first in the history of the Russian Antarctic expedition. A new part of the world was discovered, later named Antarctica. Russian sailors approached its shores 9 times, and four times they approached at a distance of 3-15 km. The discoverers of Antarctica for the first time characterized the large water areas adjacent to the "ice continent", classified and described the ice of the mainland, and also in general terms indicated the correct characterization of its climate. 28 objects were put on the map of Antarctica, and all of them received Russian names. In the tropics and in the high southern latitudes, 29 islands were discovered.
In 1819-1821, the author led the first Russian round-the-world Antarctic expedition. For 751 days of navigation, Antarctica was discovered - a continent-mystery, the very existence of which many doubted, and 29 islands in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Throughout the journey, Thaddeus Bellingshausen kept a travel diary, the entries from which he then used to write a book about this voyage. Thanks to this, the memories of the expedition turned out to be vivid, vivid and detailed.
A series: Chronicle of great geographical discoveries
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by the LitRes company.
© Bellingshausen F.F., 2017
© TD Algorithm LLC, 2017
Shvede E. E. The first Russian Antarctic expedition 1819–1821
first three decades of the nineteenth century. were marked by numerous Russian round-the-world expeditions, most of which were caused by the presence of Russian possessions in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and the coasts of North America bordering it.
These round-the-world trips were accompanied by the largest geographical discoveries in the Pacific Ocean, which put our Motherland in first place among all other states in the field of Pacific research of that time in oceanographic science in general. Already during the first seven Russian voyages around the world - I. F. Kruzenshtern and Yu. F. Lisyansky on the ships "Neva" and "Nadezhda" (1803-1806), V. M. Golovnin on the sloop "Diana" (1807-1809) , M. P. Lazareva on the ship "Suvorov" (1813-1816), O. E. Kotzebue on the brig "Rurik" (1815-1818), L. A. Gagemeister on the ship "Kutuzov" (1816-1819), 3 I. Ponafidina on the ship "Suvorov" (1816-1818) and V. M. Golovnina on the sloop "Kamchatka" (1817-1819) - vast areas of the Pacific Ocean were explored and numerous discoveries of new islands were made.
However, the vast expanses of the three oceans (Pacific, Indian and Atlantic) south of the Antarctic Circle, which at that time were united under the common name of the Southern Arctic Ocean, as well as the most southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean, remained completely unexplored by either Russian or foreign expeditions.
Many foreign expeditions of the XVIII century. aspired, swimming in these waters, to reach the shores of the mysterious continent of Antarctica, the legendary information about the existence of which has been spread in geographical science since ancient times. The second round-the-world voyage (1772-1775) of the English navigator Captain James Cook was also largely devoted to the discovery of the southern mainland. It was the opinion of Cook, who proved in the report on his second voyage that Antarctica either does not exist, or that it is impossible to reach it at all, that served as the reason for abandoning further attempts to discover a sixth part of the world, almost half a century until the departure of the Russian Antarctic expedition of Bellingshausen - Lazarev.
Cook, resolutely denying the existence of a southern continent, wrote: "I went around the ocean of the southern hemisphere at high latitudes and rejected the possibility of the existence of a continent, which, if it can be found, is only near the pole in places inaccessible to navigation." He believed that he had put an end to further searches for the southern mainland, which was a favorite topic for discussion among geographers of that time. In his afterword, Cook says: “If we had discovered the mainland, we would certainly have been able to satisfy the curiosity of many to a greater extent. But we hope that the fact that we have not found it after all our persistent research will leave less room for future speculation (speculation) about unknown worlds still to be discovered.
Emphasizing the success of the expedition in many other respects, Cook ends his work with the following words: “This alone will be enough to consider our trip wonderful in the opinion of well-meaning people, especially after disputes about the southern continent cease to attract the attention of philosophers and cause them differences."
Thus, Cook's fatal mistake had as its consequence the fact that at the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century. the belief prevailed that Antarctica did not exist at all, and all the areas surrounding the South Pole were then represented on the map as a "white" spot. Under such conditions, the first Russian Antarctic expedition was conceived.
Preparing for the expedition
Planning an expedition. It is difficult to say who first thought about this expedition and who initiated it. It is possible that this idea originated almost simultaneously with several of the most prominent and enlightened Russian navigators of that time - Golovnin, Kruzenshtern and Kotzebue.
In archival documents, the first mention of the projected expedition is found in the correspondence of I.F. Kruzenshtern with the then Russian Minister of Marine Marquis de Traverse (Golovnin at that time was on a round-the-world voyage on the sloop "Kamchatka", from which he returned after the departure of the Antarctic expedition from Kronstadt).
In his letter dated December 7, 1818, the first time document concerning this expedition, Kruzenshtern, in response to a message about the planned sending of Russian ships to the south and north poles, asks Traverse for permission to present his thoughts on organizing such an expedition.
After that, the Minister of Marine instructed both Kruzenshtern and a number of other competent persons to draw up notes on the organization of the expedition, including the representative of the older generation of Russian navigators, the famous hydrograph Vice Admiral Gavrila Andreevich Sarychev. Among the archival documents there is also a note “A Brief Review of the Plan of the Proposed Expedition”, which does not have a signature, but, judging by the references to the experience of the brig “Rurik” that had just returned from a round-the-world voyage (came to St. Petersburg on August 3, 1818), written by the commander of the latter - Lieutenant O. E. Kotzeb. According to some information, it can be assumed that Kotzebue's note is the earliest of all, and it provides for the sending of only two ships from Russia, and their separation was planned near the Hawaiian Islands, from where one of the ships was supposed to cross the Pacific Ocean to the west - to the Bering Strait, the second - to the east, in order to try to get closer to the South Pole.
On March 31, 1819, Kruzenshtern sent his lengthy note on 14 pages to the Minister of Marine from Revel, with a cover letter. In a letter, Kruzenshtern states that with his "passion" for this kind of travel, he himself would ask to be put at the head of the expedition, but this is prevented by a serious eye disease, and that he is ready to draw up detailed instructions for the future head of the expedition.
In his note, Kruzenshtern refers to two expeditions - to the North and South Poles, each of which includes two ships. However, he pays special attention to the expedition to the South Pole, about which he writes: “This expedition, in addition to its main goal - to explore the countries of the South Pole, should especially have in the subject to believe everything that is wrong in the southern half of the Great Ocean and replenish all those in it. shortcomings, so that it can be recognized as, so to speak, the final journey in this sea. Kruzenshtern concludes this remark with the following words, full of patriotism and love for the Motherland and striving for its priority: “We must not allow the glory of such an enterprise to be taken away from us; in the course of a short time it will certainly fall into the lot of the British or French. Therefore, Kruzenshtern hurried with the organization of this expedition, considered "this enterprise to be one of the most important that has ever been intended ... The journey, the only one undertaken to enrich knowledge, is, of course, crowned with gratitude and surprise of posterity." However, he nevertheless "after strict consideration" proposes to postpone the start of the expedition to the next year, for more thorough preparation. The Naval Minister remained unsatisfied with a number of Kruzenshtern's proposals, in particular regarding the postponement of the expedition for a year and the separate departure of both expeditions from Kronstadt (the minister insisted on the joint passage of all four ships to a certain point and their subsequent separation along routes).
The government in every possible way hurried with the organization of the expedition and forced its exit from Kronstadt. In his note, Kruzenshtern also outlined the heads of both "divisions" sent to the South and North Poles. Kruzenshtern considered the outstanding navigator Captain 2nd Rank V. M. Golovnin to be the most suitable head of the “first division”, intended for discoveries in the Antarctic, but the latter, as already indicated, was at that time on a round-the-world voyage; he appointed O. E. Kotzebue as the head of the “second division” that was going to the Arctic, whose voyage in the northern latitudes on the Rurik proved his outstanding qualities as a navigator and learned sailor. In view of Golovnin's absence, Kruzenshtern proposed instead to appoint his former co-founder, Captain 2nd Rank F.F. Bellingshausen, who then commanded one of the frigates on the Black Sea. On this occasion, Kruzenshtern wrote: "Our fleet, of course, is rich in enterprising and skillful officers, but of all those whom I know, no one except Golovnin can equal Bellingshausen."
The government, however, did not follow this advice, and the closest assistant to Kruzenshtern on the round-the-world expedition on the Nadezhda ship, Captain-Commander M. I. Ratmanov, was appointed head of the first division, and captain-lieutenant M. N. Vasiliev was appointed head of the second division. Ratmanov, who shortly before his appointment was shipwrecked at Cape Skagen on his return from Spain, was in Copenhagen, and his health was in a state of disarray. He asked on this occasion not to send him on a long voyage and, in turn, nominated F. F. Bellingshausen.
Choice of ships. As already noted, at the request of the government, both expeditions were equipped in a very hasty manner, as a result of which they included not sailing ships specially built for sailing in ice, but sloops that were under construction, intended for departure on ordinary round-the-world voyages. The first division consisted of the sloops Vostok and Mirny, the second of the sloops Otkritie and Blagonamerenny.
With regard to the Kamchatka sloop of the same type as the Vostok, V. M. Golovnin writes: “The Maritime Department decided on purpose to build a warship for the intended voyage at a frigate location, with only a few changes that were necessary for the type of service, this vessel was to come”; elsewhere he says that "the size of this sloop was equal to a mediocre frigate." M. P. Lazarev, in a letter to his friend and former co-alloyer A. A. Shestakov, notes that the Vostok was built according to the plan of the former frigates Castor and Pollux (built in 1807), but with the difference that on it the upper deck was solid, without split waists. Lazarev believed that "this ship is completely inconvenient for such an enterprise due to its small capacity and tightness for both officers and crew." The sloop "Vostok" (as well as a whole series of the same type of sloops "Kamchatka", "Opening", "Apollo") was built by ship engineer V. Stoke (an Englishman in the Russian service) and in practice turned out to be little successful. Bellingshausen complains that the Minister of Marine recognized the choice of this sloop as successful only because the Kamchatka sloop of the same type was already on a round-the-world voyage with V. M. Golovnin, while the latter, in his already cited work, complains about not quite satisfactory seaworthiness his sloop. Bellingshausen repeatedly dwells on a number of design shortcomings of the Vostok sloop (excessive mast height, insufficient hull strength, poor material, careless work) and directly accuses Stoke of having these shortcomings. So, regarding the malfunction of the tiller, he writes: "the unreliability of the tiller proves the negligence of the shipmaster, who, forgetting the sacred duties of service and humanity, subjected us to death." Elsewhere, regarding the insufficient height of the hatch coamings on the upper deck, he charges Stoke with being out of practice. “Such and other errors in construction occur more from the fact that shipbuilders build ships without ever being at sea themselves, and therefore hardly one ship will come out of their hands in perfection.” The sloop "Vostok" was built from damp pine wood and had no special fastenings, except for ordinary ones; the underwater part was fastened and sheathed with copper on the outside, and these works were already carried out in Kronstadt by the Russian shipbuilder Amosov. The hull of the Vostok sloop turned out to be too weak for navigation in ice and in conditions of continuous stormy weather, and it had to be repeatedly reinforced, reloaded all the weights into the hold, put additional mounts and reduced the sail area. Despite this, by the end of the voyage, the Vostok had become so weak, “that further assassination attempts to the south seemed almost impossible. The incessant outflow of water exhausted people extremely ... The rot appeared in different places, moreover, the shocks received from the ice forced Captain Bellingshausen to abandon the search too much a month earlier and think about returning. “The sloop had a strong movement, the waderwels grooves, with each inclination from side to side, were sensitively heard,” writes Bellingshausen on December 1, 1820. The sloop did not even have an additional (“fake”) outer skin (“Vostok” had only one skin and unsealed intervals of frames in the underwater part), which was required in preparation for the expedition by MP Lazarev, who oversaw the equipment of both sloops due to the fact that the appointment of Bellingshausen took place only 42 days before the expedition left Kronstadt.
Despite such unsatisfactory constructive and seaworthy qualities of the sloop, the Russian military sailors honorably completed the difficult task and completely completed the bypass of the entire Antarctic water area. Bellingshausen repeatedly had to think about the question of whether such a damaged ship should cross the ice fields again and again, but each time he found “one consolation in the thought that courage sometimes leads to success” and steadily and firmly led his ships to the intended goal.
On the other hand, the second sloop, the Mirny, built by the Russian shipbuilder Kolodkin in Lodeynoye Pole, showed excellent seaworthiness. Probably, the project of this ship was drawn up by the remarkable Russian ship engineer I.V. Kurepanov, who built the same type of sloop "Blagonamerenny" in Lodeynoye Pole (in total, he built 8 sailing battleships, 5 frigates and many small ships during his service); Kolodkin was only the executor of this project. The Mirny sloop had a much smaller size, and was originally listed in the fleet lists as the Ladoga transport. It has been somewhat rebuilt to give it the appearance of a warship. In addition, its commander, an excellent maritime practitioner, Lieutenant M.P. Lazarev, made a lot of efforts in the preparatory period before setting off on a long voyage to improve the seaworthiness of this sloop (it was equipped with a second skin, the pine rudder was replaced with oak, additional hull fastenings, the rigging was replaced with stronger ones, etc.), built, however, from good pine wood with iron fastenings, but designed for sailing in the Baltic Sea. M.P. Lazarev gives a positive assessment to his sloop: the same type "Mirny" and "Benevolent", in his words, "later turned out to be the most convenient of all the others, both in terms of their strength, so spaciousness and peace: there is only one drawback against the" Vostok "and “Discovery” was a move”, and further: “I was very pleased with my own sloop”, and “standing in Rio de Janeiro, Captain Bellingshausen felt it was necessary to add another 18 knees and standers to fasten the Vostok; “Mirny” did not complain about anything.” Both Bellingshausen and Lazarev repeatedly complain about the fact that two completely different types of ships were included in both divisions, which differ significantly from each other in speed. Bellingshausen writes about the renaming of the Ladoga transport to the Mirny sloop: “regardless of this renaming, every naval officer saw what inequality should be in the course with the Vostok sloop, therefore, what difficulty it would be for them to remain in connection and what From this, slowness in swimming should have occurred. Lazarev expresses himself more sharply: “why were ships sent that should always keep together, and by the way such an inequality in the course that one must constantly carry all the foxes and thus strain the mast while his companion carries very small sails and waits? I leave this riddle to you to guess, but I do not know. And the riddle was solved by the low naval experience of the then Minister of Marine Traverse, who first led the Black Sea Fleet, which he commanded, and then the entire Russian fleet, to decline compared to the previous brilliant period of Ushakov and Senyavin, and the subsequent, no less glorious, period of Lazarev, Nakhimov and Kornilov.
Sloop "Vostok". Rice. artist M. Semenov, made on the basis of historical and archival materials.
Sloop Mirny. Rice. artist M. Semenov, made on the basis of historical and archival materials
Only thanks to the amazing maritime art of M.P. Lazarev, the sloops never parted during the entire voyage, despite the exceptionally poor visibility conditions in Antarctic waters, dark nights and continuous storms. Bellingshausen, presenting the commander of the "Mirny" on the way from Port Jackson to the award, especially emphasized this invaluable quality of MP Lazarev.
Manning the expedition
Even I. F. Kruzenshtern wrote about the selection of personnel for the first Russian round-the-world expedition: “I was advised to accept several foreign sailors; but I, knowing the predominant properties of Russian, which I even prefer to English, did not agree to follow this advice. On both ships, except for the scientists Horner, Tilesius and Liband, there was not a single foreigner on our journey. On the ships of Bellingshausen and Lazarev there was not a single foreigner at all. This circumstance is emphasized by the member of the expedition, professor of Kazan University Simonov, who, in his speech delivered at a solemn meeting at this university in July 1822, stated that all the officers were Russians, and although some of them had foreign surnames, but “being children Russian subjects, having been born and raised in Russia, cannot be called foreigners. True, at the invitation of the Russian government, two German scientists were supposed to arrive on the ships of Bellingshausen, when they were parked in Copenhagen, but at the last moment, obviously frightened of the difficulties ahead, they refused to participate in the expedition. On this occasion, Bellingshausen speaks as follows: “In the course of the entire journey, we always regretted that two students from the Russian Natural History section were not allowed to go with us, who wished this, but unknown foreigners were preferred to them.”
All members of the expedition, both officers and sailors, were volunteers. F. F. Bellingshausen was appointed head of the first division and raised his braid pennant on the Vostok sloop almost at the very last moment, shortly before leaving to sail. Therefore, he could not pick up the officers at will and took with him from the Black Sea only his former assistant on the Flora frigate, Lieutenant Commander I. I. Zavadovsky, and other officers had already been assigned to the Vostok on the recommendation of various commanders persons. M. P. Lazarev, who took command of the Mirny sloop a little earlier, was in better conditions and had the opportunity to select his assistants more carefully, and some of them rafted with him so much that they were invited to participate in his third circumnavigation on the frigate " Cruiser "from 1822 to 1825 (lieutenant Annenkov and midshipman Kupriyanov, and Annenkov - on the ship" Azov ").
Brief biographical information about the members of the expedition
Faddey Faddeevich Bellingshausen. The head of the expedition and the commander of the Vostok sloop Faddey Faddeevich Bellingshausen was born in 1779 on Ezel Island (now Khiuma Island, which is part of the Estonian SSR). near the city of Kuresaare (Arensburg). He spent part of his childhood in this city, part - in the house of his parents, in its vicinity. From early childhood, he dreamed of being a sailor and always said about himself: “I was born in the middle of the sea; just as a fish cannot live without water, so I cannot live without the sea.” His dream was destined to come true; from youth to old age and his very death, he was at sea almost every year. At the age of ten, he entered the Naval Corps, which was then in Kronstadt, as a cadet; in 1795 he was promoted to midshipman, and in 1797 - to the first officer rank of midshipman. While still a midshipman, he sailed to the shores of England, and then, until 1803, while on various ships of the Revel squadron, he sailed the Baltic Sea. With success in science and in service, Bellingshausen attracted the attention of the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Khanykov, who recommended him to be assigned to the Nadezhda ship, commanded by I.F. Kruzenshtern, to participate in the first Russian round-the-world expedition. In the "Forewarning" to the description of his circumnavigation, Kruzenshtern gives the following assessment to Bellingshausen: he also drew up the general map. The Central Naval Museum has a whole atlas with numerous authentic maps of the young Bellingshausen. The abilities of a hydrographer and navigator F. F. Bellingshausen showed repeatedly and subsequently.
Admiral Faddey Faddeevich Bellingsgazuzen (according to the lithograph by U. Steibach, dated approximately to 1835)
After returning from a round-the-world voyage in 1806, with the rank of lieutenant commander, Bellingshausen sailed for 13 years as a commander on various frigates, first on the Baltic Sea, and from 1810 on the Black Sea, where he took part in hostilities near Caucasian coast. On the Black Sea, he paid great attention to hydrographic issues and greatly contributed to the compilation and correction of maps. In 1819, commanding the frigate "Flora", he received a responsible assignment from the commander of the fleet: to determine the geographical location of all prominent places and capes. However, he did not have to fulfill this order due to an urgent call by the Minister of Marine to St. Petersburg for a new assignment. On May 23, 1819, Captain 2nd Rank F.F. Bellingshausen took command of the Vostok sloop and at the same time took command of the Antarctic expedition. At that time he was 40 years old, and he was in the full bloom of his powers and abilities. Service in his younger years under the command of an experienced old sailor Admiral Khanykov, participation in the first Russian circumnavigation under the leadership of I.F. Kruzenshtern, and finally, 13-year-old independent command of ships developed the main business and personal features of Bellingshausen. His contemporaries portray him as a brave, resolute, knowledgeable commander, an excellent sailor and a learned hydrograph-navigator, a true Russian patriot. Remembering the joint voyage, M.P. Lazarev subsequently “did not call him anything other than a skilled, fearless sailor,” but he could not help adding that he was “an excellent, warm-hearted person.” Such a high assessment, coming from the strict lips of one of the largest Russian naval commanders - MP Lazarev, is worth a lot. Bellingshausen repeatedly showed his humanity: in the cruel age of Arakcheevism, during his circumnavigation, he never used corporal punishment in relation to his subordinate sailors, and subsequently, holding high positions, he always showed great concern for the needs of the rank and file. He was connected with M.P. Lazarev by cordial, friendly relations, and for the entire period of the joint voyage, as far as is known, only once did disagreements arise between the head of the expedition and his closest assistant: despite his own exceptional courage and experience, M.P. Lazarev considered that Bellingshausen is taking too many risks maneuvering between ice fields in poor visibility. In his remarks on swimming, which, unfortunately, have not come down to us, M. P. Lazarev said: “although we looked forward with the greatest care, it seemed to me not entirely prudent to go on a cloudy night at 8 miles per hour.” Bellingshausen replies to this remark: “I agree with this opinion of Lieutenant Lazarev and was not very indifferent during such nights, but I thought not only about the present, but arranged my actions in such a way as to have the desired success in our enterprises and not remain on the ice during coming equinox."
Returning from an exceptionally successful voyage as a renowned discoverer of new lands and the most mysterious Antarctica, F. F. Bellingshausen, at first, apparently, was engaged in processing his remarks, shchane journals and memoirs of his co-leaders, since at that time he held various coastal positions, which was unusual for him; at the end of 1824, he submitted to the Admiralty Department a description of his journey, with maps and drawings attached. However, as already indicated in the preface, despite the exceptional interest in this work and the request of the Naval Staff for its publication, it was not published at that time. It can be thought that the Decembrist uprising frightened and distracted Nicholas I and all the higher naval authorities at that time so much that all other questions were postponed for a while (the publication took place only 10 years after the return of the expedition, in 1831).
All further service of Bellingshausen (unlike other famous navigators, such as Kruzenshtern, Golovnin and Litke, who devoted themselves to more scientific activities and coastal service) proceeded in almost continuous voyages, combat and military service and in senior command positions. It was a real combat commander. In 1826–1827 we see him commanding a detachment of ships in the Mediterranean; in 1828, being rear admiral and commander of the guards crew, he, together with the latter, set out from St. Petersburg by land and went through all of Russia to the Danube to participate in the war with Turkey. On the Black Sea, he played a leading role in the siege of the Turkish fortress of Varna, and then, having his Rear Admiral's flag on the ships "Parmen" and "Paris", in the capture of this fortress, as well as a number of other cities and fortresses. In 1831, already a vice-admiral, Bellingshausen was the commander of the 2nd Naval Division and annually cruises with it in the Baltic Sea.
In 1839, he was appointed to the highest military post in the Baltic Sea - the chief commander of the Kronstadt port and the Kronstadt military governor. This position was combined with the annual appointment of the commander of the Baltic Fleet during the summer voyages, and until his death (at the age of 73, in 1852) Bellingshausen continued to go to sea for combat training of the fleet under his jurisdiction.
As the chief commander of the Kronstadt port, Admiral (since 1843) Bellingshausen took an exceptionally large part in the construction of new granite harbors, docks, granite forts, preparing the Baltic stronghold to repel the invasion of the Western European coalition, just like his former co-leader Admiral carried out a similar task MP Lazarev in the south - in Sevastopol. Bellingshausen diligently trained his fleet and, in order to improve the quality of artillery firing, developed and calculated special tables published under the title "On Aiming Artillery Guns at Sea." As already noted, Bellingshausen was an excellent sailor and until the end of his days skillfully trained his commanders in maneuvering and evolution. Contemporaries who participated in these evolutions gave him the certification of "master of his craft", and the Swedish Admiral Nordenskiöld, who was present at the 1846 naval maneuvers, exclaimed: "I bet with anyone that these evolutions will not be made by a single fleet in Europe." To the honor of the old admiral, it must be said that he highly appreciated the courage and initiative of young commanders, and when in 1833, during the autumn voyage at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland on a stormy rainy night, the commander of the frigate Pallada, the future famous naval commander P. S. Nakhimov, raised the signal to his admiral "The fleet is heading for danger", the latter unquestioningly changed the course of the entire wake column, thanks to which the squadron was saved from an accident on the rocks.
F. F. Bellingshausen was interested in geographical issues all his life, read all the descriptions of circumnavigations and transferred all new discoveries to his map. His name is listed among the first elected full members of the Russian Geographical Society, and the recommendation for admission to membership was given to him by Admirals Rakord and Wrangel.
Of course, Bellingshausen lacked the talent and breadth of scale characteristic of MP Lazarev; he was not a naval commander in the full sense of the word and did not create such a famous naval school in the Baltic with a whole galaxy of famous sailors (Nakhimov, Kornilov, Istomin, Butakov, etc.) as Lazarev on the Black Sea, but he left a noticeable mark on the history of the Russian fleet and raised the world prestige of Russian navigators and Russian oceanographic and hydrographic science with his remarkable voyage to the South Pole.
When he was the chief commander in Kronstadt, he showed much concern for raising the cultural level of naval officers, in particular, he was the founder of one of the largest Russian libraries of that time - the Kronstadt Naval Library. Much of the success of the Russian round-the-world expeditions of the period when he was in charge of their equipment in Kronstadt owed much to his great practical experience.
Bellingshausen is characterized by his humanity in relation to the sailors and constant concern for him; in Kronstadt, he significantly improved the living conditions of the teams by building barracks, arranging hospitals, and planting greenery in the city. They did a lot to improve the nutrition of the sailors. He achieved an increase in meat rations and the widespread development of vegetable gardens to supply vegetables. After the death of the admiral, a note was found on his desk with the following content: “Kronstadt should be planted with such trees that would bloom before the fleet goes to sea, so that a particle of the summer woody smell gets to the sailor’s share.” In 1870, a monument was erected to F. F. Bellingshausen in Kronstadt.
Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev . Captain Bellingshausen's closest assistant on the expedition and the commander of the Mirny sloop was Lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev, later a famous naval commander and founder of an entire naval school. MP Lazarev was born in 1788 in the family of a poor Vladimir nobleman. Having about 10 years of age, Lazarev was sent to the Naval Corps, and in 1803 he was promoted to midshipmen. Among the most capable graduates of the corps, in 1804 he was sent to the ships of the English fleet for the practical study of naval affairs. Lazarev spent four years in the English fleet, continuously sailing in the West Indies and the Atlantic Ocean, and participated in hostilities against the French. During this time he was (in 1805) promoted to the first officer rank of midshipman. Lazarev returned to Russia with great practical and combat experience; however, unlike some other Russian naval officers who also sailed on English ships, he did not become a blind admirer of foreignness, but forever remained a true Russian patriot, and in his further service he always fought against giving preference to foreigners who then served in large numbers in Russian fleet, to the Germans and Greeks. As an experienced sailor, already in 1813, Lazarev was entrusted with the command of the ship of the Russian-American company "Suvorov", on which he, a 25-year-old young man, independently completed a four-year circumnavigation - the next in a row in the Russian fleet after the round-the-world expeditions of Kruzenshtern - Lisyansky and Golovnin. Here is how Lazarev was regarded at that time by his contemporaries: “Everyone gave full justice to the excellent knowledge of Lieutenant Lazarev in the marine part; he was considered one of the first officers in our fleet, and he was really such, possessing to a high degree all the qualities necessary for this. Naturally, the choice fell on Lieutenant M.P. Lazarev when appointing the commander of the second sloop to the responsible Antarctic expedition of 1819–1821. This choice turned out to be extremely successful. Thanks to the high seafaring art of Lazarev, both sloops were able, without ever parting (with the exception of a separate voyage of Lazarev, made on the orders of the head of the expedition), to complete this most difficult voyage so brilliantly. Bellingshausen highly valued his closest assistant and comrade: in his book, he repeatedly emphasizes his exceptional skill in sailing, which made it possible for the slow-moving sloop Mirny to follow all the time together with the faster sloop Vostok. When both sloops followed different routes to Port Jackson, Lazarev arrived at this port only a week after Bellingshausen's arrival there. The qualities of the commander and educator of young officers in this voyage were clearly manifested by Lazarev, as midshipman P. M. Novosilsky figuratively narrates, to whom the commander came to the rescue during difficult maneuvering among the floating ice: “every second brought us closer to the ice mass terribly flashing because of the fog ... At that very moment MP Lazarev entered the deck. In an instant I explained to the chief what was the matter and asked for orders. - Wait! he said coolly. - How I look at Mikhail Petrovich now: he then fully realized the ideal of a naval officer who possessed all the perfections! With complete self-confidence, he quickly looked ahead ... his gaze seemed to cut through the fog and overcast ... - Get down! he said calmly.
He viewed participation in the expedition with extreme responsibility and, like a true Russian patriot, made every effort to raise the authority of his Motherland high and win her glory in the field of scientific expedition. He said: "Cook gave us such a task that we were forced to undergo the greatest dangers, so as not to lose face, as they say." And indeed, the Russian sailors had a brilliant voyage. M. P. Lazarev could rightfully exclaim: “What is it like for our Rusachkas to walk now?”.
Admiral Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev (according to the lithograph by U. Steibach, dated approximately to 1835)
Introducing Lazarev for the award, Bellingshausen wrote to the Minister of Marine: “Throughout our voyage, with continuous fogs, gloom and snow, among the ice, the Mirny sloop always kept in connection, which to this time was not an example, so that ships sailing so for a long time in such weather, they did not part, and therefore I set it a long time to introduce you to such a vigilant vigil of Lieutenant Lazarev.
Upon returning from the expedition, Lazarev was promoted through the rank directly from lieutenant to captain of the 2nd rank and received a number of other awards. But Lazarev did not sit long on the shore: a year later, in 1822, we see him again on the deck of the ship - now as head of the round-the-world expedition and commander of the frigate "Cruiser". Lazarev was one of the very few Russian officers who made three round-the-world voyages, and the only one who circled the globe three times as a commander. The frigate "Kreyser" returned three years later to Kronstadt in such exceptional order that everyone looked at it as an unattainable model. On the Cruiser, the friendship of two great sailors, Lazarev and Nakhimov, who was then in the rank of midshipman, was born. After returning from this third round-the-world voyage, Captain 1st Rank Lazarev was appointed commander of the best and newest battleship Azov, on which he moved from Arkhangelsk to Kronstadt, and a year later, in 1827, he was sent as part of Rear Admiral Geideia's squadron. to the coast of Greece. Here, Lazarev, as the commander of the Azov and at the same time the chief of staff of the squadron, especially distinguished himself by courage and skillful maneuvering in the Navarino battle, for which he received the rank of rear admiral. The best representatives of his naval school, the future famous admirals Nakhimov, Kornilov and Istomin, sailed on the Azov with Lazarev. For the first time in the history of the Russian fleet, Lazarev's ship was awarded the highest combat distinction - the St. George flag. In 1829, Lazarev commanded a squadron for the first time and returned to Kronstadt with it.
In 1832, he was transferred to the Black Sea Fleet, first to the post of chief of staff, and in 1837 - already a vice admiral - he was appointed commander of the Black Sea Fleet and ports and the military governor of Nikolaev and Sevastopol.
Here, on the southern borders of our Motherland, Lazarev's energetic activity as a naval commander, educator of personnel, builder of the fleet, ports and fortresses was widely developed. For seventeen years he stood at the head of the Black Sea Fleet and brought it to a brilliant state. This period in the history of the Black Sea Fleet is commonly called the "Lazarev era". Relying on the best officers of his school, he prepared the Black Sea theater of military operations, the ships and personnel of the Black Sea Fleet to repel a foreign invasion - the Crimean War of 1853-1856. The same, but with less brilliance and talent, Bellingshausen did at the Baltic Theater during the same period. On the same day in 1843, both former Antarctic navigators were promoted to full admirals. Almost simultaneously, they ended their life path (Lazarev in 1851, Bellingshausen in 1852), only a little short of the combat test of the defense of the Russian maritime borders they created.
Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev worked hard in Nikolaev and Sevastopol to create cultural living conditions for officers and sailors. His favorite brainchild was the Sevastopol Maritime Library. For his geographical merits in circumnavigating the world, Lazarev was elected in 1850 an honorary member of the Russian Geographical Society.
Among the constant voyages, military exploits and major state activities, Lazarev did not have time to generalize his thoughts in scientific works. He possessed, however, a good literary gift and keen powers of observation, as can be seen from the content of his letters to A. A. Shestakov. His official report for the time of a separate voyage from March 5 to April 7, 1819 was greatly distorted by someone in preparation for printing, and the original did not reach us.
In honor of Lazarev, a monument was erected in his beloved Sevastopol in 1870, towering over the Sevastopol southern bay and the “Lazarevsky Admiralty” he created.
Information about other members of the expedition
Among the officers of the Vostok sloop, the most prominent personalities were the assistant commander, Lieutenant Commander Ivan Ivanovich Zavadovsky and Lieutenant Konstantin Petrovich Torson.
I. I. Zavadovsky was taken by Bellingshausen from the Black Sea, where he was also his assistant on the frigate Flora; he was a participant in hostilities in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas on the squadrons of the famous Russian naval commanders, Admirals Ushakov and Senyavin; he subsequently returned to the Black Sea, and the last position he held as rear admiral before retiring in 1829 was that of commander of the Danube Flotilla. K. P. Thorson was an extremely knowledgeable and cultured naval officer, and in his description of the journey, Bellingshausen most often mentions him, in connection with his vigilance on duty and the presence of a sense of responsibility for the official assignments that were given to him. Thorson was one of the Decembrist naval officers, was sentenced to hard labor in 1826 and died in Selenginsk in 1852. To Bellingshausen's credit, it must be said that, despite the publication of the travel description only in 1831, after the uprising, Thorson's name is preserved everywhere without any comments, and only Thorson's island was renamed High Island.
Lieutenant Arkady Sergeevich Leskov was assigned two more times to circumnavigate the world.
Most of the officers subsequently retired relatively early.
Another outstanding astronomer, Professor of Kazan University Ivan Mikhailovich Simonov (1794–1855) and artist Pavel Nikolaevich Mikhailov (1786–1840), later an academician of painting, were also on board the Vostok sloop. The first of them left behind a number of major scientific works (“On the temperature difference in the southern and northern hemispheres”, as well as unpublished “Notes on circumnavigation”); at the end of his life, Simonov was appointed rector of Kazan University, replacing the brilliant mathematician Lobachevsky in this position; he donated to Kazan University his rich ethnographic collections collected during the voyage.
From the officers of the Mirny sloop with MP Lazarev, lieutenants Mikhail Dmitrievich Annenkov and Ivan Antonovich Kupriyanov went on a round-the-world voyage on the frigate Cruiser; the latter was subsequently at one time the chief ruler of the Russian-American Company, then commanded various ships and brigades of ships, and in 1857, with the rank of vice admiral, died; Annenkov, under the command of Lazarev, distinguished himself on the ship "Azov" in the Battle of Navarino and for three years commanded a brig in his squadron.
Midshipman P. M. Novosilsky, who wrote an anonymous book: "The South Pole", soon after returning from a circumnavigation was appointed teacher of higher mathematics, astronomy and navigation in the Naval Cadet Corps, and in 1825, having passed the exams at St. Petersburg University, switched to service in the Ministry of Public Education.
Hieromonk Dionisy (not mentioned in Bellingshausen's book) was also on the Mirny sloop.
For an unknown reason (possibly the fault of the editors of the first edition), only the names of the officers who participated in the expedition were listed in Bellingshausen's book, while Kruzenshtern and Lisyansky also included lists of sailors. Kruzenshtern, explained this circumstance in the following words: “I make it my duty to place here not only the names of the officers, but also the servants who all voluntarily undertook this first such a long journey”
We consider it necessary to correct this injustice and provide a complete list of the sailors of the expedition.
1. Sloop "Vostok"
1. Non-commissioned officers: navigator Andrey Sherkunov and Pyotr Kryukov, skipper's assistant Fyodor Vasiliev, paramedic 1st class Ivan Stepanov.
2. Quartermasters: Sandash Aneev, Alexei Aldygin, Martyn Stepanov, Alexei Stepanov, flutist Grigory Dianov, drummer Leonty Churkin.
3. Sailors of the 1st article: helmsman Semyon Trofimov; marshal Gubey Abdulov, Stepan Sazanov, Petr Maksimov, Kondraty Petrov, Olav Rangopl, Paul Yakobson, Leon Dubovsky, Semyon Gulyaev, Grigory Ananyin, Grigory Elsukov, Stepan Filippov, Sidor Lukin, Matvey Khandukov, Kondraty Borisov, Eremey Andreev, Danila Kornev, Sidor Vasiliev, Danila Lemantov, Fedor Efimov, Christian Lenbekin, Efim Gladky, Martin Lyubin, Gavrila Galkin, Yusup Yusupov, Gabit Nemyasov, Prokofy Kasatkin, Ivan Krivov, Matvey Lezov, Methuseil May-Izbay, Nikifor Agloblin, Nikita Alunin, Egor Kiselev, Ivan Saltykov, Ivan Sholokhov, Demid Antonov, Abrosim Skukka, Fyodor Kudryakhin, Ivan Yarengin, Zakhar Popov, Filimon Bykov, Vasily Kuznetsov, Alexei Konevalov, Semyon Guryanov, Ivan Paklin, Ivan Grebennikov, Yakov Bizanov, Mikhail Tochilov, Matvey Popov, Elizar Maksimov, Pyotr Ivanov, Grigory Vasilyev, Mikhail Takhashikov, Pyotr Palitsin, Denis Yuzhakov, Vasily Sobolev, Semyon Khmelnikov, Matvey Rozhin, Sevastyan Chigasov, Danila Stepanov, Varfolomey Kopylov, Spiridon Efremov, Terenty Ivanov, La Rion Nechaev, Fedot Razgulyaev, Vasily Andreev, Kirill Sapozhnikov, Alexander Bareshkov, Alexey Shilovsky, Afanasy Kirillov.
4. Various artisans: locksmith Matvey Gubin, timmerman Vasily Krasnopevov, blacksmith Pyotr Kurlygin, carpenter Pyotr Matveev, caulker Rodion Averkiev, sailboat Danila Migalkin, cork Gavrila Danilov.
5. Gunners: artillery non-commissioned officers Ilya Petukhov and Ivan Korniliev, bombardier Leonty Markelov, gunners of the 1st article Zakhar Krasnitsyn, Yan Yatsylevich, Yakub Belevich, Yegor Vasiliev, Vasily Kapkin, Feklist Alekseev, Semyon Gusarov, Stepan Yadynovsky, Nikita Lebedev, Gleb Plysov and Ivan Barabanov.
2. Sloop Mirny
1. Bosun and non-commissioned officers: boatswain Ivan Losyakov, battalion sergeant rank Andrey Davydov, paramedic 1st class Vasily Ponomarev, mechanic Vasily Gerasimov, skipper's assistant Vasily Trifanov, navigational assistant Yakov Kharlav.
2. Quartermasters: Vasily Alekseev, Nazar Rakhmatulov, drummer Ivan Novinsky.
3. Sailors of the 1st article: Abashir Yakshin, Platon Semenov, Arsenty Filippov, Spiridon Rodionov, Nazar Atalinov, Yegor Bernikov, Gabidulla Mamlineev, Grigory Tyukov, Pavel Mokhov, Petr Ershev, Fedor Pavlov, Ivan Kirillov, Matvey Murzin, Simon Taus, Ivan Antonov , Demid Ulyshev, Vasily Sidorov, Batarsha Badeev, Lavrenty Chupranov, Egor Barsukov, Yakov Kirillov, Osip Koltakov, Markel Estigneev, Adam Kukh, Nikolai Volkov, Grigory Petunii, Ivan Leontiev, Anisim Gavrilov, Larion Filippov, Thomas Vunganin. Danila Anokhin, Fyodor Bartyukov, Ivan Kozminsky, Frol Shavyrin, Arkhip Palmin, Zakhar Ivanov, Vasily Curly, Philipp Pashkov, Fedor Istomin, Demid Chirkov, Dmitry Gorev, Ilya Zashanov, Ivan Kozyrev, Vasily Semenov.
4. Various craftsmen: locksmith Vasily Gerasimov, carpenters Fedor Petrov and Petr Fedorov, caulker Andrey Ermolaev, sailboat Alexander Temnikov, cupper Potap Sorokin.
5. Gunners: artillery senior non-commissioned officer Dmitry Stepanov; gunners of the 1st article Pyotr Afanasiev, Mikhail Rezvy, Vasily Stepanov, Vasily Kuklin, Efim Vorobyov, Ivan Sarapov.
Expedition supplies
Despite the great hurry with the equipment of the expedition, it was generally well equipped. However, this supply still did not quite correspond to its main goal - navigation in ice. On this occasion, the later well-known navigator and geographer F.P. Litke, who saw the sloops Vostok and Mirny on the Portsmouth roadstead during his voyage on the sloop Kamchatka, wrote in his unpublished diary that their supply and equipment were made “according to example of "Kamchatka" and, if their command staff did not agree with something, then they answered: "this is how it is done in Kamchatka", although this sloop was intended for ordinary navigation, and, moreover, there was also no response from Captain Golovnin about his qualities.
Particular attention was paid to providing the ships with the best nautical and astronomical instruments for that time. In view of the fact that at that time in tsarist Russia all these instruments were not made, during the period of stay in Portsmouth chronometers and sextants made by the best English masters were purchased in London. In this respect, Russian ships were much better equipped than English ones: the author of the preface to the first translation of Bellingshausen's book into English, Frank Debenham, especially emphasizes that while in the English fleet there was still a disdain for chronometers, and there were English admirals who were uniformed In this way, chronometers were expelled from their subordinate ships (and they were officially adopted in the English fleet only from 1825), in the Russian navy this instrument, which was essential for determining longitudes, was already included in the regular supply of ships.
The expedition was well supplied with all kinds of anti-scurvy foods, which included coniferous essence, lemons, sauerkraut, dried and canned vegetables; in addition, on every suitable occasion, the commanders of the sloops bought or bartered (on the islands of Oceania from local residents) a large amount of fresh fruit, which was partially prepared for future use for the upcoming voyage in Antarctica, and partially provided for full use by all personnel. To warm the sailors, who were freezing while working on the yards during the freezing winds and frosts in the Antarctic, there was a supply of rum; red wine was also purchased to add to drinking water when swimming in hot climates. All personnel, on the basis of special instructions, were obliged to observe the strictest hygiene: the living quarters were constantly ventilated and, if necessary, heated, frequent washing was provided in an impromptu bath, requirements were made for the constant washing of linen and beds and for airing clothes, etc. Thanks to the listed measures and highly qualified ship's doctors, there were no serious illnesses on the sloops, despite the difficult climatic conditions of navigation and frequent transitions from heat to cold and back.
To communicate with each other, the sloops had a telegraph, invented shortly before by a Russian naval officer, Lieutenant Commander A. Butakov. This telegraph improved by him in 1815 “consisted of a box with 14 shchives and a bar with the same number of shchives, with round halyards based, with flags tied to them, for climbing a mizzen ray”; Butakov also published the Marine Telegraph Dictionary. This Russian invention was of great benefit to the expedition for the negotiations between sloops over long distances.
Each of the sloops had a significant library containing all published descriptions of sea voyages in Russian, English and French, sea calendars for 1819 and 1820. and the English nautical yearbooks "Nautical Almanac" for another 3 years ahead, essays on geodesy, astronomy and navigation, sailing directions and instructions for navigation, various nautical tables, essays on terrestrial magnetism, celestial atlases, telegraphic dictionaries, notes of the Admiralty Department, etc.
The general course of the expedition and its results
The sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny" left Kronstadt on July 4, 1819, from July 14 to 19 they stayed in Copenhagen, from July 29 to August 26 - in Portsmouth. During a month's stay in an English port, chronometers, sextants, telescopes and other nautical instruments were received, which were not yet manufactured in Russia at that time. Here the stock of provisions was replenished with canned food and some special products. Further, a small detachment, leaving Portsmouth on August 26, headed for the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean and after a short call (from September 15 to 19) at Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from east to west and entered the roadstead of Rio de Janeiro, for the rest of the crew before a tedious and difficult voyage in Antarctica, to prepare the sloops for stormy trips and to take provisions. In Rio de Janeiro, the sloops stayed from 2 to 22 November.
According to the instructions received, the expedition was to begin its research work from the island of South Georgia and the "Sandwich Land" discovered by Cook, the South Sandwich Islands, the nature and extent of which were not the last to be determined. On December 15, Russian navigators saw the pointed peaks of the island of South Georgia and the small island of Willis. The sloops, passing along the southern coast of South Georgia, put this coast on the map, and a number of geographical points received Russian names in honor of the expedition members - Capes Paryadina, Demidov and Kupriyanov, Novosilsky Bay, and the newly discovered island received the name of the second lieutenant of the sloop who first saw it " Peaceful" - Annenkov.
Further, the expedition headed to the notorious "Sandwich Land". On the way to this "Earth", on December 22, the first major discovery was made - a group of islands called by Bellingshausen, by the name of the then Russian naval minister, the islands of the Marquis de Traverse, and individual islands were also named after the names of the expedition members: Zavadovsky Island, Ostrov Leskov and Thorson Island (after the Decembrist uprising, the tsarist government renamed it Vysoky Island, due to the fact that Lieutenant Thorson took an active part in this uprising). On December 29, the expedition approached the area of "Sandwich Land" and discovered that the points that Cook considered to be her capes were in fact separate islands. Bellingshausen showed exceptional tact, retaining for the islands discovered by Russian navigators the names that Cook gave to the capes, and for the entire group - the name of Sandwich; on this occasion, he writes: “Captain Cook was the first to see these shores, and therefore the names given to him must remain indelible, so that the memory of such a brave navigator could reach the later descendants. For this reason I call these islands the South Sandwich Islands. Regarding this fact, the famous Soviet geographer Academician Yu. English geographers and the English Admiralty acted quite differently when they withdrew from the map of the South Shetland Islands all the Russian names given by Bellingshausen to the newly discovered islands. From the group of the South Sandwich Islands, Bellingshausen and Lazarev rushed south, making the first attempt to go as far as possible straight along the meridian to the south, in accordance with the instructions of the Minister of Marine, which said that after passing east of Sandwich Land, Bellingshausen should go down to the south and "continue his explorations to the farthest latitude that he can reach "and that he must" use all possible diligence and the greatest effort to reach as close as possible to the pole, looking for unknown lands, and will not leave this enterprise except in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Further, the instructions stated that “if under the first meridians, under which he will descend to the south, his efforts remain fruitless, then he must resume his attempts under others, and not losing sight of the main and important goal for which he was sent for a minute.” will be, repeating these attempts hourly, to open the lands, and to approach the South Pole.
Islands de Traverse: Leskov, Thorson, Zavadsky. From the album of drawings by the artist P. Mikhailov
As you can see, the instructions made exceptionally strict and severe requirements for the expedition, and Bellingshausen and Lazarev resolutely and boldly tried to fulfill them.
For this purpose, the Russian expedition in the first period of its voyage, from January to March, that is, during the summer of the southern hemisphere, made a total of five "attempts", namely: 1) from January 4 to 5, 1820, to the southern latitude 60° 25' 20"; 2) from January 5 to 8 - 60 ° 22 '; 3) from January 10 to 16, and on January 16 it was almost close to the mainland of Antarctica, only 20 miles from it, in latitude 69 ° 25 'and longitude 2 ° 10' (near the coast, which is now called Princess Martha Land) and 4) from January 19 to 21, when the expedition again reached latitude 69° 25' and was again in close proximity to the mainland, at a distance of less than 30 miles from it; 5) from 1 to 6 February, when latitude 69° 7' 30" and longitude 16° 15' were reached.
If not for the bad visibility conditions, then on January 16, Bellingshausen and Lazarev would have been able to give absolutely accurate information about the lands of the Antarctic continent. The author of the preface to the English translation of Bellingshausen's book, published in 1945, the Antarctic explorer Frank Debenham, writes on this occasion: Bellingshausen "saw the mainland, but did not recognize it as such", and further - "it was impossible to give a better description of hundreds of miles of the Antarctic mainland as we now know it." For the second time, the expedition was close to the mainland on January 21. In his preliminary report sent to Russia from Port Jackson, Bellingshausen characterizes his impressions of the ice that he saw in front of him at a very close approach to the mainland from February 5 to 6: “Here, behind the ice fields of small ice and islands, you can see a continent of ice, whose edges are broken off perpendicularly and which continues as far as we see, rising to the south like a coast. Many of the expedition officers were confident in the proximity of the coast. So, midshipman P. Novosilsky in his brochure wrote about the case of a close approach of sloops to Antarctica on February 5 (in the area later called the Land of Princess Ragnhilda): “On February 5, with a strong wind, the silence of the sea was unusual. Numerous polar birds and snow petrels hover over the sloop. This means that there must be a shore or immovable ice near us.
Very interesting is the evidence of the Soviet whaling expedition to the Antarctic on the steamer Slava, which was in March 1948 almost at the same point where Bellingshausen was on January 21, 1820 (south latitude 69° 25', longitude 1° 11' west): “We had excellent visibility conditions in a clear sky and clearly saw the entire coast and mountain peaks in the depths of the continent at a distance of 50–70 miles along bearings 192 ° and 200 ° from this point. When Bellingshausen was here, the visibility range was extremely limited, and he could not observe and survey the mountain peaks located to the south and southwest. The hilly ice described by Bellingshausen, which stretched from west to east in this area, fully corresponds to the shape of the relief of the coastal strip of Princess Martha Land.
Only exceptional honesty and insistence on the reliability of the discovery did not allow Russian sailors to claim that they actually saw the low part of the mainland, and not the ice fast ice. During this period, Russian ships crossed the Antarctic Circle three times.
In early March, due to unfavorable weather and the need to stock up on fresh provisions and firewood and rest the personnel, Bellingshausen decided to leave the high southern latitudes, head to Port Jackson (Sydney) for a long stop and after that, according to instructions, for the duration of the winter southern hemisphere go to explore the southeast Pacific. Wanting to explore a wider strip of the Indian Ocean along the way, Bellingshausen ordered the Mirny sloop to follow a more northerly course to Port Jackson. On March 5, the sloops were separated, and on March 30, 131 days after leaving Rio de Janeiro, the Vostok sloop anchored in the roadstead in Port Jackson, where the Mirny sloop arrived a week later.
A month later, on May 7, 1820, both sloops weighed anchor and headed through the Cook Strait to the area of the Tuamotu Islands and the Society (Partnership) Islands, as recommended by the instructions. To the east of the island of Tahiti, in June 1820, a Russian expedition discovered a whole group of islands, which Bellingshausen called the islands of the Russians (among them are the islands of Kutuzov, Lazarev, Raevsky, Yermolov, Miloradovich, Greig, Volkonsky, Barclay de Tolly, Wittgenstein, Osten- Saken, Moller, Arakcheev). After that, the sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny" visited the island of Tahiti, where they stayed from July 22 to 27, and then headed back to Port Jackson for rest, repairs and acceptance of various supplies before a new trip to Antarctic waters. On the way to Port Jackson, the expedition discovered a number of other islands (Vostok, the islands of Alexander Nikolaevich, Ono, Mikhailov and Simonov).
On September 9, 1820, the sloop Vostok returned to the hospitable Port Jackson, and the next day the slower Mirny arrived there. Here Bellingshausen and Lazarev began to repair both ships as carefully as possible, especially the Vostok sloop, which had weaker hull mounts.
Coral Island of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich, Vovadu Island, Ono, Mikhailov Coral Islands, Lord Gove Island. From the album of drawings by the artist P. Mikhailov
Inhabitants of the island of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich. From the album of drawings by the artist P. Mikhailov
The expedition stayed in Port Jackson for almost two months, and on October 31, 1820, it again went to sea to reach high latitudes in other sectors of the Antarctic that it had not yet visited.
On the way to the south, on November 10, the sloops approached Macquari Island (or, as Bellingshausen calls it, Macquaria); the island was put on the map and Bellingshausen, Lazarev, the artist Mikhailov and several officers went ashore to explore it.
From the end of November, the expedition resumed its attempts to reach the mainland of Antarctica. There were five “attempts” to penetrate possibly further south during this period (November 30, December 1, December 14, December 29, 1820 and January 9-16, 1821), and three times the ships penetrated beyond the Antarctic Circle. However, in this sector of the Antarctic, the mainland does not reach the Antarctic Circle, and only the fourth “assassination attempt” was successful: on January 9, 1821, the island of Peter I was discovered, and on January 16, the coast of Alexander I, about which Bellingshausen writes: “I call the acquisition this shore because the remoteness of the other end to the south disappeared beyond our vision. On January 20, Bellingshausen went to New Shetland, the discovery of which he learned while still in Australia from the Russian ambassador to the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro. On January 24, the expedition saw the land and, until January 27, explored its southern coast, discovering that it was a group of a dozen large islands and many smaller ones. All the South Shetland Islands were put on the map and all of them were given Russian names (Borodino, Maly Yaroslavets, Smolensk, Berezino, Polotsk, Leipzig, Waterloo, Vice Admiral Shishkov Island, Admiral Mordvinov Island, Captain Commander Mikhailov Island, Counter- Admiral Rozhnov, Three Brothers). After surveying the South Shetland Islands, the expedition headed back to their homeland. From February 27 to April 23, the sloops stood in Rio de Janeiro, where they were again carefully repaired. On the way back, only one short stop was made in Lisbon (from 17 to 28 June) and, in addition, the sloops waited out the night from 15 to 16 July at anchor in the Copenhagen roadstead. Finally, on July 24, 1821, the sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny" anchored in the Small Kronstadt roadstead, in the places from which they set off on their glorious and dangerous journey more than two years ago.
Islands of Nova South Scotia. From the album of drawings by the artist P. Mikhailov
The voyage of the expedition lasted 751 days (including 527 sailing days and 224 anchoring days); it traveled almost 50,000 nautical miles, which is 2 1/2 times the length of the great circle of the globe. What were the results of the first Russian Antarctic expedition?
Firstly, the expedition completed the main task - discovered the mainland of Antarctica and thereby approved the priority of our Motherland in this regard. In total, she rediscovered 29 previously unknown islands, including 2 in Antarctica, 8 in the southern temperate zone and 19 in the hot zone.
Secondly, the expedition carried out an enormous amount of scientific work. The essential merit of the expedition was the precise determination of the geographical coordinates of the islands, capes and other points and the compilation of a large number of maps, which was a favorite specialty of Bellingshausen himself. One must be surprised at the exceptional accuracy of the observations of both Bellingshausen and Lazarev themselves, as well as other officers of the expedition, and especially the astronomer Simonov. These definitions have not lost their significance so far and differ very little from the latest definitions, produced on the basis of more accurate methods and more advanced nautical instruments. The map of the South Shetland Islands was the most accurate until very recently, and the sketches of the islands made by the artist Mikhailov are still used in English sailing directions; Lazarev measured the heights of the mountains and islands with particular accuracy. The astronomer Simonov made systematic observations on the change in air temperature, the navigator - on the elements of terrestrial magnetism. The expedition carried out many important oceanographic studies: for the first time, water samples were taken from the depths using a primitive bathometer made by ship; experiments were made with lowering the bottle to a depth; the transparency of water was determined for the first time by lowering a white plate to the depth; the depths were measured, as far as the length of the existing lotline allowed (apparently, up to 500 m); an attempt was made to measure the water temperature at depth; the structure of sea ice and the freezing of water of different salinity were studied; for the first time, the deviation of compasses was determined at various courses.
The expedition collected rich ethnographic, zoological and botanical collections brought to Russia and transferred to various museums, where they are still kept.
Of great interest are some of the personal scientific observations of F. F. Bellingshausen. He solved many complex physical and geographical problems; however, unfortunately, scientific fame did not go to him, but to Western European scientists who dealt with the same issues much later. Thus, long before Darwin, Bellingshausen quite correctly explained the origin of coral islands, which was a mystery before him, he gave a correct explanation of the origin of algae in the Sargasso Sea, challenging the opinion of such an authority in the field of geographical science of his time as Humboldt; In the theory of ice formation, Bellingshausen has many correct ideas that have not lost their significance to this day.
The album of drawings compiled by the artist Mikhailov and consisting of 47 pages deserves special attention; among the drawings are sketches of islands, landscapes, types of local residents of various countries, animals, birds, fish, plants, types of ice mountains, etc. The original drawings were discovered in the State Historical Museum in Moscow only in 1949. Due to the fact that there were no naturalists in the expedition, Mikhailov tried especially carefully to sketch everything related to fauna and flora; so, for example, in his drawings of birds every feather is drawn, in the drawings of fish - every scale.
The expedition was greeted in the homeland with great triumph and great importance was attached to its discoveries. Only after more than 20 years was the first foreign expedition sent to Antarctic waters. On this occasion, the leader of this English Antarctic expedition of 1839-1843. James Ross wrote: "The discovery of the most southern of the known continents was valiantly conquered by the fearless Bellingshausen, and this conquest remained with the Russians for a period of more than 20 years."
In 1867, the German geographer Peterman, noting that in the world geographical literature the merits of the Russian Antarctic expedition were completely underestimated, directly points to the fearlessness of Bellingshausen, with which he went against the opinion of Cook that had prevailed for 50 years: “For this merit, the name of Bellingshausen can be directly put on a par with the names of Columbus and Magellan, with the names of those people who did not retreat before the difficulties and imaginary impossibilities created by their predecessors, with the names of people who went their own way, and therefore were the destroyers of barriers to discoveries, which designate epochs.
Academician Yu. M. Shokalsky, comparing the achievements of the Antarctic expeditions of Cook and Bellingshausen, made the following calculation: out of the total number of days of navigation in the southern hemisphere (1,003) days, Cook spent only 75 days south of the 60 ° parallel, and Bellingshausen (out of 535 days) - 122 days. Cook was in the ice for 80 days, Bellingshausen - 100 days; Cook's ships parted, and both Russian sloops, in the most difficult conditions, went all the time together. Yu. M. Shokalsky concludes his calculation (made back in 1924) with the following words: “Bellingshausen made a completely unparalleled voyage, which has not been repeated by anyone since then.”
The merit of Russian sailors is their bold maneuvering among the mass of ice, often in exceptionally stormy weather, in conditions of fog, snow and a very short visibility range. Many pages of Bellingshausen's work are devoted to these difficulties of navigation.
Finally, one cannot fail to note the exceptional humanity of Russian sailors in relation to the local residents of the newly discovered islands. Already in the instructions given to Bellingshausen, it was stated that in all the lands to which the expedition would stick, it was necessary to deal with the local residents with “the greatest friendliness and philanthropy, avoiding as much as possible all cases of causing offense or displeasure ... and not reaching strict measures, except in necessary cases, when the salvation of the people entrusted to his superiors will depend on this. Bellingshausen actually refused to land on the islands if he saw that it could involve the use of firearms. How much this humane attitude differs from the cruelty of many foreign sailors, which James Cook himself did not escape! Characteristic in this regard is the review of the closest assistant of I.F. Kruzenshtern, senior officer of the Nadezhda sloop M.I. Ratmanov, who visited the Pacific Islands shortly after Cook: “If you consider everything that Cook did for the human race, you should be horrified. At the opening of various peoples of the Southern Ocean, he shot, cut the ears of those who almost revered him as a god and did not resist him in anything. The end of this navigator's life proves his outrageous character and rude upbringing.
Noteworthy is the following comment by Bellingshausen, directly directed against the "racial theory": "The consequence proved that the natural inhabitants of New Holland are capable of education, despite the fact that many Europeans in their offices completely deprived them of all their abilities."
Russian navigators on Russian ships were the first to discover Antarctica and thereby approved the priority of our Motherland for this discovery. This circumstance must be especially remembered now, when a number of foreign states are attempting to partition Antarctica without the participation of the Soviet Union, to which this right of priority has passed by succession. It must be remembered that Russia never gave up its rights to these lands, and the Soviet government did not give anyone consent to dispose of the territories discovered by Russian sailors.
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The given introductory fragment of the book On the sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny" to the South Pole. The First Russian Antarctic Expedition (F. F. Bellingshausen, 2017) provided by our book partner -
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