January 28, 1820 from the boards of the sloops "Vostok" and "Mirny" people first saw the Antarctic coast
After the circumnavigation of the world by the famous English explorer James Cook, the question of the existence of the "unknown southern continent" - Terra Australia incognita - was considered not just closed, but indecent. Cook, who set off on his journey as an ardent supporter of the existence of the continent south of the 50th parallel, returned from it as an ardent opponent of this idea. And on the basis of his research and conclusions, both British and French scientists decided that there are no continents in the South Pole area and cannot be.
However, many phenomena were quite clear to the contrary. In addition, no matter how high the authority of Cook was, but at the beginning of the 19th century he was already subjected to serious criticism. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that Russian sailors, for whom this period was the time to enter the vastness of the World Ocean, also set out to explore the southern polar seas. The assets of the Russian fleet already included the first in its history round-the-world expedition of Ivan Kruzenshtern and Yuri Lisyansky, undertaken in 1803-1806, and Vasily Golovnin's round-the-world voyage on the sloop "Diana" in 1807-1809, and the round-the-world voyage of Otto Kotzebue on the brig "Rurik", stretching from 1815 to 1818. And all the results of these travels suggested that the southern polar continent should exist.
To prove this assumption, a separate expedition was required, the task of which would be extremely narrow and would be reduced to the search for the southern continent. This is exactly how the commander of the first Russian round-the-world expedition, Ivan Kruzenshtern, formulated his idea, who on March 31, 1819 sent a letter to the Marquis Ivan de Traversa, the naval minister of Russia, about the need to study polar waters. Kruzenshtern proposed to organize two expeditions at once - to the North and South Poles, and to include two ships in each. Accordingly, these pairs were named "Southern Division" and "Northern Division". At the suggestion of Kruzenshtern, the commander of the "Southern Division" was the captain of the second rank Thaddeus Bellingshausen, whom the mastermind of the expedition knew well as a subordinate on his first round the world voyage. Under the direct command of Bellingshausen, the British-built sloop Vostok was transferred, and the commander of the second ship, the Mirny sloop, built according to the design of the Russian engineers Kolodkin and Kurepanov, was Lieutenant Mikhail Lazarev. It is noteworthy that his younger brother Alexei Lazarev soon also went on a polar campaign: as a lieutenant on the sloop Blagonamerenny in the Northern Division.
Sloops of the "Southern Division", the crews of which were fully staffed with volunteers - and it should be noted that there was no shortage of those who wanted, rather the opposite! - set out on their historic voyage from Kronstadt on July 16, 1819. In the documents of the expedition, its goal was formulated briefly and rather vaguely: discoveries "in the possible proximity of the Antarctic Pole." This vagueness had its own meaning: not a single scientist of that time would have undertaken to predict the results of research, and under the "possible proximity" all the southern waters of both the Pacific and Atlantic and the Indian oceans were hidden - waters that interested the Russian fleet as an area of possible expansion.
The first stop on the long journey of the "Southern Division" was the English Portsmouth, where the ships were delayed for a month, purchasing the necessary equipment and supplies. From the coast of Britain, "Vostok" and "Mirny" moved towards Brazil, making a short stop on the island of Tenerife, and then reaching Rio de Janeiro. This path was already familiar to Russian sailors from their previous round-the-world voyages. But after Brazil, as the sloops descended further and further south, completely new areas began.
On January 27 (new style), 1820, Russian sloops crossed the South Arctic Circle for the first time in the history of the Russian fleet. And the next day "Vostok" and "Mirny" came close to the ice barrier of the Antarctic continent. In his expedition diary, the commander of the "Southern Division" described this event as follows: "Continuing our way south, at noon at latitude 9 ° 21'28" and longitude 2 ° 14'50 "we met ice that appeared to us through the falling snow in the form white clouds ". And the commander of the Mirny sloop, Lieutenant Mikhail Lazarev, later in a letter to his friend and classmate in the Marine Corps Alexei Shestakov, found more emotional words: “On January 16 we reached latitude 69 ° 23 'S, where we met hard ice of extreme height, and on a beautiful evening looking at the salinga, it stretched as far as sight could only reach … From here we continued our way to the east, attempting at every opportunity to the south, but always met the icy continent, not reaching 70 ° … Finally, that mother in the south opened the land that they had been looking for for so long and the existence of which the philosophers sitting in their offices considered necessary for the equilibrium of the globe."
But Russian sailors did not confine themselves to just one first acquaintance with the new mainland. Continuing to move east and not abandoning attempts to move further south again and again, they each time stumbled upon "hard ice", making sure that they were dealing with the mainland coast, and not the islands. Finally, in early February, the ships turned north and soon arrived in Sydney, Australia. Having replenished supplies and correcting the spars and rigging, the sloops in May went out into the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean for three months, and then, having returned briefly to Sydney, on October 31 they again moved towards the newly discovered land. Without abandoning their attempts to advance as far south as possible, "Vostok" and "Mirny" eventually bypassed Antarctica around, finally proving not only the existence of a new continent, but also that it, contrary to the ideas of some geographers, does not in any way connect with South America. During the second phase of the Antarctic voyage, Peter I Island (January 22, 1821) and Alexander I Land (January 29, 1821), the largest Antarctic island, were discovered.
The discoverers of Antarctica returned home to the Baltic on August 5, 1821. On that day, the sloops Vostok and Mirny entered the roadstead of Kronstadt and soon anchored in the same places from which they weighed 751 days ago. Astern they had 49,720 nautical miles - two and a quarter of the equator, or almost 100,000 kilometers! In addition to Antarctica, during the expedition of the Southern Division, 29 islands and one coral reef were discovered, many of which were named after Russian sailors - participants in the unique voyage. But all the same, in the history of both the Russian fleet and world science, everyone who was on board the sloops Vostok and Mirny will forever remain as people who made the largest geographical discovery after the beginning of the 19th century - the discovery of the sixth continent, the “unknown southern land », The discovery of Antarctica.
