The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas, 1819-1821
Modernized, illustrated English edition of The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas, 1819-1821 (Двукратныя изысканія въ Южномъ Ледовитомъ океанѣ) by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (1819-1821).
Head south with Bellingshausen, whose Russian ships skirt the ice and sight Antarctica.
Read more ↓- about 390 pages
- Paperback
- English
Countries covered: Antarctica · French Polynesia · Australia · Brazil · Kiribati · Cook Islands · Tonga · Fiji · Portugal · Denmark
About this book
July 1820, Matavai Bay. The Russian sloops Vostok and Mirny weigh anchor off Point Venus, after visits from King Pomare and the missionary Nott, and Captain Bellingshausen sets his course for the unknown.
Across the tropical Pacific, he fills the chart with nameless atolls, meets a hostile reception on Grand Duke Alexander Island and strikes up a friendship with Fio, king of Ono. At Port Jackson, he observes the young convict colony, its roads toward the Blue Mountains and the Aboriginal chief Bongari. Then comes the second austral summer: the elephant seals of Macquarie Island, the first ice around 63° South, St Nicholas's Day celebrated among the icebergs, the breakers glimpsed through the fog.
On 10 January 1821, the cry of land finally rings out: an island rising from the mist, impossible to approach, which is named Peter I. A week later a coast appears, which is called Alexander I. In the South Shetlands, the Russians meet the young American sealer Nathaniel Palmer, before heading north to Rio de Janeiro, where King John VI embarks for Lisbon amid constitutional fever.
A precise officer and attentive observer, Bellingshausen tells the final act of a voyage of 751 days. What is left to discover once you have touched the edge of the world?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- South Pole
- The author
- Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
- Modern edition by
- Hélène Garnier
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- about 390
The author
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen was born in 1778 on the island of Ösel, in Livonia, into a noble Baltic German family, and entered the Naval Cadet Corps at Kronstadt. A naval officer, he took part from 1803 to 1806 in the first Russian circumnavigation under Krusenstern, then commanded ships in the Baltic and the Black Sea. From 1819 to 1821, he led the expedition of the sloops Vostok and Mirny in the Southern Ocean, which sighted the Antarctic coast in January 1820 and discovered Peter I Island and Alexander I Land. He drew from it the account published in 1831, Double exploration de l'océan Glacial Antarctique, the basis of the Russian claim to the discovery of the continent. An admiral, and military governor of Kronstadt from 1839, he died there in 1852.
All books by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen →Sources
The Double Exploration of the Southern Icy Ocean appeared in Saint Petersburg in 1831, from the printer I. Glazunov, in two parts accompanied by an atlas by P. Mikhailov published separately. Three witnesses were examined. The original edition, digitized by the Russian State Library, is transcribed in full on Wikisource, in the original spelling. The text offered by az.lib.ru reproduces the second edition, published in Moscow in 1949 with abridgements and alterations. The Hakluyt Society's English translation, published in 1945, is not the Russian text and was not found in digitized form. The text we selected for our work is therefore the second part of the original 1831 edition, read in the Wikisource transcription of the Russian State Library copy.
This transcription, not yet reviewed by its contributors, was proofread and cleaned. The title page, the table of contents and the closing notices were set aside. The summaries the author places at the head of each chapter were kept, as were the tables of observations, the list of plants, the short vocabulary and the price records inserted in the narrative, which belong to the traveller's journal. This volume corresponds to the second part of the 1831 edition, made up of chapters V to VII of the work. The text thus established runs to about 68,000 words.
How we transform the text. This book is neither a literal translation nor a facsimile: it is a rewriting in today's language, carried out in three stages. Modernisation renders the text in contemporary English; each place and person receives a single modern form, and period terms (currencies, measures, titles) are kept, with a light gloss where needed. Clarification untangles the long sentences of the period, one idea per sentence, adding nothing and removing nothing. Shaping the narrative divides the text into titled chapters and restores its flow; repetitive passages are condensed, but no dated, numbered or named fact is removed. Each stage is followed by a review of fidelity to the original text.
| Status | Edition | Copy | Language | Note | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selected | Двукратные изыскания в Южном Ледовитом океане и плавание вокруг света…, Saint Petersburg, I. Glazunov printing house, 1831, 2 parts (separate atlas); text of part 2 | Russian State Library, digitized by the Presidential Library and on Wikimedia Commons; text read in the Wikisource transcription | Russian | Unabridged original edition; this volume follows its second part, chapters V to VII, transcribed in full in the original spelling. | View |
| Set aside | Двукратные изыскания…, 2nd edition, Moscow, Geografgiz, 1949, edited by E. E. Shvede | Online transcription on az.lib.ru | Russian | Second edition, published with abridgements and alterations: it does not faithfully reproduce the 1831 text. | View |
| Set aside | The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas, 1819-1821, Hakluyt Society, 2nd series, nos. 91-92, 1945, 2 vols. | not located online (Hakluyt Society bibliographic record) | English | English translation edited by Frank Debenham: it is not the Russian text, and no digitized copy was found. | View |
The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
-
James Weddell, A Voyage towards the South Pole, performed in the years 1822-24 (1822-1824)
Barely two years after the Vostok's passage, the Scottish sealer James Weddell returns to the South Shetlands with the brig Jane and the cutter Beaufoy.
Read a free edition → -
Jules Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zélée (1837-1840)
Louis-Philippe wants France to surpass Weddell's latitude: Dumont d'Urville leaves Toulon in 1837 with the Astrolabe and the Zélée.
Our edition → -
Adrien de Gerlache, Quinze mois dans l'Antarctique (1897-1899)
At the end of February 1898, the Belgica allows herself to be caught by the pack ice of the Bellingshausen Sea, not far from Peter I Island, which the Vostok had been the first to see.
-
Jean-Baptiste Charcot, Le Pourquoi-Pas ? dans l'Antarctique (1908-1910)
Charcot winters at Petermann Island, on the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula, then sends the Pourquoi-Pas?
The modern editor
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