Everything about Fabian Gottlieb Von Bellingshausen totally explained
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (also known as ;
Faddey Faddeyevich Bellinsgauzen) (–) served as a naval officer of the
Russian Empire and commanded the second Russian expedition to
circumnavigate the globe. During this expedition Bellingshausen became one of three Europeans to first see the continent of
Antarctica.
Biography
Born to a
Baltic German family in Lahetaguse manor (in German: Lahhentagge) in
Saaremaa (
Ösel) in
Estonia - then part of the Russian Empire - von Bellingshausen enlisted as a cadet in the
Imperial Russian Navy at the age of ten. After graduating from the
Kronstadt naval academy at age eighteen, he rapidly rose to the rank of captain. A great admirer of
Cook's voyages, he served from 1803 in the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth. The vessel
Nadezhda ("Hope") was commanded by
Krusenstern, completing the mission in 1806. Von Bellingshausen's career continued with the command of various ships in the
Baltic and
Black Seas.
When
Czar Alexander I authorized an expedition to the south polar region in 1819, the authorities selected Bellingshausen to lead it. Leaving
Portsmouth on
September 5,
1819 with two ships, the 600-ton
corvette Vostok ("East") and the 530-ton support vessel
Mirnyi ("Peaceful") (captained by
Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev), the expedition crossed the
Antarctic Circle (the first to do so since Cook) on
January 26,
1820. On
January 28 1820 (
New Style) the expedition discovered the
Antarctic mainland approaching the Antarctic coast at a point with coordinates 69º21'28"S 2º14'50"W and seeing ice-fields there. The point in question lies within twenty miles of the Antarctic mainland. Bellingshausen's diary, his report to the
Russian Naval Minister on
21 July 1821 and other documents, available in the
Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic
in
Saint Petersburg,
Russia, were carefully compared with the log-books of other claimants by the British polar historian A. G. E. Jones in his 1982 study 'Antarctica Observed'. Jones concluded that Bellingshausen, rather than the Royal Navy's
Edward Bransfield on
30 January 1820 or the American
Nathaniel Palmer on
17 November 1820, was indeed the discoverer of the sought-after
Terra Australis. During the voyage Bellingshausen also visited the
South Shetland Islands, and discovered and named
Peter I,
Zavodovski,
Leskov and
Visokoi Islands, and a peninsula of the Antarctic mainland which he named the Alexander Coast but which has more recently borne the designation of
Alexander Island.
Bellingshausen Island in the
South Sandwich Islands is named after him. The
Faddey Islands in the
Laptev Sea are named after Bellingshausen's first name.
The expedition continued to make discoveries in the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Returning to
Kronstadt on
4 August 1821 to no great acclaim, Bellingshausen continued to serve his
tsar. He fought in the
Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 and attained the rank of
admiral. He became the military governor of
Kronstadt (from 1839) and died there in 1852.
A
minor planet 3659 Bellingshausen, discovered by
Soviet astronomer
Lyudmila Chernykh in 1969 is named after him. There is a memorial stone of von Bellingshausen on the previous site (on the ruins) of Lahhentagge/Lahetaguse manor in Oesel/Saaremaa.
Named in his honor
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