Russian-English translation: unknown southern land.
Story [ | ]
Although the supposed land along the southern edge of the map appears on some ancient maps, such as Ptolemy's, the first documented evidence of the "equilibrium" hypothesis comes from Macrobius's 5th-century map. n. e.
Practical interest in the search for the Southern Land arose during the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, and its peak occurred in the 18th century in connection with the ongoing colonial expansion of the leading European powers.
The northern capes or parts of the territory of the South Land were at various times depicted as Tierra del Fuego (thus the Strait of Magellan was considered the boundary between South America and Terra Australis), Estados Island, Espiritu Santo Island, South Georgia, Bouvet Island, Australia and New Zealand.
In 1770, the British Admiralty geographer Alexander Dalrymple wrote a work in which he provided evidence that the population Southern continent exceeds 50 million people. This was one of the last theories about Southland.
In 1772-1774, James Cook, during his second expedition, walked around and mapped the vast majority of the Southern Ocean in the area of the 55-60th parallel, crossed the Antarctic Circle three times, coming almost close to Antarctica, but failed to break through the obstacles blocking his path ice fields. Upon his return, he stated that if the Southern Continent exists, it is only near the pole, and therefore is of no value.
After this, the Southern Continent was no longer depicted on maps. After the discovery of the Antarctic Peninsula, it was depicted as an island (Palmer Land, Graham Land). Even 50 years after the discovery of Antarctica, Jules Verne wrote the novel “
Even in ancient times, when the inhabitants of the Mediterranean did not know how far the continents of Eurasia and Africa extended, legends circulated among sailors about mysterious land on South. It was depicted on most maps of the world and given names: Parrot Island, Locac, Anian. But most often it was called the Unknown Southern Land, the Mysterious Southern Land, the Unknown Southern Land, or simply the Southern Land, in Latin - Terra Australis or Terra Australis Incognita.
On the map of the Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer Eratosthenes, the Unknown Southern Land is depicted as the tip of Africa. The historian Herodotus talked about the Phoenicians, who, by order of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho at the end of the 7th century. BC e. sailed around Africa. Coming out of the Red Sea, they sailed along the African coast. In the fall they landed on the shore, sowed grain, harvested the crops and moved on. In the third year of the voyage, they passed the Pillars of Hercules (as the Strait of Gibraltar was then called). But Herodotus himself considered the story of this journey implausible (in the southern hemisphere, sailors saw the sun on the starboard side). And the astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the 2nd century. BC e., did not believe that Africa could be circumnavigated by sea. He believed that Africa and the Southern Land are connected, and, therefore, the Indian Ocean is a giant closed lake. Hipparchus thought that the island of Taprobane (Ceylon) was the northern tip of the Southern Land. Later it became clear that Ceylon is an island. On the map of Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century. AD, the Unknown Southern Land occupies the entire south and joins Africa, isolating the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic.
A thousand years after Ptolemy, the Arab cartographer Al-Idrisi, who served King Roger II of Sicily, created a world map on the orders of his ruler, which is considered the first scientific map. The geographer depicted the southern land as the huge eastern tip of Africa, but no longer connected it with Asia, leaving an ocean between them.
In 1559, in the Strait of Magellan, a ship commanded by Dirk Geeritz lost sight of the squadron after a storm and went south. When it dropped to 64° S. sh., the sailors saw a high shore.
Later, Tierra del Fuego was mistaken for an unknown continent. The Strait of Magellan thus separated South America and the South Land. This was already close to the truth... early XVII V. in the southeast Indian Ocean didn't open large continent and called it Australia. But Australia did not reach the South Pole. Sailors and scientists understood that there was some kind of continent to the south of America.
IN early Middle Ages it was inhabited by dragons and other all kinds of monsters. The French geographer A. Dalrymple claimed in 1770 that 50 million people lived there. Others believed that the continent was uninhabited, but there were forests and fertile lands. However, Lomonosov also believed that the unknown continent was covered with ice, because in the south sailors encountered huge icebergs that could only come off land.
In 1737, Philippe Boichet, a full member of the French Academy of Sciences, published his map of the Southern Lands. Three large islands are visible here, and there is an inland sea near the south pole. The Dutch were the first to cross the Antarctic Circle.
In 1772 and 1774 The famous traveler James Cook came close to the southern continent, but the ice did not let him in. He was forced to turn back, and later wrote a treatise in which he argued that if the Southern Land exists, it is located at the pole and is of little importance.
The southern land was no longer depicted on maps, but the search continued. On January 27, 1820, two Russian ships “Vostok” and “Mirny” crossed the southern polar circle. The next day, Captain Lazarev wrote in his journal that he saw ice of incredible height, which extended as far as vision could reach. And therefore, the day of January 28, 1820 went down in history as the date of the discovery of Antarctica. But the sailors received more complete evidence exactly a year later, when they returned to the southern latitudes, again crossed the Antarctic Circle and saw the mountainous coast of the southern continent. It became finally clear that this was land, not a glacier. Today, two Russian stations bear the names of ships - “Vostok” and “Mirny”.
Research in Antarctica continues continuously. It became clear that it could be divided into two parts. East Antarctica is a continental plateau, and West Antarctica is a chain of mountainous islands connected by ice. The mysterious continent, by international agreement, does not belong to any state. During the long winter, scientists working at the stations remain as if on another planet, having only satellite communications with the mainland.
And yet Antarctica still remains a mysterious land. After its discovery, a map of the famous Turkish admiral Piri Reis, made in 1513, was discovered in Istanbul. Its authenticity was in doubt, but still many researchers believe that it is really a document of the 16th century. Doubts are not surprising - the map accurately depicts the eastern coast of South America, the Amazon and the Falkland Islands, which are believed to have been discovered by the inhabitants of the Old World only in 1592. And most importantly, the map contains part of the Antarctic coast, and without ice, just like on the map of Buache. Piri Reis in his notes claimed that he relied on ancient maps from the time of Alexander the Great, and the Piri Reis Map is not the only one. The map, compiled in 1531 by Orontius Finney, shows the yet undiscovered Antarctica with mountain ranges and rivers.
Already in 1949, seismic exploration of the Antarctic coast was carried out, and its relief was studied. Researchers noted with great surprise that this relief corresponds to the image on maps of the 16th century. Modern science does not know how to explain this. It is believed that Antarctica has been covered by a two-kilometer layer of ice for the last 14 million years. However, this did not stop atlantologist Rand Flem-Ath from hypothesizing that Antarctica is Atlantis, comparing its outlines with Plato’s description of the island. In 1990, the remains of trees frozen in ice were discovered on this continent. Their age was determined to be 2-3 million years. Of course this too prehistoric times. How could Piri Reis and Orontius Finney know about Antarctica?
On the Antarctic islands Lately ship skeletons of the 17th-18th centuries are found. On this basis, Chile even lays claim to Antarctica: an 18th-century Spanish galleon from Chile was discovered in Antarctica, and its remains are now on display in the Valparaiso Museum. And a few years ago, Argentine archaeologists found knives, clothes and objects in Antarctica kitchen utensils which date back to the 17th century. Scientists believe that in the summer, hunters of sea animals lived on ice-free areas of the Antarctic coast. Therefore, it can be assumed that some ships could have drifted to the Antarctic shores a century, and perhaps centuries earlier. But the accuracy of ancient maps leaves us room for various assumptions.
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People have always been attracted to polar countries. At the poles in the summer the sun does not set for months, and the eternal ice shines in its rays. In winter, the polar night reigns, and hurricane winds and severe snowstorms constantly rage. The book "Antarctic Pioneers" contains a narrative of discoveries in Antarctica until 1954, when a new era began in the exploration of Antarctica - the romance of the discoveries of the pioneers was replaced by commerce and politics. The book is addressed to the reader who is interested in the history of geographical discoveries.
Part 1. PROLOGUE
"Unknown Southern Land"
(Terra australis incognita)
The story of the pioneers of Antarctica begins in those distant centuries, when the very first mapmakers of the Southern Hemisphere were sure that somewhere far to the south there was a large continent called the Unknown Southern Land.
Having made this conclusion, ancient geographers determined the size of our planet and depicted its surface in the form of a map. However, due to the lack of information about the Earth's surface, these maps only depicted areas of ancient civilization. The areas remote from them were plotted on the map completely arbitrarily, depending on the imagination of its compiler. The land around the South Pole was depicted on the map as the Unknown Southern Land, but... without ice cover. There was an opinion that this was a densely populated, fabulously rich region. And oddly enough, its boundaries were indicated in great detail.
The ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy (2nd century AD) proceeded from the fact that the land on Earth is a single continent, and the geographer Strabo, no less famous at that time, argued that the southern and northern hemispheres should contain identical land masses that create equilibrium. The southern land was depicted as the vast eastern tip of Africa in the Indian Ocean. The outlines of the continent were drawn arbitrarily; mountains, forests and rivers were often depicted. On Ptolemy's map, Southern Land occupied the entire south.
Ptolemy considered the Indian Ocean to be a closed sea, bounded from the west and south by the shores of Africa, from the north by Arabia, Persia, Gedrosia and India, and from the east by the country of the Sins (Indochina). Ptolemy called the south of Malacca the Golden Chersonese. Serika is China (“the land of silk”). Despite numerous errors, for that time, Ptolemy's map retained its significance almost until the 17th century. Although many of his miscalculations and conjectures were corrected in the works of Arab and Central Asian scientists, Ptolemy’s “Geography” continued to be used in Europe in its original form.
At the end of the 15th century, people no longer doubted that the Earth was round, like a ball, although this had not been proven by anyone. This is exactly what Columbus thought, when he suggested that the Spanish Queen Isabella find new way to India, sending ships not to the east, but to the west. The Queen blessed him for this journey, and... Columbus discovered America. The fact that this was not India became clear quite quickly, but this did not stop Spain from making America its “zone of influence.”
The great geographical discoveries of that time became possible thanks to the important improvements that were made in those days in navigation and military affairs. In the 15th century a new type of high-speed light sailing ships was created - caravels, capable of long sea crossings. Caravels went down in the history of navigation as the first ships of Columbus that crossed the Atlantic and discovered the New World. A magnetic compass, nautical charts, and firearms appeared - muskets, pistols and cannons.
Chapter 1. THE CONTOURS OF THE SOUTH EARTH ARE REMOVED TO THE SOUTH
Bartolomeu Dias di Novais
(Bartolomeu Dias de Novaes; 1450 – 1500)
At the end of the 15th century, the question arose: was Ptolemy’s world map correct? On this map, Africa extended to the South Pole, separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Indian Ocean.
Portuguese navigators established: the further south you go, the further the coast of Africa deviates to the east; perhaps the continent ends somewhere and is washed by the sea from the south? Then it would be possible to go around Africa on ships and get to the Indian Ocean, and along it to India and China, and from there to transport spices and other valuable goods to Europe by sea. This exciting mystery was solved by the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias.
Bartolomeu Dias…… Ferdinand Magellan
It is known that Dias was known as an experienced sailor. As part of expeditions, he often sailed along the western coast of Africa. Apparently, this is why King Juan, who continued the work of his great-uncle Henry the Navigator, appointed Dias as commander of a flotilla that set off to explore the southern coast of Africa and search for a sea route to India.
In 1487 In the same year, three ships of Dias left Lisbon and reached the southern tip of Africa and circled it, despite a severe storm.
The seafarers had a view of Table Mountain and the majestic cape of the southernmost tip of Africa. Dias called it the Cape of Storms. 10 years later, Vasco da Gama renamed this tip the Cape of Good Hope - hopes to reach India and other countries of the East by sea.
Beyond the cape, the waters of the Indian Ocean stretched to the east. Dias' ships reached the Great Fish River (Cape Province of Africa).
The voyage of Dias' ships had a huge historical meaning:
– The ships circumnavigated the southern tip of Africa for the first time, thereby proving that the African continent is not connected to the Southern Land. When depicted on the map, these continents began to be separated from each other by a wide strait.
– The way to the Indian Ocean was opened for Portuguese and later other European ships.
– In addition to the opening of the route around Africa, the length of the studied African coast increased by 1260 miles.
– This was the longest of all Portuguese sea voyages - Dias’ ships stayed at sea for 16 months and 17 days.
Over time, the belief in the existence of the Southern Land weakened somewhat, although it did not disappear completely, even after the sailors rounded the Cape of Good Hope and then Cape Horn, not finding any lands in the south except the raging ocean.
Ferdinand Magellan
(Fernando de Magallanes, 1480 – 1521)
For more than two centuries, the contours of the newly discovered lands remained unsteady and unclear. In the 17th century, huge blank spots remained on world maps, both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Hypothesis about spherical shape Earth and a single ocean washing the land, expressed by ancient scientists, found an increasing number of supporters in the 15th century. Based on this hypothesis, people in Europe began to express the idea of reaching the eastern coast of Asia by sea, sailing from Europe to the west, across the Atlantic Ocean.
Like the expeditions of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Magellan's voyage was one of the most significant voyages of the initial stage of the Great Discoveries.
1519 Magellan's flotilla consisted of five small ships. Without nautical charts, Magellan set off across the Atlantic Ocean west into the unknown. The set of navigation instruments included only a compass, hourglass and the astrolabe (predecessor of the sextant), there were no reliable instruments even for approximate determination of longitude; latitude was determined by the sun.
The goal of Magellan's expedition was to find a new route to the riches of the Spice Islands, the most important source of Portuguese wealth.
In 1520 Off the coast of South America, a storm miraculously drove the ships to the inconspicuous entrance to the strait, which now bears the name of Magellan.
The mountainous land that Magellan saw south of the strait was taken by him for the shore of the Southern Continent. Silent mountains and glaciers stretched all the way to the sea. The air is damp and cold. Bonfires burned on the banks at night, apparently lit by local residents. The Land of Fires - this is how the southern 6th leg of the strait was named and accepted as the northern part of the Unknown Southern Land.
The ships, one after another, entered the strait that separated the mainland of South America from the Southern Earth and, rocking on the stormy waves, emerged into an unknown sea - it was the Pacific Ocean.
Strait of Magellan
Coming out of the strait, Magellan's ships turned sharply to the north and reached approximately 25° S in this direction. and then headed northwest and passed the most “landless” part Pacific Ocean, encountering only two small islands on the way from the strait to the Mariana Islands.
Significant is the fact that 18 people who returned from this circumnavigation of the world, after difficult three years, brought a cargo of spices on the only surviving ship “Victoria” to Spain, which covered all the costs of preparing and sending five ships with 265 sailors and officers to this expedition on board.
Magellan's circumnavigation of the world proved that the Earth has the shape of a ball that can be circumnavigated by the sea. Magellan put an end to the debate about the shape of our planet forever by providing practical evidence of its spherical shape. It became clear that oceans and seas occupy most of the surface of our planet - like a single World Ocean. A passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean was opened, and the southern tip of the American continent was determined.
On maps, Tierra del Fuego was depicted as the northern cape of Southland.
Francisco Oses
1526 The development of the Great (Pacific) Ocean allowed Europeans to explore new lands and build trade routes to India and the Spice Islands.
Competition from Portugal forced the Spaniards, six years after the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, to organize an expedition to test the possibility of using the strait as a route to the western shores of America.
A squadron of seven ships led by Garcia Loaiza and Juan Elcano (captain of the Victoria Magellan) crossed the Atlantic. A storm scatters ships off the coast of Patagonia. One of them was wrecked, and the small ship Santo Lemes was thrown far south from Tierra del Fuego by a capricious storm gust.
In his report, the captain of the Santo Lemes, Francisco Oses, said that they saw the “end of the Earth,” i.e. the tip of the main island of Tierra del Fuego, beyond which the open sea extended to the south.
This was an important discovery. It turned out that it is possible to go to the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic, bypassing the winding and dangerous Strait of Magellan. The herd is clear that Tierra del Fuego is not the northern part of the Southern Land, but is an archipelago adjacent to South America. This discovery pushed the borders of the Southland even further south.
At that time, no attention was paid to Oses's message. Confirmation of this discovery came only 50 years later, when in 1578 the ships of the English pirate Francis Drake passed through the Strait of Magellan from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and then, rounding Tierra del Fuego from the southwest, again entered the Atlantic Ocean.
Francis Drake
(Francis Drake; 1540 – 1596)
In the middle of the 16th century, English pirates began to become active on the Spanish Atlantic sea roads. Like pirates of other nationalities, they either hunted for Spanish ships loaded with jewelry, or smuggled black slaves with Spanish planters in “Western India.”
Drake joined the pirate fraternity. But then he became the “executor” of a large “share company”, one of the shareholders of which was the English Queen Elizabeth. At the expense of the treasury, she equipped pirate ships, and the pirates shared their booty with her.
In April 1578, Drake's squadron of 4 ships approached the coast of South America in the La Plata area, and slowly moved south. In August, Drake's ships entered the Strait of Magellan and passed it in twenty days.
Francis Drake
In the Pacific Ocean, the flotilla was met by a fierce storm and Drake's Golden Hind was carried far south beyond the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. Next Drake saw the open sea. It was a strait between Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica, which today is called the Drake Passage. As soon as the storm subsided, the Golden Hind headed north towards the Chilean coast. The borders of "Terra Australis Incognita" again retreated to the south.
When Drake's ship was overloaded big amount looted gold and jewelry, the captain thought about returning to his homeland. However, he did not dare to return through the Strait of Magellan, assuming that Spanish ships might be waiting for him there. Therefore, Drake decided to take an unknown route across the Pacific Ocean to the west. The journey along the west coast of America turned out to be very successful. During the voyage, Drake mapped islands and coastlines, established relationships with the natives, thereby laying the foundations for England's trade with Asian countries.
The Golden Hind crossed the Pacific Ocean, went to the Philippines and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, returned to England in September 1580. This was the second time in the history of navigation trip around the world.
Drake's pirate raid opened up a new sea route for English ships, previously known only to the Spaniards and Portuguese.
Cartographers have made a change to nautical charts: Tierra del Fuego is not part of the Southern Land, but is an archipelago - a group of islands.
Australia and New Zealand were soon discovered. They were mistaken for the northern capes of the mysterious continent, until the Dutchman Tasman dispelled this myth.
The Renaissance came, giving the world great thinkers, artists, and travelers. The human mind again turned to earthly things, trying to connect and explain the diversity of phenomena in the world around it. The uncontrollable desire to take possession of a fabulous country lying somewhere overseas continued to motivate us to finance dubious expeditions and pursue only one goal - to find a country where gold is in abundance. Each era is characterized by its own unique misconceptions, and it is not surprising that many sailors tried to find the mysterious Southern continent.
Dirk Gerritz
(Dirck Gerrits. 1544 – 1608)
In 1599 During the confrontation between the Dutch and the Spaniards over overseas possessions, a squadron of ships was sent from Holland to the Pacific Ocean to seize Spanish possessions in the Great Ocean.
The squadron safely passed the Strait of Magellan, but when leaving the strait, the sailors were overtaken by a severe storm. One of the ships under the command of Dirk Gerrits was carried south in the Drake Passage to the 64th parallel. Here Gerritz saw a land with high snow-clad mountains that reminded him of the shores of Norway. In all likelihood it was one of the South Shetland Islands, discovered more than a hundred years later. Approaching this land, Dirk Gerrits turned the ship north and soon lost sight of it.
Gerritz's discovery confirmed the opinion existing among geographers of that time that in the extreme south around the pole lies a mysterious continent, to which geographers gave the most arbitrary and fantastic outlines.
But that was the end of the matter - not only the discovery, but also the very name of Dirk Gerrits was forgotten for a long time, and only later, when they actually began to discover some lands south of Cape Horn, did they remember the story of Dirk Gerrits and began to call these lands the Dirk Gerrits Archipelago .
Jacob Lemer
(Jacob le Maire; 1585-1616)
1615 A rival of the East India Company, a wealthy Amsterdam merchant Isaac Lemer, having received in 1610 the privilege to trade with “... Tartary, China, Japan and Southern Land", wanted to use this privilege by finding a sea route to South Asia past the Cape of Good Hope, without outposts and slingshots placed along the way.
In 1615, Lemaire equipped an expedition to find a route to Asia in the western South Pacific direction. The helmsmen of the expedition were Lemer's son - the Dutch merchant Jacob Lemer and the navigator V. K. Schouten.
The expedition set sail from Holland to the Atlantic.
In January 1616, having rounded Tierra del Fuego from the south, the ship approached the tip of the South American continent - Cape Horn.
They called the high coast east of Tierra del Fuego Land of the States(now Estados Island). Dutch navigators decided that they had discovered the northern ledge Southern mainland.
Having circled Tierra del Fuego from the south, the ship approached the tip of the South American continent - Cape Horn, then to the atolls and islands of the Tuamotu, Samoa and Bismarck archipelagos.
Chapter 2. TRADING COMPANIES - THE BASIS OF COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 17TH CENTURY
The Age of Great Geographical Discovery is a period in human history from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th century. During this era, the prerequisites for the development of colonialism arose, namely in those times (XV century) when Vasco da Gama opened the route to India and Columbus reached the shores of America.
The understanding of the world around us began to expand rapidly. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England and France sent ships to countries unknown to them, rumored to be rich in gold and spices. Behind the thirst for knowledge of mankind stands like a shadow the thirst for profit of the industrialist. The first colonies were founded in the New World by the Spaniards. When encountering peoples of other cultures, Europeans demonstrated their technical superiority (ocean sailing ships and firearms).
New countries were opened, often mistaken for the Southern Continent. But it gradually became clear that to the south of the newly discovered lands there were vast expanses of ocean.
The search for mysterious lands continued in the second half of the 18th century. The incentive to search for new lands was not only human curiosity, but also the thirst for enrichment and the desire of states to seize new territories and turn them into colonies. And commerce always came ahead of state interests.
The word “capital” appeared in the 12th – 13th centuries. in Italy in the meaning of “value”, “stock of goods”, “interest-bearing money”. In this meaning it spread throughout Europe. In Holland in the 17th century, the word “capitalist” arose on its basis, i.e. owner of capital.
The era of primitive accumulation of capital in Europe is considered to be the time from the mid-15th century to the mid-18th century. At this time there was intensive development and growth of trade.
The rulers of Western Europe began to pursue a policy that was based on the theory that it was necessary to sell abroad more than to buy there, and receive the difference in value in gold.
To obtain the greatest income from exports, this policy recommended the use of monopolies, i.e. large business associations that are privately owned to exercise control over the market, establish monopoly prices to extract monopoly profits. The rulers and their entourage turned into allies of traders.
In England and Holland in the 17th century, capitalist production became dominant. The rapid development of capitalism also occurred in France. There was a fierce struggle for colonies between these three countries. The plunder of colonies served as a source of initial capital accumulation for the European bourgeoisie, and colonies became increasingly important as sources of market needs and raw materials for rapidly developing industry. As capitalism developed, as a consequence, the plunder of colonial countries intensified.
Holland and England captured the richest colonies in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The emerging French bourgeoisie also sought to expand its colonial possessions. That is why the French East India Company in the late 60s and early 70s of the 18th century was active in equipping a number of expeditions “to search” for the Southern continent.
Trading companies from Holland, England, and France take part in the struggle for possession of the colonies. The emerging bourgeois society puts forward new forms and methods of colonial policy, different from those that were characteristic of the colonial empires of feudal states. Their essence was that state power did not directly participate in the seizure and exploitation of colonies. The state machine, pumping income from the colonies into the royal treasury, was replaced by private individuals - shareholders of companies organizing the exploitation of the colonies solely in the interests of their personal enrichment. The close connection between the interests of the state and the company is direct military assistance and support for their colonial activities, which manifested themselves openly in a wide variety of forms. However, the apparatus of colonial exploitation itself was in private hands; colonial spoils were not wasted on wars, but served, first of all, directly to concentrate capital in private hands and served the cause of primitive accumulation.
The colonial activities of European powers until the beginning of the 17th century were carried out in two directions: firstly, the search for new trade routes that were not captured by the Spaniards and Portuguese, mainly routes to India; secondly, collecting information about sea routes to India and America, which were used by the Spaniards and Portuguese.
Among the numerous trading companies that arose in the 17th century, two of the most significant were the Dutch and English East India Companies.
Note
East Indies (“East India”) are the countries of South and Southeast Asia.
West Indies (“Western India”) is the name of the islands in the Caribbean Sea and the adjacent Bahamas, Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles. The West Indies are located between South and North America, between 10° and 26° north latitude and 59° and 85° west longitude.
It should also be understood that the West Indies and Western Indies are completely different regions, although “West Indies” is translated as “Western India”, but it is not.
Discovery of South Georgia Island
1675 Anthony de la Roche- English merchant. Having received permission from the Spanish authorities to trade in Spanish America, he went to the shores of Chile. In April, rounding Cape Horn, the ship encountered a storm at the southern entrance to the Lemera Strait (the strait between the islands of Estados and Tierra del Fuego) and was thrown far to the east by storm winds. Having lost its course, the ship found refuge in one of the hospitable bays of an unknown island. We dropped anchor next to a rocky and sandy cape.
The bay was surrounded by icy, mountainous terrain. Two weeks later, as soon as the weather cleared, the sails were raised and the ship continued sailing.
After this trip to new geographical maps In the 17th century, the names appeared: “Roche Island” and “De la Roche Strait”, separating the island from an unknown land in the southeast.
In 1695 year Duclos Guillot, returning from Peru on the Spanish ship Leon, he saw in the South Atlantic Ocean the land that Roche had once discovered. He named it the island of "San Pedro" (St. Peter).
These first visits did not lead to any territorial claims. At that time, Spain never laid claim to the island, which was also located in the “Portuguese” half of the world according to the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal.
A hundred years later (in 1775) during the second trip to South ocean On the ships Resolution and Adventure, James Cook explored and mapped this island, and named it George Island after the English king George III. Following instructions from the Admiralty, Cook declared the island a possession of the British crown.
Historically, South Georgia Island is the first Antarctic territory discovered by man.
Discovery of New Holland (Australia)
and New Zealand
Dutch expeditions to southern seas The Indian and Pacific oceans were directly or indirectly connected with the activities of the Dutch East India Company. The direct scope of the company's activities covered the islands of the Malay Archipelago. The company's base in Batavia (Jakarta) was like an octopus, whose tenacious tentacles stretched to the Moluccas and Ceylon, to the islands of Sulawesi and Banda.
By the early 40s of the 17th century, Dutch sailors discovered and mapped the western, southwestern and partially northern shores of a huge land called New Holland from the Indian Ocean.
Tierra del Fuego, Estados Island, Bouvet Island, New Holland, New Zealand and even the northern coast of the island of New Guinea, discovered by the Spaniards in 1544, in the minds of Dutch sailors and cartographers of those years were taken as giant protrusions of the northern territories of the mythical South Land, stretching almost from the equator to the South Pole.
A significant change in the contours of the South Land occurred in the first half of the 17th century as a result of the voyages of the Dutch in the seas surrounding New Holland, after which the outlines of the South Land moved further to the south.
Luis Vaez de Torres
(Luis Váez de Torres 1560-1614)
In 1606, a Portuguese ship in the Spanish service of Luis Torres reached the southeastern tip of New Guinea and continued along its southern coast. He walked in the waters of the Coral Sea, dotted with shoals and reefs, bypassing countless small islands and overcoming headwinds and currents. In the first forty days he passed to the Gulf of Papua, leaving behind a long "tail" of New Guinea. In early September, while in the bend of the Gulf of Papua, Torres became convinced that it was impossible to go further along the New Guinea coast because of shoals and oncoming coastal currents. Torres turned southwest and steered the ship into the open sea. At 9° and 10° S. w. he discovered the islands of Malandanza, Perros, Vulcan, Manserate and Cantharides - they corresponded to the Warrior Reef chain (this chain of reefs stretches across the entire northern part of the Torres Strait). Torres walked east of it, trying to get around the reefs and reach “ clean water».
Luis Vaez De Torres
On October 3, 1606, Torres made an entry in the ship's log about large islands and among these islands there was one very large one.
Without knowing it, Torres made a discovery of enormous importance - it was Prince of Wales Island, lying off the coast of Cape York Peninsula - the northernmost tip of Australia.
Torres turned northwest and again reached the New Guinea shores, and then headed towards Manila, where he arrived in the spring of 1607.
It is difficult to say whether Torres discovered Australia, but undoubtedly he was the first European to pass through the strait separating the fifth continent from New Guinea, and rightly later named after him. Torres established that New Guinea, considered part of the Southern Land, is an island surrounded by many islands.
The most amazing thing is that the world learned about this outstanding discovery only one hundred and sixty years later! Torres's reports were safely hidden in secret Spanish archives, and the strait between Australia and New Guinea was “lost” for many years.
Pedro Fernandez Quiros
(Pedro Fernandes de Queiros; 1565-1614)
In 1595, the Spanish navigator Pedro Fernandez Quiros participated as a helmsman in the expedition that discovered the Marquesas Islands and the Santa Cruz archipelago.
In 1605, Quiros, together with Torres, took part in the search for the Southern Land. At the beginning of 1606, the Tuamotu archipelago was discovered, then several more islands and atolls, including the Banks Islands. The ship approached Espiritu Santo, one of the islands that would later be called the New Hebrides.
Kiros decided that this was the unknown southern land in search of which they had been sent. He declared this land a possession of the Spanish crown, calling it “Australia of the Holy Spirit.”
Quiros hastened to report his “discovery” to King Philip III. However, his message was not accepted.
A century and a half later, maps of the archipelago compiled by Quiros came to the British. The British Admiralty developed detailed navigation instructions based on them, which English sailors used for more than a hundred years.
Abel Tasman
(Abel Janszoon Tasman, 1603-1659)
By 1642 it became known that south of Cape Levin of New Holland the coast took an easterly direction. The question arose: what is this - the edge of the mainland or the beginning of a large bay? Van Diemen, the governor of the Dutch East Indies, instructs Captain Abel Tasman to find out whether New Holland is part of the Southland.
Tasman led a detachment of two ships of the East India Company to explore the southern and eastern waters of the Pacific Ocean. According to the assumptions of geographers and navigators of those times, it was these waters that should wash the shores of the Unknown Southern Land, the possible riches of which were told by several generations of navigators.
Abel Tasman……Pedro Quiros
The ships sailed along the western coast to Cape Levin, then turned to the southeast. A few days later, the sailors saw a fairly large land in the east. Tasman called it Van Diemen's Land. It was actually a large island south of New Holland.
The British later renamed this island Tasmania, in honor of the discoverer.
Having followed several dozen miles along the coast of the island, Tasman turned east and on December 13 saw the outlines of another unfamiliar land. He decided that it was a solid landmass (it was the North Island belonging to New Zealand), and called it the Land of the States (Statenlandt).
On January 4, 1643, the ships approached the extreme northwestern tip of New Zealand, which was named Cape Maria Van Diemen. Headwinds did not allow the ships to go around the cape and explore the northern coast of the island, and the ships entered a wide bay. Tasman did not know that this was not a bay, but a strait that divides New Zealand in half.
Walking along northern shore"Gulf", Tasman's ships turned west and went around the southwestern tip of the island and followed its western coast to the north. Only the western coast of the United States was mapped.
The new discovery led to new misconceptions: Tasman discovered another land on this voyage - New Zealand and considered it to be part of the Southern Land.
Only after 127 years were the true outlines of this land determined and it became clear that this was not Southland - these were two islands, slightly larger in area than Great Britain.
Tasman "separated" the Australian mainland from Southland
The ships headed northeast, towards the islands of Tonga and Fiji. By traveling unhindered for thousands of miles around Australia, Tasman proved that Australia was not part of the Southern Continent, but an independent continent.
Thus, Tasman “separated” the New Dutch (Australian) land from the Southern Land, opened a new sea route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific in a strip of stable western winds forties latitudes and suggested that the ocean washing Australia from the south covers a vast area in the forties and fifties latitudes. Contemporaries did not use these important discoveries of Tasman, but they were duly appreciated by the English navigator James Cook.
In 1770, James Cook, during his first expedition around the world, circled New Zealand and thereby “closed” the last protrusion of the Southern Continent in the southern hemisphere. He owes much of the success of his first two voyages to Tasman.
Almost 100 years after James Cook's voyages, Europeans began to explore New Zealand.
The name Terra Australis incognita, intended since ancient times for the Antarctic continent, was later assigned to the continent, the discovery of which was begun by the Dutch and completed by Cook. New Holland became known as Australia.
The results of Tasman's expeditions disappointed the East India Company: Tasman found neither gold nor spices - he explored the deserted shores of desert lands. New trading areas were never discovered.
For fifty years, the company had seized so much rich land in the Asian East that it was now preoccupied with how to retain these distant possessions. The routes laid out by Tasman did not promise her any benefits, because she already held in her tenacious hands the sea route leading to the East Indies past the Cape of Good Hope. And so that these new paths would not be taken over by competitors, the company considered it best to close them and at the same time stop further research.
« Preferably- wrote to Batavia from Amsterdam, - so that these lands remain unknown and unexplored, so as not to attract the attention of foreigners to ways in which they could harm the interests of the company...»
Chapter 3. THE SEARCH FOR THE SOUTH LAND CONTINUES
Edward Davis
(Edward Davis)
Ships XVI- XVIII centuries, first the Spanish, and then the English and Dutch, plowed the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean in search of the mysterious Southern continent. But instead of a huge continent, they discovered dozens and hundreds of small and large islands, inhabited and deserted.
In 1687 year, the English filibuster Edward Davis set off in search of the Unknown Southern Land. Turning from the coast of South America to the Galapagos Islands, Davis' ship went south. At 27º S, at a distance of more than three thousand kilometers from the Chilean coast, sailors noticed a low sandy island. Twenty miles to the west of it a long and high strip of land was visible.
Davis did not land on open land and continued on his way.
Further attempts to find “Davis Land” in the vastness of the Great Ocean were futile. It is still unknown whether the lands Davis saw were an optical illusion, or whether there was land in this area of the Pacific Ocean.
Jacob Roggeveen
(Jacob Roggeveen, 1659 – 1729)
Roggeveen - a Dutch navigator discovered the island of Rapa Nui (Easter) lost in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean.
In 1717 year, Roggeveen turned to the West India Company with a project in which he argued that Holland was undervalued western path to Far Asia through the Strait of Magellan and the Strait of Lemaire. Meanwhile, following this path, you can not only penetrate from the rear into the possessions of the East India Company, but also open up the southern land. He believed that this Earth should be located in the Pacific Ocean only 15° south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Roggeveen's project was taken very seriously - Jacob Roggeveen had extensive navigator experience behind him. He spent nine years in the East Indies, was a councilor of the court chamber in Batavia, has experience in driving ships and knows the routes leading from the harbors of Java and the Moluccas to New Holland.
Jacob Roggeveen...Jean Francois Bouvet
In 1721 year, the West India Company equipped an expedition consisting of three ships - "Arend", "Tinhoven" and "African Galley". The flotilla had seventy cannons, and its crew included 223 sailors and soldiers. The ships were heading in search of land, which was supposedly called "Davis Land".
The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was successful. After entering Rio de Janeiro, Roggeveen’s ships entered the Lemera Strait, where the current carried them south to 62°30.” Then, rounding Cape Horn, they headed north, approached the shores of the Juan Fernandez Islands (opposite Chile) and headed west-northwest in a direction that should have been between 27° and 28° S. w. land discovered by Edward Davies.
At dawn on April 6, 1722, in the area indicated by Davis, just on Easter Sunday, Jacob Roggeveen discovered an equally mysterious small rocky island, and since the traditions of that time were to name the new land in honor of the religious holiday that fell on the day of its discovery, This is exactly how a new name appeared on the world map - Easter Island.
« Since we noticed this land on the solemn day of the Resurrection of the Lord, we called it Easter Island. ABOUT the island gives the impression of being very fertile and probably inhabited, as smoke is visible in places“- writes Karl Friedrich Behrens, Roggeveen’s companion, in his book “The Tried Southerner,” published in Leipzig in 1737.
The sailors were literally stunned by the huge number of statues that seemed to be squatting at the very edge of the water, peering into the horizon. According to Roggeveen, these statues consisted of only heads, which, like busts, were located on small torsos. Moreover, the height of some reached almost twelve meters. The tops of their heads seemed to be crowned with royal crowns; in fact, they were incomprehensible headdresses. Roggeveen decided that this island was the semi-legendary land of Davis that they were trying to find.
However, despite the differences found in the description and given coordinates of the two islands, we still have to consider the discoveries of Davis and Roggeveen identical, since no other island exists in these now well-studied latitudes.
In the archipelago of the Tuamotu Islands, the "African Galley" crashed on reefs. Only after five days of effort, anxiety and danger did the Dutch manage to get out of the archipelago and get back onto the open sea. In July 1723, having passed the Moluccas, the ships arrived in Batavia.
French in the South Seas
Jean-François-Charles Bouvet de Lozier
(Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier; 1705-1786)
The French did not appear in the Pacific Ocean until the mid-18th century. Holland and England captured the richest colonies in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The young French bourgeoisie sought to expand its colonial possessions. The French East India Company took the initiative in mounting a number of expeditions to search for the Southern Continent.
In 1733, Lieutenant Bouvet of the French East India Company proposed to the Company a plan for an expedition to the South Atlantic with the aim of searching in the south for lands where the Company could establish transit bases to service its ships sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1738, Bouvet, at the direction of the French East India Company, set sail to southern waters on two ships "Aigle" and "Marie", not so much for the search for Terra Australis, but for the search for new colonies. Bouvet boldly sailed south into the region of the worst weather in the world - to the famous “roaring forties” latitudes.
January 1, 1739 at 54° S. Captain Bouvet saw a gloomy, fog-covered, ice-bound coast, two gloomy icy peaks clearly visible on the horizon.
Since he saw the land on January 1, the day of the Christian holiday “Circumcision of the Lord,” he named this cape Cape Sirconción (Cape of the Circumcision of the Lord).
Because of the fog, he mistook the island for a cape, beyond which a large land supposedly stretched (naturally, he assumed that this was the Unknown Southern Land indicated on the geographical maps of that time). Due to constant fogs, Bouvet was unable to land on the shore and had to retreat. In reality, this land was a small island lost in the Atlantic.
Bouvet's discovery at that time was perceived as further evidence of the existence of the Southern continent.
Bouvet's expedition brought to Europe for the first time information about huge table icebergs, which are found only in the southern polar seas, about extremely large herds of whales in southern waters, and about a new species of animals - penguins, at that time almost unknown to Europeans.
Upon his return to France, Bouvet reported the discovery of the northern tip of the Southland.
Subsequently, captains James Cook and James Ross searched in vain for this island. The ships passed significantly south of the place where Buev saw Cape Sirconcincion, but the British did not find any land in the area indicated by Bouvet. Cook decided that Bouvet mistook a huge ice island for land. The main reason Their failure was that they were looking for him in completely the wrong place. As it turned out a century and a half later, Bouvet was mistaken by 250 kilometers. Instruments for measuring longitude in those days were very imperfect. When determining longitude, he was mistaken by more than six degrees, since he, like other navigators of that time, did not have instruments that would allow him to accurately determine geographical coordinates. A reliable chronometer, a necessary tool for determining longitude, has not yet been created, and the search for this tiny island, whose area is only 57 square meters, has not yet been created. km, and an altitude of 935 m, requires precise navigation.
Despite his failure to find southern land, Bouvet was greeted with honor and went on to have a successful career with the East India Company.
Bouvet's voyage, completed in 1738-1739. V southern part Atlantic Ocean, had important consequences.
For many years after Bouvet's discovery, the existence of this island was questioned and almost 70 years later, in 1809, the island was rediscovered by English whalers James Lindsay and Thomas Hopper. In 1822, American Benjamin Morrell made the first landing and named Bouvet Island in honor of its discoverer. In December 1825, the island was once again discovered by a British whaling expedition. The name Cape of Circumcision was retained for the cape at the northwestern end of the island.
Louis de Bougainville
(Louis Antoine comte de Bougainville; 1729 -1811)
Bougainville was a French navigator, lawyer, mathematician and excellent diplomat.
After unsuccessful wars with England, France lost Canada. In 1763, a project arose to expand French possessions in the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville was perfect for this mission. He was appointed captain of a frigate and sent to the Falkland Islands to organize a French colony there. Beginning in 1764, he visited the Falkland Islands three times and founded the settlement of Saint-Louis there. At that time, these islands were a point of contention between France and Spain. King Louis XV was forced to cede the islands to Spain.
In 1766, Bougainville was appointed leader of a naval expedition tasked with exploring the ocean from the west coast of South America to the East Indies and circumnavigating the world in search of new colonies. It was proposed to find the Land of the Holy Spirit in the Pacific Ocean, which, at the suggestion of the 16th century Spanish navigator Pedro Fernandez Quiros, was considered part of the Southern Land.
In the fall of 1766, the 20-gun frigate Boudez and the auxiliary cargo ship Etoile left France and headed through the Strait of Magellan to the Pacific Ocean in search of the South Land.
Having sailed to the New Hebrides, Bougainville corrected an error that had existed for one hundred and fifty years: he proved that the New Hebrides were islands and not part of the Southland.
Bougainville expanded the expedition program by studying sea currents, winds, magnetic phenomena and the compilation of accurate maps of the Strait of Magellan. In 1769, the ships returned to France without finding the southern mainland.
Bougainville's ships were the first French ships to circumnavigate the world (1766-1769). It should be noted that in terms of its scientific results, the French expedition surpassed all three British circumnavigations.
Louis de Bougainville...Marc Joseph Marion Dufresne
Marc Joseph Marion-Dufresne
(Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, 1724-1772)
Marion-Dufresne - French navigator.
In 1771, two frigates, the Mascaren and the Marquis de Castries, set out in search of the Southern Land from the island of Mauritius, the main French base in the southern Indian Ocean.
Prince Edward Island and the Crozet Islands were discovered. Dufresne thought that this was the Southern Continent and named these lands "Terra Esperanza". But when the fog cleared, Marion Dufresne saw that there were only small islands in front of him.
The ships headed east towards New Zealand. Having set foot on the shores of New Zealand, Dufresne declared it the possession of the French crown. Then we approached the island of Tasmania.
A camp was set up on the shore. The French visit to the island lasted five weeks with no clear sign of departure, and probably local residents- The Maori were afraid of the permanence of the French settlement and interference in their way of life, this aggravated the situation. Armed Maori attacked the camp, killing Dufresne and 19 French sailors. Those French who did not leave the ships, in revenge for their dead comrades, burned the Maori village and its 250 inhabitants.
It is likely that the French violated local customs, perhaps there were serious economic or social disturbances, or the sailors went too far in some way.
Lieutenant Crozet took command of the expedition. The ships returned to the island of Mariqui.
Jean Francois Marie de Surville
(Jan Francois Mari de Survil, 1717-1770)
At the end of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), France lost a significant part of its possessions in India. The French East India Company had to sharply reduce its trading operations.
In June 1769, the Saint Jean-Baptiste, with a three-year supply of food and everything necessary for a long-distance expedition, loaded with goods, sailed from Pondicherry (India) and headed for the Philippine Islands through the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
The task of the expedition, led by the captain of the French East India Company, Surville, was to establish trade with the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, mainly with the Tahitians, and to discover new lands to the west of the coast of Peru, in the zone 27-28 ° S. sh., where, as was then believed, the mythical “Davis Land” or Southern Land was located.
Having rounded the Philippines from the north, in early October the ship approached the island of New Ireland at approximately 151° E. and, continuing to follow the same course, they approached land that was not very confidently mistaken for an island (Choiseul Island).
Moving along the chain of the Solomon Islands, Surville considered them to be peninsulas of some kind big land or maybe a continent.
At the end of October, having passed the bay (Indispensable Strait), the French saw mountainous land in the southeast (Malaita Island) and passed near its eastern shore.
de Surville... Yves Joseph Tremarec de Kerguelen
At the beginning of November, the ship rounded the eastern cape of the “land of the Papuans” - in fact it was (now bearing the name of Surville) the eastern tip of the island of San Cristobal, the last island in the Solomon Islands chain. Surville never realized that he had traced almost the entire “elusive” archipelago, passing first to the south, and at 33° S. w. to the east-southeast.
With this voyage through the Coral Sea, the waters west of the Fiji Sea and the Tasman Sea, Surville, almost five months earlier than Cook, proved that between 20 and 35 ° S. w. there is no land and therefore New Holland does not extend as far to the east as Tasman supposed.
Surville, making discoveries in Oceania, discovered almost simultaneously with Cook the land once discovered by Tasman and called by him the Land of the States.
Surville, following the company's instructions, covered a strip in an unexplored area of the ocean within 34-40° south. sh., i.e., much further south than planned. In this strip, Surville did not find any land for almost 9 thousand km, which significantly reduced the size of the Southern Continent, “pushing” it to the south - beyond 40° S. w. Surville's route clarified the map of the southwestern Pacific Ocean.
Yves Joseph Tremarec de Kerguelen
(Yves Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec; 1745 – 1797)
In 1771 year, two expedition ships “Fortuna” and “Grosventre” sailed from the island of Mauritius to the south. This expedition was led by Captain Yves Joseph Tremarec de Kerguelen.
December 12, 1771 at 49° S. French navigators, being in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, saw the mountain peaks of an unknown coast in the fog. It was an archipelago consisting of one large island and 300 small islands. The ships passed along western shores, indented by numerous bays.
Kerguelen sent people on boats to one of the bays to measure the depths and survey the shore. At this time a strong storm broke out. The ships were carried away from the shore into the open ocean. The people sent on the boats disappeared. Kerguelen decided that they had landed somewhere on the shore and did not take any action to search for them. Kerguelen decided that the land he discovered was part of the vast Southern continent, which he called Southern France. The ships turned north to the island of Mauritius, and from there to the shores of France. Kerguelen was in a hurry to announce his discovery.
At the end of 1773, two ships were sent to the land discovered by Kerguelen for a more detailed survey. The ships again passed along the western shores. In some places people were disembarked. They were trying to find people abandoned on the previous voyage. But no traces of the sailors could be found. Kerguelen himself did not go ashore either during the first or during the second voyage.
The open land turned out to be a group of rocky, barren islands, almost constantly shrouded in fog. Even at the height of summer it was cold, damp and often stormy.
January 13, 1775 A meeting of the military tribunal opened, which considered the case of Captain Kerguelen, whose main guilt was the unfulfilled hopes of France for primacy in the discovery of the Southern Land. After all, Kerguelen was sure that he discovered it in 1772 on the ship “Fortune”. After a week-long trial, Kerguelen was arrested. He was taken aboard the Amiral, an old floating prison, and placed in a punishment cell, deprived of the right to visit, correspondence, and walks. Kerguelen waited four months for the verdict of the military tribunal. On May 14, 1774, he was informed that he had been “deprived of his rank, dismissed from the officer corps, prohibited from holding any position in the royal service,” and sentenced to six years imprisonment in the fortress. Kerguelen's career did not end there. He was released early.
In 1778, Kerguelen equipped a ship and took part in the American War of Independence. During the War of Liberation of the United States, he armed a corsair and captured 7 English ships.
In 1781, during a trip around the world, which Kerguelen made for scientific purposes on the 10-gun corvette Liber-Navigator, he was arrested by the British, despite receiving a passport for free navigation from the English Admiralty.
His Account of Two Voyages to the South Seas and India was published in 1782, but was confiscated the following year. Two months after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, Kerguelen was allowed to return to the navy and was given the rank of rear admiral. During the revolution in France (1789-1794), Kerguelen was appointed director of a department of the ministry, and in 1794 he was dismissed.
Kerguelen died in Paris at the age of sixty-three.
Chapter 4. THE SOUTH LANDS ARE RUINED FROM THE MAP
Of all the parts of the world, Antarctica has been shrouded in mystery for the longest time. The mysterious land continued to excite researchers with its elusive outlines, and traders, pirates and adventurers with its “countless riches.” In search of this land, sailors moved further and further to the south.
The time has come to resolve the issue of the Unknown Southern Land once and for all.
James Cook
(James Cook; 1728-1779)
Cook's first circumnavigation of the world(1768-1771)
Lieutenant of the Royal Navy James Cook led an expedition to the Pacific Ocean on a ship with excellent seaworthiness, Endeavor, sent by the British Admiralty on an astronomical expedition to observe the passage of the planet Venus through the disk of the Sun on the island of Tahiti. Considering that there was a fierce struggle between world powers for new colonies, the following assumption is very likely: astronomical observations served as a screen for the Admiralty to cover the search for new colonies. One of the goals of the expedition was to discover the Southern continent and explore the coasts of Australia, especially the unexplored east coast.
James Cook
On October 8, 1769, the Endeavor reached an unknown land with high, snow-capped mountains. This was New Zealand. Cook sailed along its shores for more than 3 months and became convinced that these were not one, but two islands, separated by a strait later named after him. Cook refuted claims that New Zealand is the northern tip of the Southern Continent. He suggested that the continent is located in close proximity to the South Pole and covered with ice. Cook thereby “closed” the hypothesis about the last protrusion of the Southern Continent in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere.
Approaching the east coast of Australia, Cook declared it a British possession (New South Wales). About 4 thousand km of the eastern coast and almost the entire (2300 km) discovered by Cook Great Barrier Reef.
Cook sailed through the Torres Strait to the island of Java and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, returned to England.
Cook's first circumnavigation of the world lasted more than 3 years.
Second circumnavigation of the world ( 1772-1775)
The results of Cook's circumnavigation of the world caused heated debate in the British Admiralty and the Royal Society. Passions subsided only after King George III signed a rescript on the preparation of a naval expedition in search of the mysterious Southern continent and exploration of the islands of New Zealand.
The organization of Cook's second expedition was associated with the great activity that the French showed in the southern seas at that time. At the end of the sixties, four French expeditions were sent to search for the southern continent. They are associated with the names of Bougainville, Surville, Marion Dufresne and Kerguelen. The French were not prompted to search for the Southern Continent scientific interests- the initiative came from the French East India Company, which, of course, cared only about its enrichment - it was they who equipped Surville’s expedition in the same way as in the first half of the 18th century - Bouvet’s expedition.
The results of the French expeditions (except for the Bougainville expedition) in London were not yet known and therefore were alarmed. The Admiralty was in such a hurry that Cook, after compiling a report on the first three-year voyage, was given only three weeks of rest.
In July 1772, an expedition was carried out on two small ships: the first was the Resolution, commanded by the head of the expedition, Cook, the second was the Adventure, and Tobias Furneaux was appointed commander. Each ship had on board a supply of food for two and a half years. The expedition consisted of about two hundred people. The ships left England and headed south across the Atlantic Ocean.
Expedition objectives
Find Cape Circoncincion, which, according to Bouvet, is located at 54° S. and 11°20" E and establish whether it is part of the Southern Continent and accurately determine its position.
Discover new territories in the south, following either the east or the westward in search of yet undiscovered lands and unexplored parts of the southern hemisphere.
Head south until there is hope for the discovery of the Southern Continent.
Enter high latitudes and advance to the south pole as long as supplies, the health of the crew and the condition of the ships themselves allow.
In November 1772, Cook sent ships to the area where Bouvet saw land, which he named Cape Circoncincion. The British did not find any land in the area indicated by Bouvet. The ships passed south of the place where the French discovered land. Fog prevented Cook from spotting the island; he found no trace of land and concluded that Bouvet may have been deceived by the giant iceberg.
On January 17, 1773, Cook's ships crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time in the history of navigation. In the south and southeast, floating ice and icebergs stretched to the horizon.
Cook described flat icebergs and called them “ice islands.”
In his diary on February 6, 1773, Cook noted that if there was land in the south, it must be a considerable distance south of his ship's path.
Once again, twice unsuccessfully, Cook tried to approach the mainland, reaching 71° 10" south latitude. Despite the conviction that there was land near the pole, Cook abandoned subsequent attempts, considering further sailing to the south impossible due to the accumulation of ice. Three times Cook was the first European to cross the Antarctic Circle.
So, having “closed” the continent in the temperate latitudes of the southern hemisphere, Cook did not deny the existence of land near the pole.
From Cook's diary
“I will not deny that there may be a continent near the pole. On the contrary, I am convinced that such land exists there, and it is possible that we have seen part of it. Great cold, a huge number of ice islands and floating ice, all this proves that there must be land in the south.
I can safely say that not a single person will ever dare to penetrate further south than I did.”
Thus ended the epic Terra Australis Incognita.
James Cook "closed" a continent in the temperate southern latitudes - a continent with lush vegetation, rich in minerals, inhabited by people who could be robbed and exploited, a continent similar to India or America, a continent promising untold riches to trading companies.
“Geographers,” primarily English ones, began to go to the other extreme. They began to argue that there were no lands at all in Antarctica, and therefore many cartographers of that time depicted a continuous ocean all the way to the South Pole on maps and globes in the southern hemisphere. The Southern Continent was no longer depicted on maps.
Cook's second voyage around the world was outstanding event in the history of geographical discoveries and research of the first half of the 18th century - so far into the polar latitudes of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans No one has swum to Cook.
Cook's findings significantly slowed down further searches for the Golden Fleece in the Unknown Southern Land. After his voyages, Antarctica was not visited by expeditions for almost half a century. Only industrial whalers continued to sail in these waters in search of prey, penetrating further south into the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.
The borders of the Southern Continent moved even further south. The belief in the existence of the Southern Continent stubbornly continued to live, remembering the hypothesis of the ancient Greeks about the balance of the land masses of the northern and southern hemispheres.
Bellingshausen-Lazarev expedition (1819-1821)
At the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th centuries, capitalism began to develop in feudal-serf Russia. The development of industry and trade entailed the development of science, the study of natural resources and trade routes. In this regard, much attention was paid to geographical research. Russian pioneers explored the vast expanses of Siberia, reached the Pacific coast and entered North America to Alaska.
The Suez and Panama Canals had not yet been opened, so Russian ships headed to Alaska, skirting Africa and Australia from the south. At the same time, the southern parts of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans were little studied, and in higher latitudes they were simply unknown.
The first three decades of the 19th century were marked by numerous voyages around the world, most of which were caused by the presence of Russian possessions in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and the adjacent coasts North America. Already during the first 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. Lazarev on the ship "Suvorov" (1813-1816), O. E. Kotzebue on the brig "Rurik" (1815-1818), L. A. Gagemeister on the ship "Kutuzov" (1816-1818), 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, as well as the very southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean, remained completely unexplored. All areas surrounding the South Pole were then represented on the map as a “white” spot. It's time to explore the Unknown Southern Land. It was under these conditions that the first Russian Antarctic expedition was conceived.
Cook's second circumnavigation of the world ( 1772-1775)
It is difficult to say who had the first idea about this expedition, and who initiated it. It is possible that this idea arose almost simultaneously among several of the most outstanding and enlightened Russian navigators of that time - Golovkin, Krusenstern and Kotzebue. In archival documents, the first mentions of the projected expedition are found in the correspondence of I. F. Kruzenshtern with the Minister of Maritime Marquis de Traverse:
“We must not allow the glory of such an enterprise to be taken away from us, within a short time it will certainly fall to the British or French...”– wrote I. F. Kruzenshtern
According to the instructions of the Maritime Ministry, the main goal of the Bellingshausen-Lazarev expedition was “the acquisition of complete knowledge about our globe and the discovery of the possible proximity of the Antarctic Pole.”
« You will pass- said the instructions received by Bellingshausen - vast seas, many islands, various lands; The diversity of nature in different places will naturally attract your curiosity. Try to write down everything in order to communicate this to future readers of your journey.…»
Sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny"
The sloops “Vostok” and “Mirny”, intended for the expedition, left the slipways at domestic shipyards almost simultaneously (1818). The Vostok crew consisted of 117 people, the Mirny crew - 73.
The expedition included sailing ships that were under construction and intended for regular circumnavigation of the world, and not those intended for navigation in ice.
Already in Kronstadt, just before the departure of the expedition, on the instructions of the ship's master Amosov, they strengthened the underwater part of the Vostok hull as far as possible and sheathed it on the outside with copper. The Mirny sloop, converted from the Ladoga transport, had significantly better qualities. At the insistence of M.P. Lazarev, additional plating was made on the Mirny, additional fastenings were installed, and the rigging was replaced. Thanks to this, the Mirny returned from its circumnavigation in much better condition than the Vostok. The only thing in which it was inferior to Vostok was speed.
On August 29, Vostok and Mirny headed for the Atlantic Ocean. Having made a short stop on the island of Tenerife, on October 18 we crossed the equator and entered the southern hemisphere. On November 2, “Vostok” and “Mirny” dropped anchor in the Rio de Janeiro roadstead.
During their twenty days in Rio de Janeiro, the crew rested, repaired damage to the rigging, and took on board supplies of fresh provisions, fresh water and firewood.
On November 22, 1819, the ships entered the ocean. On the morning of December 15, the pointed peaks of South Georgia Island appeared. Within two days, Russian sailors mapped the southwestern coast of the island, linking it with Cook’s map, which passed along the northeastern coast of the island. It was on these days, December 15-17, 1819, that Russian names first appeared on the map of the southern hemisphere, given in honor of the officers participating in the expedition: Capes Poryadin, Demidov, Kupriyanov, Novosilsky Bay and Annenkov Island - the first island discovered by the expedition.
From South Georgia the sloops headed southeast towards Sandwich Land, which Cook saw from afar and did not explore.
On the morning of December 22, a group of unknown high mountainous islands covered with snow and ice appeared thirty miles north of the sloops. Bellingshausen named the newly discovered islands in honor Minister of the Navy de Traversi, and individual islands are in honor of the expedition members.
On the fourth day of sailing from South Georgia, the first iceberg was encountered. The air temperature dropped and the wind grew stronger. The sloops were thrown from side to side.
On the afternoon of December 29, the coast of Sanders Island opened to the south-southwest. Having called this piece of land an island, Cook was not firmly convinced that this was really an island. Russian sailors confirmed his assumption and determined the coordinates of the island.
January 1820 arrived. The ships stubbornly made their way through the heavy ice to the south. But on January 4, solid ice blocked their path. Bellingshausen headed northeast and then east, looking for a passage in the ice to the south.
Where is the Southern Continent?
On January 11, Vostok and Mirny crossed the Antarctic Circle. At noon on January 16 at 69°2" 28" S. w. and 2°14" 50" W. The sailors noticed a shiny strip of high ice. At first they mistook the ice for clouds. The ships continued to sail southeast. At times the snow stopped, and then the sailors saw a strip of continuous lumpy ice stretching from east to west. It was Antarctica.
For the first time in the history of mankind, the icy coast of the coveted Southern continent was seen by Russian sailors - the companions of Bellingshausen and Lazarev. But the view of the shores was too unusual - “It was hard ice of extreme height and extended as far as vision could reach.”
Fog and snow prevented the sailors from determining what lay further beyond the icy shore.
This, apparently, made Bellingshausen then refrain from concluding that there was a continent in front of him.
January 16, 1820 the ships reached the southernmost point during the first year of voyage - 69°25" south. w. and 2°10" W. d.
Expedition to Antarctica by Bellingshausen and Lazarev
For four days, the ships sailed along the ice barrier protruding to the north, and then turned south again.
By the end of January, Vostok and Mirny were out in the open, and on February 2, Bellingshausen again gave the order to change course. On the evening of the next day, the ships crossed the Antarctic Circle for the third time.
In his preliminary report, sent later from Australia, Bellingshausen reported to his homeland:
« Here, behind the ice fields of small ice and islands, a continent of ice is visible, the edges of which are broken off perpendicularly and which continues as we see, rising to the south like a shore».
Russian sailors saw the icy shores of the southern continent on January 16. They decided to make sure once again that they had discovered the mainland. Bellingshausen, Lazarev and their companions were firmly convinced that in front of them was land.
On January 21, the ship approached point 69° 21" 28" S. w. and 2° 14" 50" W. (the area of the modern ice shelf) and the sailors saw the “ice coast” for the second time.
Despite the obvious danger of the ships sailing separately (if one ship were lost, the second could not come to the aid of its crew), Bellingshausen and Lazarev still decided on this in order to explore the largest possible expanse of the ocean. The sloops took courses parallel to those once taken by Cook's ships Resolution and Adventure.
On March 30, on the 132nd day after leaving Rio de Janeiro, the Vostok dropped anchor in the port of Jackson (now Sydney). Seven days later, the Mirny arrived here safely.
Subsequently, the sloops sailed in the tropical part of the Pacific Ocean, after which the map of the southern seas was replenished with Russian names of the newly discovered islands.
With the onset of the polar summer, the ships again headed to the Southern continent.
The ships headed straight south, then east and crossed the Arctic Circle 3 times. January 10, 1821 at 70° S. w. and 75° W. d. Bellingshausen’s ships encountered solid ice and had to go north.
In January 1821, the island of Peter I and the shore of the island of Alexander I were discovered, then the ships came to the South Shetland Islands.
However, in the report on the expedition, Bellingshausen never spoke about the discovery of the mainland. And this is not a matter of false modesty: he understood that it is possible to draw final conclusions only "stepping over the side of the ship" conducting research on the shore. He could not form even an approximate idea of the size or outline of the continent. This subsequently took many decades.
The expedition of Bellingshausen and Lazarev is rightly considered one of the most remarkable Antarctic expeditions. She traveled a total of 49,723 miles - a path two and a quarter times the length of the equator. The voyage of the sloops lasted 751 days. Of these, the ships were in the southern hemisphere for 535 days, with 122 days south of the 60th parallel and 100 days in ice.
Thaddeus Faddeevich Bellingshausen
(Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, 1779-1852)
In 1819-1821 - head of the round-the-world Antarctic expedition on the sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny".
Publication of the first edition of F. F. Bellingshausen’s work “Two-fold surveys in the Southern Arctic Ocean and the voyage around the world during 1819, 20 and 21, carried out on the sloops “Vostok” and “Mirny” under the command of Captain Bellingshausen, commander of the sloop “Vostok”, the sloop “Mirny” was commanded by Lieutenant Lazarev” was associated with a number of complications.
In 1824, the author presented his manuscript, which included 10 notebooks, to the Admiralty Department and asked for funds to publish this work in the amount of 1,200 copies. However, Nicholas I ignored this petition.
In 1827, Bellingshausen again turned to the newly created Scientific Committee of the Main Naval Staff with a request to publish at least 600 copies, and he emphasized that he was not at all interested in material considerations, but he only wanted “his works to be known.”
The Chairman of the Scientific Committee L.I. Golenishchev-Kutuzov sent this request to Nicholas I for decision, and in his proposal he wrote: “ It may happen, and it almost certainly has not happened, that the discoveries made by Captain Bellingshausen, due to their unknown nature, will serve to the honor of foreign, and not our, navigators.”
Finally, Nicholas I ordered the publication of the work in 600 copies.
The first edition was published in 1831 and became a bibliographic rarity. The publication consisted of two volumes without any illustrations, and all maps and drawings were collected in the Atlas attached to it (19 maps, 13 views, 2 types of ice islands and 30 different drawings).
Unfortunately, the original manuscript of Bellingshausen and Lazarev, as well as all the notes of the expedition members and the log books of the ships “Vostok” and “Mirny” are not in the archives today.
Note: When preparing the second edition of Bellingshausen's book in 1949 (130 years later!) by the publishing house of geographical literature (Geographgiz), the editor did not have the opportunity to compare the text of the edition of Bellingshausen's book with the original text of the manuscripts.
Lazarev Mikhail Petrovich (1788-1851)
In 1819-1821, as commander of the sloop Mirny, he took part in a circumnavigation of the world under the leadership of F. F. Bellingshausen. During this expedition, which culminated in the discovery of Antarctica, the geographical coordinates of anchorages and the location of sloops at sea were precisely determined, and magnetometric measurements were made.
Chapter 5. THE AGE OF GREAT DISCOVERIES
(early 19th century)
As a result of the great geographical discoveries, Europe's connections with the countries of Africa, South and East Asia expanded and relations with America were established. Trade became global. Center for Economic Life of Countries Southern Europe moved from Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Italian cities, through which Europe's connections with the East had previously been carried out, lost their significance, and new centers of trade rose up: Lisbon in Portugal, Seville in Spain, Antwerp in the Netherlands. Antwerp became the richest city in Europe, trade in colonial goods, especially spices, was carried out on a large scale, and large international trade operations were carried out, which was facilitated by the fact that, unlike other cities, complete freedom of trade and credit transactions was established in Antwerp.
Sailors of the 16th - 18th centuries, first Spanish, and then English, French and Dutch, vainly sailed the vast expanses of the Pacific and Indian Oceans in search of the Unknown Southern Land. Instead of a huge continent, they discovered dozens and hundreds of islands, small and large, inhabited and deserted.
After Cook's second expedition, it became clear that the Unknown Southern Land, being located beyond the Arctic Circle, ceased to be of interest to trading companies, because this Land could not give an entrepreneur even a small profit. And James Cook, an outstanding navigator, did not see any practical interest in the discovery of this deserted continent.
There was a lull in the Southern Ocean for 45 years.
Animal hunting in Antarctica
In the 20s of the 19th century, industrialists discovered new lands south of South America, established that the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean extends well south of the Arctic Circle, and, finally, they saw the mysterious shores near the Arctic Circle on the Indian Ocean side. Unexplored lands attracted fur hunters. The abundance of seals and whales in the southern seas has attracted hundreds of fishing vessels to these regions.
What little is known about the outlines of the proposed Antarctic continent is due to instructions emanating from industrial companies like English company Enderby, and the enterprise and courage of the captains of this company, such as Weddell, Biscoe, Balleny, etc. It is difficult to enumerate all the captains and all the ships of the sealers and whalers. All of them went to Antarctic waters and, willingly or unwillingly, were involved in the discoveries and explorations of the southern seas and Antarctic lands.
On sailing ships they fearlessly set sail across the stormy southern seas. More than once they happened to be close to death, or to be on the verge of death. Their wooden ships, torn apart by ice, were leaking, the crews were exhausted from backbreaking work, dying from scurvy, but, despite incredible difficulties, their ships moved forward, and the captain never changed course unless absolutely necessary. These were the iron men - the pioneers of the Unknown Southern Land. This is how the exploration of Antarctica began.
At the beginning of the 19th century, marine hunting flourished mainly in the areas of the northern islands of West Antarctica, off the coast of South America, South Africa and New Zealand.
The shores of the islands of the Southern Ocean are inhabited by seals - these are fur seals belonging to the family of eared seals, elephant seals, leopard seals, crabeater seals, Weddell seals and Ross seals. Seal fishing in those days was very profitable, since seal skins and oil were highly valued.
The southern fur seal was considered the most valuable species for hunters in the family of eared seals. These are smart, beautiful, but incapable of defense animals that people hunted only for their skins. For women, their fur has long been an object of desire. The silky brownish undercoat is especially good for coats, caps and muffs. Sea lion fur, which is only suitable for backpacks or traveling bags, cannot be compared with it. High prices The skins of seals are quite consistent with their merits. Traveling for hunters even to the most distant countries was profitable. Other types of seals were hunted for fat, meat, and also fur, although less valuable than that of seals. Leopard seals have inedible meat and low quality fur, so only its fat is used. Ross seals are very rare and have no practical significance for hunters.
Seals and elephant seals were profitable and easy prey for hunters. During the breeding season, they annually come ashore and form huge colonies, making them easy prey for hunters. On the shore, they are subject to mass extermination, indiscriminately males, lactating females and juveniles.
The man-hunter showed the worst qualities of a bloodthirsty beast of prey - to kill, to kill, even if it was not necessary. The goal is one - enrichment at any cost. The marauders and their employers were little concerned about the noticeable decline in the seal herd. They were only interested in cash bonuses and profits for their bloody work. It was “seal genocide.” Many fortunes in New England were made by such bloody looting. The huge profits from the sale of skins justified all the expenses of the expedition.
St. John's worts were pioneers of the Antarctic seas; step by step they refined the outlines of the ice belt surrounding Antarctica and the Antarctic archipelagos. They cannot be denied courage and curiosity.
Antarctic seals
In the 20s of the 19th century, trappers discovered that the commercial southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean extended significantly south of the Arctic Circle, and finally, at the beginning of the next decade, they saw new lands near the Arctic Circle from the Indian Ocean. Although sections of open coasts were thousands of kilometers apart and the outlines of the supposed Antarctic continent had not yet emerged, it was already possible to assume the enormous size of the land in the Southern Hemisphere.
Having devastated the northern regions of the southern hemisphere, hunters' scout ships, in search of new seal rookeries, moved further and further south, discovering new lands along the way. The names of many of them are etched in history and in the names of Antarctic lands. We perceive these people as heroes of their time.
Moving south, the hunters destroyed all life behind them, turning the cold, icy expanses into a dead desert.
During the period 1775-1825, 1.2 million seal skins were harvested on the island of South Georgia alone, that is, on average, trappers destroyed 24 thousand seals per year.
The seal hunt reached its peak in the 1800-1801 season, when more than 110 thousand pelts were taken in South Georgia alone.
As a result, by the 20s of the 19th century, seals and sea lions in the northern regions of West Antarctica were almost completely destroyed. There were also few other seals left. The “Hunting Grounds” have become impoverished.
William Smith
(William Smith)
One day in February 1819, Captain William Smith, on the cargo sailing brig Williams, was sailing with cargo from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires. Rounding Cape Horn in the Drake Passage (500 miles south of Cape Horn), Smith sent the ship south of the usual route in these waters and saw the outlines of an unknown land in the south.
On the shores of the island, the British discovered numerous seal rookeries.
Smith called the discovered land New South Britain, as it was located at approximately the same latitude as the Shetland Islands in the northern hemisphere.
In 1820-1821, following the English fishing vessels, American trapping industrialists also rushed to the South Shetland Islands.
Edward Bransfield
(Edward Bransfield; 1785-1852)
It should be noted that trapping ships constantly visited the area of the South Shetland Islands and, without any maps, could approach any of them in search of seals. Industrialists sailed far into southern waters and kept secret from competitors the coordinates of the islands where the explored seal rookeries were located. They did not attach any importance to the discoveries of new lands; they were only interested in seal skins, and not in the rocky, barren land covered with ice and snow. The weather in these latitudes, as evidenced by numerous entries in ship's logs, even at the height of summer is sometimes stormy, with snowfall and fog.
In order to establish this or that fact of a discovery made in the past by these people, historians have to look for the ship's logs of industrialists and, based on meager, often semi-literate records, reconstruct the fact of this or that “discovery.”
The captain of the English naval ship Andromache, Shirreff, who was then in Valparaiso, learned about Smith's discovery. Understanding the importance of Smith's discovery, Shirreff chartered the Williams to survey and survey the shores of the islands discovered by Smith and equipped an expedition led by an officer of the British Royal Navy, Lieutenant Edward Bransfield.
Smith, as the owner of the ship, was part of the expedition as a navigator. After a short and uneventful voyage south, the Williams reached the South Shetland Islands.
Bransfield landed on the shores of King George Island and declared the island the possession of King George III (who died the day before this event - January 29, 1820).
The Williams then passed in a southwesterly direction from island to island.
January 30, 1820. A small island emerged from the fog, and the next day two high mountain peaks appeared in the east. Having passed further south, the English sailors saw snow-covered rocky shores in a south-west direction beyond the zone of floating ice, disappearing somewhere beyond the horizon.
Bransfield called these shores Trinity Land.
The voyage took place among ice and icebergs in very bad weather, so the map compiled by Bransfield turned out to be very inaccurate. From this map it follows that the Williams sailed in the strait separating the South Shetland Islands from the Antarctic Peninsula. Trinity Land is the northern protrusion of the Antarctic Peninsula, stretching hundreds of miles towards South America.
The Bransfield expedition established that the South Shetland Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Southern Ocean, stretching from southwest to northeast and separated from Earth by the Trinity Strait (this strait is today known as the Bransfield Strait), and from South America by the Drake Passage. The archipelago consists of 11 large islands and many small islets and rocks, stretching in a chain for almost 500 km.
Returning to Valparaiso, Bransfield gave Captain Shirreff a report for the Admiralty. The report was published in 1821.
Nathaniel Brown Palmer
(Nathaniel Brown Palmer; 1799-1877)
The city of Stonington was a kind of capital of American seal hunters in those parts. From here risky expeditions to the southern seas were prepared. The name of Captain Palmer, who in the United States is considered the discoverer of Antarctica, is associated with the Stonington seal hunters.
In 1819, the ship "Garsilia", on which Palmer served as second mate, met the English fishing ship "Espirita Santo" off the Falkland Islands. The British kept their route secret, and they went to the South Shetland Islands, recently discovered by their compatriot Captain Smith, who discovered rich seal rookeries there. Palmer followed the course of the British and persuaded the captain of the Garsilia to follow them. The ships met near the islands, and the British trade secret was revealed. All that remained was to hunt together. Soon both ships, overflowing with cargo, sailed from the shores of the island. For one voyage of the Garsilia, the revenue was $20,000, which was 8 times the amount of expenses for supporting the expedition.
The following year, Stonington industrialists sent a flotilla of five brigs under the command of Captain Pendleton to the shores of the South Shetland Islands.
This flotilla included a small sloop “Hero” with a shallow draft, which was supposed to conduct reconnaissance of seal rookeries and maintain communication between the vessels of the flotilla.
Nathaniel Palmer was appointed captain of the sloop.
Nathaniel Palmer......Edward Bransfield
Having passed to the island, where a year ago many seals had been killed and approximately 50-60 thousand more seals were supposed to remain, the industrialists saw that someone had gotten ahead of them. The shores of the island were deserted.
The American ships were based in a convenient harbor on one of the islands, now known as Deception. From here Pendleton sent the Hero south to search for new seal rookeries. The “hero” rushed among the islands.
November 17, 1820 According to American historians, Palmer saw the rocky shores of an unknown land, which was later called Palmer Land. This was the same land that Edward Bransfield, the captain of the English ship Williams, saw before him on January 30, 1820.
IN short note Palmer's logbook states that the ship approached the shore and discovered an extended strait filled with ice. The latitude of the strait, as indicated in the ship's log, was 63°45. The fact that Palmer saw the shore of some large land is evidenced by a map published in England in 1822.
But more important for Palmer was the discovery a few days later of a huge seal rookery. It was about this, and not about the newly acquired land, that he hastened to report to the leadership of the expedition. For a short time, the South Shetland Islands became one of the world's most important seal hunting centers. Bellingshausen, while visiting the islands, met several dozen seal-hunting ships there.
End of introductory fragment.
Let's take a look at some of the ancient geographical maps compiled several centuries ago. We will see many unusual names on it; Even the very outlines of the oceans, continents and islands will be unusual for us on such a map. Next to the land plots known to people in those days, the supposed “mysterious” lands are also plotted on the map, and the largest of them is the huge continent in Southern Hemisphere, on which is written: “Southern land, as yet unknown.”
Not only on maps of the 15th–16th centuries, but also on maps compiled already in the 19th and even at the beginning of the 20th century, we will find images of a number of mysterious lands, but only in one area of the globe. The Arctic has long been the last refuge of these mysterious lands.
How did images of various mysterious lands appear on the map? What reasons led to the emergence of numerous legends and hypotheses about these lands?
In those distant times, when the main form of human life was the communal-tribal system, man's knowledge of the world around him was extremely limited. But the migrations and resettlement that accompany the transition from the communal tribal system to the slave system, with the further division of labor and growth commodity-money economy contributed to a significant expansion of man's understanding of the Earth. The developing trade relations between various, sometimes very distant points, began to play an important role.
And yet, much of what is now depicted on any geographical map remained an insoluble mystery for the people of that period; they did not even suspect the existence of a number of lands and countries; a lot of things were pictured to them in the most fantastic light.
Rumors about distant fabulous lands, brought by merchants, reported by prisoners of war, gradually acquired more and more new details, gave rise to all kinds of geographical legends and, at the same time, provided material for the construction of some theoretical generalizations and hypotheses. Thus, in ancient Greece, theories arose that claimed the presence of a continental formation in the Southern Hemisphere (see the essay “The Unknown Southern Land”).
Over time, as productive forces continued to develop and new production relations emerged, the art of navigation improved, connections between peoples expanded, the human eye was able to penetrate into remote areas of the globe and many of geographical mysteries received their final approval.
But at the same time, new problems arose that were no longer resolved speculatively, but fully armed with the vast research experience and achievements of science accumulated by mankind. Based on rich scientific data obtained as a result of numerous expeditionary studies by Russian and Soviet scientists, the existence of a number of lands in the Arctic was predicted, which was brilliantly confirmed by subsequent research. Existence of the Franz Josef Archipelago and Islands Severnaya Zemlya was predicted by the famous Russian geographer P. A. Kropotkin, the existence of the island of Vize - by the Soviet scientist and polar explorer V. Yu. Vize.
The history of geographical exploration knows other cases when sailors and travelers, returning from expeditions, brought information about the lands they allegedly discovered; however, this was not confirmed by subsequent studies. An extremely large number of such facts are associated with the study of Arctic regions. Peculiarities natural conditions Polar basin, when there was often no way to verify the correctness of certain assumptions due to insurmountable obstacles created here by nature, the phenomenon of refraction, so characteristic of high polar latitudes, often misleading researchers, entailed obvious errors and the appearance on geographical maps of a number of virtually non-existent lands.
This is the fate of Peterman Land and King Oscar Land, Gilles Land, Bruesewitz Island, Harris Land and some others. Like ephemeral streams that suddenly appear in deserts during heavy rains and just as quickly disappear with the onset of the dry season, many islands appeared and disappeared on maps of the Arctic.
But, along with such truly fantastic lands, we also know facts that indicate that there really were lands that subsequently, for a number of reasons, forever plunged into the abyss of the ocean (see the essay “Islands Swallowed by the Ocean”).
The question of mysterious lands is one of the most fascinating pages in the history of geographical discoveries and research. The search for legendary islands and countries that appeared in ancient and medieval legends contributed to the discovery of new lands, the exploration of unknown territories, and the expansion of the circle of knowledge - science was enriched with new valuable information. The search for terra australis incognita greatly contributed to expanding the range of ideas about the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The search for mysterious Arctic lands contributed to a comprehensive study of the Polar Basin.
Many scientists and researchers devoted a lot of time and effort to solving all these geographical mysteries, and among them, a place of honor rightfully belongs to Russian scientists and navigators.
Indeed, there was literally not a single geographical problem, in the resolution of which the Russian people would not take part. Moreover, the most interesting and difficult of them were solved precisely thanks to their active participation. The inquisitive gaze of the Russian person persistently penetrated and is penetrating the innermost secrets of all corners of the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, affirming the true and refuting the imaginary.
Unknown Southern Land
In the far south, beyond the Arctic Circle, lies a huge continent bound by a powerful ice shell. Solid ice stretches for many hundreds of kilometers, blocking the path to its shores.
The traveler will not encounter any noisy cities and villages, nor green forests, nor deep rivers here; endless snowy desert with bizarre piles of ice cliffs, rocks and ledges will be revealed to his eyes. Giant glaciers descend from the shores into the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans surrounding this land. It is harsh and gloomy both during the months-long polar night, which brings severe cold, and on the polar day, when the sun does not set over this area. The vegetation here is so sparse that it is inferior even to the Arctic flora. Only a few birds and sea animals somewhat enliven the monotonous, dull landscape.
What is hidden under the thickness of the glaciers of the distant Southern land? The human eye has not yet penetrated its depths, but scientists suggest that innumerable riches are hidden there: coal and iron ore, non-ferrous, rare and precious metals.
The waters surrounding the mainland are rich in sea animals, in particular whales: fishing vessels come here from many countries; The Soviet whaling fleet regularly hunts here.
This is Antarctica, a sixth of the world, a continent occupying an area of 14.2 million square meters. km, one and a half times larger than the territory of Australia and Oceania.
For a long time, the huge Southern continent remained an insoluble mystery. Many scientists and sailors went in search of him.
Already opened New World and the Western European colonialists who rushed there for easy money captured and uncontrollably plundered rich overseas countries; Magellan circled South America, entered the Pacific Ocean and, moving westward, reached the shores of Asia; the outlines of the Australian continent were determined; a sea route to India and China around Africa was opened; brave Russian explorers in an incredibly short time overcame the vast expanses of Northern Asia, reached the Pacific coast, crossed the strait separating Asia from North America, and landed on the coast of Alaska - and the unknown southern land (terra australis incognita) still remained a mystery, just like in ancient times, when the assumption of the existence of vast expanses of land in the south first arose.
Unknown Southern Land
In the far south, beyond the Arctic Circle, lies a huge continent bound by a powerful ice shell. Solid ice stretches for many hundreds of kilometers, blocking the path to its shores.
The traveler will not encounter any noisy cities and villages, nor green forests, nor deep rivers here; an endless snowy desert with bizarre piles of ice cliffs, rocks and ledges will open to his gaze. Giant glaciers descend from the shores into the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans surrounding this land. It is harsh and gloomy both during the months-long polar night, which brings severe cold, and on the polar day, when the sun does not set over this area. The vegetation here is so sparse that it is inferior even to the Arctic flora. Only a few birds and sea animals somewhat enliven the monotonous, dull landscape.
What is hidden under the thickness of the glaciers of the distant Southern land? The human eye has not yet penetrated its depths, but scientists suggest that innumerable riches are hidden there: coal and iron ore, non-ferrous, rare and precious metals.
The waters surrounding the mainland are rich in sea animals, in particular whales: fishing vessels come here from many countries; The Soviet whaling fleet regularly hunts here.
This is Antarctica, a sixth of the world, a continent occupying an area of 14.2 million square meters. km, one and a half times larger than the territory of Australia and Oceania.
For a long time, the huge Southern continent remained an insoluble mystery. Many scientists and sailors went in search of him.
The New World had already been discovered and the Western European colonialists who poured there for easy money captured and uncontrollably plundered rich overseas countries; Magellan circled South America, entered the Pacific Ocean and, moving westward, reached the shores of Asia; the outlines of the Australian continent were determined; a sea route to India and China around Africa was opened; brave Russian explorers in an incredibly short time overcame the vast expanses of Northern Asia, reached the Pacific coast, crossed the strait separating Asia from North America, and landed on the coast of Alaska - and the unknown southern land (terra australis incognita) still remained a mystery, just like in ancient times, when the assumption of the existence of vast expanses of land in the south first arose.
The eternal secret of terra australis incognita was revealed at the beginning of the 19th century by brave Russian navigators.
Based on the doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth, ancient Greek and Roman scientists came to the conclusion that there was a large continent in the Southern Hemisphere, which should “balance” the continental masses of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists imagined this continent differently. Pomponius Mela was closest to the truth
The Earth as imagined by Pomponius Mela.
Despite conflicting opinions, ancient geographers agreed on the assumption that the Southern Land is very large in size and strongly elongated in the latitudinal direction.
The hypothesis of ancient scientists about the existence of the Southern Continent lasted over two millennia and played an important role in expanding geographical knowledge. Essentially erroneous, it, however, led to positive results: in the process of searching for a hypothetical landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, previously unknown islands, large archipelagos, and continents were discovered.
In the 15th century, Portuguese ships increasingly began to appear in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. They carefully move south along the coast of Africa and finally reach the southern tip of the African continent. The Portuguese are looking for a sea route to India, the land of fabulous riches that Arab merchants talk so temptingly about. Gold, jewelry, and spices of the East attract Western European rulers and traders.
The neighbors of the Portuguese, the Spaniards, overwhelmed by a thirst for quick enrichment, organize an expedition led by Columbus to search for sea routes to India in the west - on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The process of capital accumulation that characterized this era of emerging capitalist relations, was inextricably linked with the colonial aspirations of a number of Western European states, with the search for countries rich in precious metals, fertile lands, with the seizure of overseas territories: “Various moments of primitive accumulation are distributed among various countries in a known historical sequence, namely: between Spain, Portugal, Holland , France and England"
Southern continent on the map XVI century.
There is this huge land or were the ancients wrong?
The first attempt to solve this problem was made by the Spaniards, who at that time had the most powerful fleet. The presence of an unknown land south of the strait through which Magellan’s expedition passed from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, as well as the discovery in 1527 by the Spanish navigator Saavedra of the island of New Guinea, which was mistaken for the northern tip of the Southern continent, seemed to them convincing evidence of the validity of the hypothesis of ancient geographers.
However, it was not the desire to verify the correctness or incorrectness of the assumptions about the presence of a large continental mass in the southern latitudes that prompted the Spanish navigators to undertake long and often dangerous voyages. No! An unquenchable thirst for easy money pushed them to search for new lands.
At that time, many areas of South America had already been finally conquered by the Spaniards. One of these vast and rich colonies was Peru. Peruvian planters and owners of silver mines needed new slaves - local Indians, turned into slaves, could not withstand the hellish working conditions and died out. It was assumed that in the areas of the northern (tropical) tip of the southern continent, as in New Guinea, there lived black people who could be transported to Peru and forced to work in the mines and plantations. The colonialists also dreamed of gold, which would probably be found on the Southern continent; for his sake they were ready for any adventure.
At the end of 1567, the Viceroy of Peru equipped an expedition of two ships under the command of Alvaro Mendaña to search in the South Sea for islands allegedly discovered by a certain Peruvian navigator shortly before the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards.
Moving westward, the expedition came across a small island lying at 6° south latitude (belonging, in all likelihood, to the Ellis Archipelago), and soon discovered a large group of islands, now called the Solomon Islands. The archipelago apparently received this name because Mendaña, returning from a voyage, claimed that he had discovered the fabulously rich country of Ophir, from where King Solomon, according to biblical legend, drew legendary treasures.
However, legends about mountains of gold and precious stones in no way could they replace the real treasures that the Spanish colonialists were eager to acquire. A quarter of a century later, Mendaña set sail again.
The route of the second expedition lay somewhat further south - approximately along the tenth degree of southern latitude. Heading towards the already familiar Solomon Islands, Mendaña discovered a new archipelago, which he called the Marquesas Islands. The Spanish sailors marked their stay here with their usual bloody massacre of the local population.
Having exterminated many islanders, Mendaña moved further west. The expedition discovered the island groups of San Bernardo (now Humphrey Islands) and Santa Cruz. Attempts to find the archipelago discovered on the first voyage were unsuccessful. Mendaña soon died, and the Portuguese Pedro Fernandez de Quiros took command, who led the ships to Mexico.
Upon his return, Quiros, with the tenacity of a fanatic, claimed that this journey had proven the existence of the Southern Continent, and made plans for a new expedition. He went to Spain and began to seduce Spanish nobles and rich merchants with the fabulous treasures of the Southern continent, but failed. At that time, Spain had other concerns: dangerous rivals appeared who were increasingly pressing the Spanish fleet on the sea routes - the Dutch and the British.
Quiros moved to Rome, hoping to receive support from the pope and equip the expedition with the help of the head of the Catholic Church. Tempted by the promises of the eloquent adventurer, the “holy father” could not resist and promised his help.
At the end of 1605, a flotilla of three ships, led by Quiros, set out from the Peruvian port of Callao in search of the legendary Southern continent.
The expedition rose to 20° south latitude, then headed north and, at the end of the second month of sailing, encountered some islands. Soon there was a a new group islands are part of the Tuamotu archipelago. Continuing to move west, after much wandering, the sailors found themselves in sight of a large (as Quiros imagined) land - mountainous, covered with lush vegetation, with numerous villages scattered along the mountain slopes and along the coast. The ships entered a picturesque bay.
Kiros triumphs: he has finally discovered the Southern Land! Gold will pour into his storerooms in an inexhaustible stream!.. The Roman “benefactor” will not be forgotten; something will have to be given to him. In the meantime, you can make a pious gesture: Quiros calls the “mainland” he has found “Southern Land of the Holy Spirit” (Espiritu Santo), and on the shore of the bay he lays the city of New Jerusalem.
However, Quiros will be bitterly disappointed: the most thorough searches do not reveal even the slightest sign of the desired gold. Plans for instant enrichment collapsed. There is a murmur among the expedition members. In a humid tropical climate, fever knocks seafarers off their feet.
On one of the ships, Quiros secretly leaves the ill-fated land and returns to Peru, where he announces that he has discovered a huge new continent. According to him, there is an abundance of everything you need for an easy, carefree life. “I can say from facts that there is no country in the world more pleasant, healthy and fertile; a country richer in building stone, timber, tile and brick clay needed to create a large city, with a port near the sea and, moreover, irrigated by a good river flowing across the plain, with plains and hills, with mountain ranges and ravines; a country more suitable for growing plants and everything that Europe and India produce... - Quiros reported in a memo to the Spanish king. - From everything I have said, it irrefutably follows that there are two continents, separate from Europe, Asia and Africa. The first of these is America, discovered by Christopher Columbus, the second and last on earth is the one that I saw and which I ask to explore and populate.”
Meanwhile, the ships abandoned by Quiros left Espiritu Santo and, under the command of Luis Torres, circumnavigated... the open land; it was just a small island...
Long before Mendaña and Quirós undertook their voyages to discover terra australis, the Spaniards had equipped an expedition tasked with following Magellan's route to reach and capture the Spice Islands. This was in 1525. One of the ships of the expedition, when approaching the Strait of Magellan, was carried by a storm far to the south and found itself in close proximity to an unknown land. The captain of the ship neglected this discovery; Instead of circumnavigating the earth and attempting to reach the Pacific Ocean that way, he returned to the Strait of Magellan. It subsequently turned out that it was the southern part of Tierra del Fuego; it was considered as the northern protrusion of the Southern Continent.
At the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, new treasure hunters appeared on the ocean roads - the British, who, like the Spaniards and Portuguese, began unbridled colonial conquests and the robbery of overseas peoples.
English pirates scoured the seas and oceans in search of new lands, simultaneously robbing merchant ships. For these “exploits”, sea robbers were awarded noble titles in England.
One of these titled pirates was Francis Drake, who circumnavigated the world in the seventies of the 16th century. Setting sail in 1578, Drake followed the coast of South America and reached its southern tip. The description of this journey mentions an episode directly related to the issue of the Southern Continent: “On the seventh day (of September) a strong storm prevented us from entering the Southern Sea
Almost simultaneously with Torres, in 1606, the Dutchman Willem Janswan, sailing from Java east towards New Guinea, reached the northern coast of Australia - near the western tip of the York Peninsula. In subsequent years, a number of Dutch navigators managed to expand information about sections of the northern, western and southwestern coasts of the Australian mainland, which they called New Holland.
The vast stretches of the coast of New Holland, mapped, appeared to everyone, like New Guinea, as part of the Southern Continent. It seemed that the mystery had now been finally resolved - the Southern Land had been found, all that remained was to explore it, establish its dimensions, true outlines and develop it.
In 1642 from Batavia
More than forty years have passed since James Cook returned from his second voyage in the southern seas. The 19th century came, and ships of the Russian fleet appeared on the expanses of three oceans.
One after another, round-the-world sea expeditions left Kronstadt. Residents of Rio de Janeiro and Nagasaki, Java and Canton saw ships flying the Russian flag off their coasts for the first time.
Kruzenshtern and Lisyansky, Golovnin, Kotzebue, Lazarev, Ponafidin and many others made long-distance sea voyages, discovered new lands, explored unexplored areas of the Pacific Ocean, enriched science with valuable scientific observations and research.
And so, at the end of the second decade of the 19th century, the thoughts of advanced Russian navigators turned to the mysterious Southern Land, the existence of which Cook so stubbornly denied.
The desire to explore the southern part of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, while avoiding the errors and mistakes made in previous voyages in these waters, the conviction that Cook’s conclusions were incorrect - this is what guided the initiators and organizers of the new Russian expedition.
“A journey, the only one undertaken to enrich knowledge, will, of course, be crowned with the gratitude and surprise of posterity...”
On July 4, 1819, residents of Kronstadt accompanied the Russian sloops Vostok and Mirny on a long and difficult voyage to the South Pole.
According to the instructions of the Naval Ministry, the leaders of the expedition - Captain 2nd Rank Thaddeus Faddeevich Bellingshausen and Lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev were to proceed to the southern waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the islands of South Georgia and Sandwich Land, explore them and make every effort to penetrate as far as possible South.
The expedition was categorically ordered to continue research as long as it was humanly possible. “He (Bellingshausen. - S.U.) will use all possible diligence and the greatest effort to achieve as close as possible to the pole, looking for unknown lands and will not leave this enterprise except in the face of insurmountable obstacles.
If under the first meridians, under which he sets off to the south, his efforts remain fruitless, then he must resume his attempts under others, and without losing sight for a minute of the main important goal for which he will be sent, repeating these attempts hourly as for discovery of lands, and for approaching the South Pole"
Map of Antarctica with the route of the Bellingshausen-Lazarev expedition.
The mass of the Antarctic continent turned out to be concentrated within the seventieth parallel. Only from the Indian Ocean did it spread north to the Antarctic Circle, and at the junction of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans it formed a protrusion in the form of Graham Land. The shores of this huge highland stretch over more than 13 thousand km - steep, mostly hidden by the walls of powerful glaciers. Antarctica rose to a height of 3 thousand meters above ocean level, and its individual ridges and peaks - up to 4.5 thousand meters. Ice Shield hundreds of meters thick, tightly hid this huge block of earth from daylight, the sixth and last of the open continents of the globe.
The question of the existence of terra australis incognita was now finally resolved and, contrary to Cook's assertion, resolved positively.
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