Background

Ethnicity: Bellingshausen was born to a family of German Baltic aristocrats on the Estonian island of Oesel (Saaremaa) at the mouth of the Gulf of Riga.

Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen was born on September 20, 1778, in Lahhentagge Manor, Lahhentagge, Ösel County, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire.

Education

Bellingshausen graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps first. After graduating from the Kronstadt Naval Academy at age eighteen, Bellingshausen rapidly rose to the rank of captain.

Career

Bellinsgauzen began his naval career in 1789 as a cadet in Kronstadt. From 1803 to 1806 he participated in the first round-the-world voyage by a Russian ship, the Nadezhda, under the command of Ivan F. Kruzenstern. Following this trip, and until July 1819, Bellinsgauzen commanded various ships on the Baltic and Black seas. From 1819 to 1821 he headed a Russian Antarctic expedition, then commanded various naval units in the Mediterranean, Black, and Baltic seas. From 1839 until the end of his life Bellinsgauzen was the military governor of Kronstadt.

Bellinsgauzen’s fame is a result of the discoveries made on the expedition he led to the Antarctic. When the Russian government decided to send an expedition to study the Antarctic, he was designated commander because of his solid knowledge of physics, astronomy, hydrography, and cartography, and because of his wide naval experience. He also was responsible for practically all the maps of the Kruzenstern expedition. During his Black Sea service, he had determined the coordinates of the main points of the eastern shore and had corrected several inaccuracies on the map of the shoreline.

Two three-masted vessels, the Vostok and the Mirny, were outfitted for the trip to the Antarctic. Bellinsgauzen commanded the Vostok; the commander of the Mirny was Mikhail P. Lazarev. The expedition was to survey South Georgia Island, sail to the east of the Sandwich Islands, go as close to the pole as possible, and not turn back unless it met impassable obstacles.

The Vostok and the Mirny left Kronstadt on 15 July 1819. In December the expedition sighted the south shore of South Georgia Island, and at the beginning of January 1820, it came upon the Traverse Islands. Reaching the Sandwich Islands seven days later, the expedition found not a single island, as Cook had proposed, but several islands. Naming them the South Sandwich Islands, the expedition headed south and, in spite of ice barriers, on 27 January 1820, near the coast of Princess Martha’s Land at a latitude of 69°25' (according to Bellinsgauzen’s report of 20 April 1820 to the Russian minister) came within twenty miles of the Antarctic mainland, the shoreline of which was plotted. Bellinsgauzen wrote on this day that ice, which appeared “like white clouds in the snow that were then falling,” was sighted. This was the first view of the earth’s sixth continent, and on the navigational map he noted, “Sighted solid ice.”

On February, Bellinsgauzen’s expedition was about thirty miles from the icy continent, at latitude 69°25' south and longitude 1° 11' west. The third leaf of the navigational map shows the ice, which the expedition again approached on 17-18 February. In a report from Port Jackson (Sydney), Australia, to the war minister on 20 April 1820, Bellinsgauzen wrote of these approaches: “Here behind ice fields of smaller ice and islands, a continent of ice is seen, the borders of which are broken off perpendicularly and which ranges as far as we could see. The flat ice islands are situated close to that continent rising toward the south… and show clearly that they are wreckage of that continent, for their borders and surface are like the continent.”

The expedition later discovered a series of islands in the Pacific. In January 1821 the southernmost point of the trip was reached (latitude 69°53' south, longitude 92° 19' west) and an island (which was named Peter the Great) and a coastline (which was named Alexander I Coast) were sighted.

In 751 sailing days, of which 122 were spent below the sixtieth parallel, the Vostok and the Mirny covered over 55,000 miles. Besides discovering Antarctica and sailing around it, one of the great achievements of the Bellinsgauzen-Lazarev expedition was the first description of large oceanic regions adjoining the ice continent. It discovered twenty-nine islands and one coral reef and conducted valuable oceanographic and other scientific observations. A test of the water at a depth of 402 meters, using a bathometer with a thermometer placed inside, showed higher specific weight and lower temperature proportional to depth. The climatic peculiarities of the Antarctic as recorded by Bellinsgauzen are generally in agreement with modern observations. The generalization concerning the temperatures of the equatorial and tropic zones of the Pacific is also important: “Here I ought to note that the greatest heat is not to be expected directly at the equator, where the passing southern trade wind refreshes the air. The greatest heat is in a zone of calm between the southern and the northern trade winds.”

Bellinsgauzen explained the origin of coral islands and on the basis of 203 observations of compass variations determined with great precision the position of the South Magnetic Pole at that time - latitude 76° south, longitude 142° 30' west. He wrote of this in a letter to Kruzenstern, asking him to pass on to Gauss, at the latter’s request, his table of compass variations.

Achievements

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  Bellingshausen's major achievement was in his successful leadership in the Russian circumnavigation to Antarctica. The global cruise that lasted for 751 days was crowned with the discovery of the sixth continent of the planet, mapping of 28 Antarctic geographical objects and finding 29 earlier unknown islands in equatorial and tropical latitudes. Commanding the Vostok and Mirny, sloops of about 500 tons each, on his Antarctic voyage, Bellingshausen discovered Peter I and Alexander I islands in the South Sandwich Island group in 1821. Upon returning to Russia Bellingshausen put the results of this Antarctic expedition, which was the greatest one in the 19th century, in his book Double Investigation of the Southern Polar Ocean and the Voyage Around the World that was published in 1831 and then repeatedly republished.
  
  Also, Bellinsgauzen made the first attempt to describe and classify the Antarctic ice and determined that the Kanarsky flow is a branch of the Floridsky. This table was published in Leipzig by Gauss (1840).
  
  Another Bellinsgauzen's achievement was in being one of the founders of the Russian Geographic Society in 1845.
  
  A sea in the Antarctic was named for Bellinsgauzen, as well as a cape in the southern part of Sakhalin Island and an island in the Tuamotus.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Forschungsfahrten im Südlichen Eismeer 1821
  • Double Investigation of the Southern Polar Ocean and the Voyage Around the World 1831

Views

Quotations: Bellinsgauzen expressed his firm conviction that there was an ice continent at the South Pole: “I call the great ice rising to form sloping mountains as one proceeds to the South Pole the inveterate ice, provided it is 4° cold in the midst of the most perfect summer day. I suppose it is no less cold farther to the south, and thus I conclude that the ice ranges over the Pole and must be stationary...”

Membership

Bellinsgauzen was a member of the Russian Geographic Society from 1845.

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  Russian Geographic Society , Russia

  1845 - 1852

Connections

Bellingshausen married Anna Dmitriyevna Bellingshausen (Baikova) in 1826.

Father:

Fabian Ernst von Bellingshausen

1735-1784

Mother:

Anna Katharina von Bellingshausen (von Folckern)

1752-1825

Wife:

Anna Dmitriyevna Bellingshausen (Baikova)

1808-1892

Brother:

Reinhold Johann von Bellingshausen

1775-1840

Brother:

Hermann Friedrich von Bellingshausen

1776-1841

Brother:

Otto Wilhelm von Bellingshausen

1780-1782

Son:

Peter von Bellingshausen

Daughter:

Helena von Bellingshausen

Son:

Nikolai von Bellingshausen

Daughter:

Katharina Alexejew (von Bellingshausen)

Daughter:

Elizaveta Gershau (von Bellingshausen)

1828-1910

Daughter:

Maria von Bellingshausen

1836-1863

collaborator:

Mikhail Lazarev

Lazarev first circumnavigated the globe in 1813–1816, aboard the vessel Suvorov; the expedition began at Kronstadt and reached Alaska. During this voyage, Lazarev discovered the Suvorov Atoll. As a commander of the ship Mirny and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen's deputy on his world cruise in 1819–1821 (Bellingshausen commanded Vostok), Lazarev took part in the discovery of Antarctica and numerous islands. On 28 January 1820 the expedition discovered the Antarctic mainland.

References

• The Empty Ocean
  2013
• Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
  2003
• Dictionary of scientific biography
  1981
• Bellingshausen and the Russian Antarctic Expedition, 1819-21
  2014