Biography
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (in Russian Faddei Faddeevich Bellinsgauzen) was born on 9 September 1778 (20 September in the Gregorian calendar) on the island of Ösel, today Saaremaa, then in Livonia, into a German-Baltic noble family. Sources give the name of his native estate in similar spellings, Lahhentagge or Lahetaguse. In 1789 he entered the Naval Cadet Corps at Kronstadt, became a midshipman in 1795, then a junior officer in 1797 in the Reval squadron.
His career was first played out at sea. From 1803 to 1806 he served on the Nadezhda under Adam Johann von Krusenstern, during the first Russian circumnavigation, and afterwards published a collection of charts of the Pacific. He then commanded several vessels, including the corvette Melpomene in 1809, then the frigates Minerva in the Black Sea from 1812 to 1816 and Flora from 1817 to 1819. This experience as a navigator and cartographer explains why he was thought of for a polar expedition.
In 1819, on the orders of Alexander I, he took command of two sloops, the Vostok, which he commanded himself, and the Mirny, entrusted to Mikhail Lazarev. Leaving Kronstadt on 4 July 1819 (Old Style), they called at Copenhagen, Portsmouth, Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro before heading south. They returned to Kronstadt in August 1821 after circling the southern continent twice, discovering islands and sighting the ice of the continent in January 1820. Bellingshausen then wrote his account, published in Saint Petersburg in 1831 under the title Двукратные изыскания в Южном Ледовитом океане и плавание вокруг света в продолжение 1819, 20 и 21 годов, in two volumes and accompanied by an atlas. The book presented here is the first of these volumes, running from Kronstadt to the ice of 1820.
On his return, promotions followed: captain-commodore, then rear admiral in 1826. He took part in the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829, notably the siege of Varna, became vice admiral in 1830, then military governor of Kronstadt in 1839 and admiral in 1843. He was one of the founders of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845. Among other honors he received the Order of Saint George, fourth class, and the Order of Saint Vladimir, third class. The priority in sighting the continent, disputed among him, Bransfield and Palmer, remains a subject of debate.
He died at Kronstadt on 13 January 1852 (25 January Gregorian), at the age of seventy-three. According to the Russian Wikipedia article, his grave in the town's Lutheran cemetery has not been preserved and only a cenotaph remains there. His logbook and his report to the Minister of the Navy of July 1821 are kept at the State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic in Saint Petersburg. The account was reissued in 1869. His name lives on in a sea, an island and an Antarctic station, and monuments are dedicated to him at Kronstadt, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo.
