In what year did Russian sailors discover Antarctica? Who discovered Antarctica and what year was it

Almost 200 years after the discovery of the sixth continent of the planet, it is of interest to scientists. Because of the ice cover, it is called the "high" land. Average Height- 2,000 m, and the maximum - 5140. The area of Antarctica - 14 million km2 - only 3 million km2 less than Russia. Who discovered the land of eternal ice?

Who discovered Antarctica

Even before the first expeditions, scientists assumed that on south pole There is big land. However, there was no evidence of this. M. V. Lomonosov did not doubt its existence and gave a very clear description: “Far to the south, between the cape Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan, there is a large land covered with ice. At the same time, Mikhail Vasilievich noticed that there was much more ice in the south than in the north.

The involuntary discoverer is Captain Dirk Gerritz. He was the first to approach Antarctica. But Gerritz hardly wanted this. In 1559, during a storm, the ship was carried beyond the Antarctic Circle. When the ship reached 64 degrees south latitude, the crew observed "high" land. The captain put the lives of people above the possible laurels of a researcher. So as soon as the weather allowed, he left the dangerous waters.

Captain James Cook made the following important discoveries in Antarctic exploration. In the period 1768–1775. famous navigator and the cartographer has repeatedly been beyond the Arctic Circle. James Cook explored the coast of Australia, proved that New Zealand has nothing to do with Antarctica, but is an archipelago.

Once the ship "Endeavour" was caught in ice beyond 71 degrees south latitude. Then the ship was only 75 miles from the sixth continent. However, due to the brutal cold and impassability of the ice, Cook considered that it was pointless to continue the expedition.

Who first discovered Antarctica

For almost 50 years, people have not crossed the Antarctic Circle. Many scientists agreed with James Cook that there was little point in discovering Antarctica, because nothing would have changed for science.

However, interest in the icy land returned in 1819. The Russian Empire equipped an expedition consisting of two sloops:

"Vostok" - the captain and commander of the expedition Thaddeus Bellingshausen (pictured left).
Mirny - Captain Mikhail Lazarev.

On July 4, the team left Kronstadt for Rio de Janeiro, where they moored at the end of autumn. From there, the explorers headed south. Rounding the island of South Georgia, headed east past the archipelago South Sandwich islands.

Discovering several islands Russian expedition crossed 69 south latitude, where one of the major discoveries geography. On January 28, 1820, the sailors were 20 miles from Antarctica. For several days, the team observed rocky shores and impressive ice shelves.

The Antarctic winter has come, and the discoverers of Antarctica have turned north. Waiting for the ice to melt, the expedition discovered several islands in the Pacific Ocean. A year later, the Bellingshausen team returned to the same place and continued the mission. Rounding Antarctica coastline, having traveled 50 thousand miles and discovered 29 islands, the expedition returned home.

Controversial discoverers - whalers bransfield and Palmer

In November 1820, a whaling ship passed near the icy land. Sailors and Captain Nathaniel Palmer claimed to have seen the Southern Continent. Also on January 31, that is, three days after official opening, the coast of Antarctica was allegedly seen by the team of an English sailing ship under the command of Edward Bransfield. One way or another, they cannot claim to have discovered an uncharted land, since this happened later. In addition, it is not known whether they saw Antarctica or just glaciers.

The question of the discovery of Antarctica still pops up. Bellingshausen and Lazarev are officially considered the discoverers. However, in our time, scientists find shipwrecks and household items of the 16th-17th centuries in the South. Some of them are stored in the Chilean Museum of the city of Valparaiso. There are two opinions about how they got there: it was brought by the current, or the hunting ships were nailed to the icy shores even before the official opening.

How it really happened and which of the travelers discovered Antarctica, we most likely will not know.

Antarctica is a mysterious and cold land that has haunted explorers and travelers from all over the world for several centuries. So who discovered Antarctica, and in what year did it happen?

History of Antarctic exploration

Antarctica was discovered by two Russian navigators F. Bellingshausen and M. Lazarev in 1820. However, even before this great discovery, other sea vessels with no less famous scientists approached its shores, or knew about the existence of the mainland.

Rice. 1. Fadey Bellingshausen and M. Lazarev.

At the beginning of the 16th century, in 1501-1502, the Portuguese discoverer Amerigo Vespucci put forward a conjecture about the existence of the mainland. By chance, he was lucky enough to give the name of North and South America, but failed to get closer to Antarctica. He came to the island South Georgia, which is located far enough from Antarctica, but did not dare to move further due to the severe cold that fettered all members of the team. Frightened for his men, Vespucci retreated.

Rice. 2. Amerigo Vespucci.

In the second half of the 18th century, the English traveler James Cook became interested in Antarctica. He approached the South Pole closer than his predecessors, practically confirming his guesses about the existence of a southern land bound by ice. Cook returned to his homeland, confident that no one would advance further to the South Pole due to severe weather conditions.

When was Antarctica discovered?

So what year was Antarctica discovered? In 1819, by order of Tsar Alexander I, the round the world expedition under the leadership of Fadey Bellingshausen and his deputy M. Lazarev. They were faced with the task of confirming or disproving the existence of the sixth continent. The expedition was carried out on two ships - Vostok and Mirny.

On January 16, 1820, the crew of Bellingshausen and Lazarev were the first to reach the coast of Antarctica. In honor of his king, Thaddeus Bellingshausen called these lands the lands of Alexander I. Also as a result of this sea travel other discoveries were made. For example, the Antarctic Peninsula was discovered, on which the northernmost and only extreme point mainland - Cape Sifre (Cape Prime Head).

What have we learned?

Antarctica is the coldest continent on earth. That is why, because of the difficult conditions, it was the most difficult to open. It happened only in the 19th century. Amerigo Vespucci and James Cook thought about the existence of Antarctica. They tried to make their way to the shores of Antarctica, but they failed to do so. Only in 1820, the Russian travelers Bellingshausen and Lazarev were able to reach the shores of the mainland. From that moment, a new era of exploration and development of a previously unknown continent began.

Topic quiz

Report Evaluation

Average rating: 4.6. Total ratings received: 208.

It was actually discovered in 1820, when on January 16 (28) an expedition led by the great Russian seafaring officers Mikhail Lazarev and Thaddeus Bellingshausen noticed an unknown land nearby. This land turned out to be the sixth, the last of the discovered globe- Antarctica.

The distance traveled by the Mirny and Vostok boats was 100,000 km.

The expedition members managed to accomplish what was previously considered impossible.

Indeed, back in 1775, the famous James Cook, who could not break through the ice (he stopped about two hundred kilometers from Antarctica), wrote in his diaries that not a single person could move south further than him.

The Russian expedition did not land on the coast of Antarctica, and this is one of the reasons for the disputes about the discovery of the continent.

The expedition of Lazarev and Bellingshausen lasted a little more than two years (751 days), and the path they covered was equal to two trips around the world.

Discovery of Antarctica: speculation and assumptions

The version about the existence of the continent itself was expressed in the second century AD by the ancient Greek geographer and astronomer Ptolemy. However, his assumptions for many centuries were not confirmed by scientific facts.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese, led by Amerigo Vespucci, reached the island of South Georgia, but returned due to extreme cold, which none of the members of the flotilla could endure. In 1775, James Cook went deep into the Atlantic waters, but he could not break through the cold and ice close to the mainland, and was also forced to retreat. Although he was in the existence of Antarctica.

Whoever set foot on earth first discovered

Recently, the assertion that it is not open until a person has set foot on it has become popular. Hence, another date for the “discovery” of the sixth continent is January 23, 1895, when the Norwegians Christensen (the captain of the Antarctic vessel) and Carlsen Borchgrevink (teacher of natural sciences) reached the coast of Antarctica and landed on its land.

Their expedition managed to get samples of minerals and describe the aurora. A few years later, Borchgrevink returned to Antarctica, but already as the leader of an expedition called the Southern Cross.

Only 120 years have passed since the beginning of the development of people on the continent known as Antarctica (1899), and almost two centuries since the seafarers first saw its shores (1820). Long before the discovery of Antarctica, most early explorers were convinced that there was a large southern mainland. They called it Terra Australis incognita - the Unknown Southern Land.

The origins of ideas about Antarctica

The idea of its existence came to the mind of the ancient Greeks, who had a penchant for symmetry and balance. It should be big continent in the South, they postulated, to balance the large landmass in the Northern Hemisphere. Two thousand years later great experience geographical research gave Europeans enough reason to pay attention to the South to test this hypothesis.

16th century: first erroneous discovery of the southern continent

The history of the discovery of Antarctica begins with Magellan. In 1520, after he sailed through the strait that now bears his name, the famous navigator suggested that his South coast(now we loan that this is an island Tierra del Fuego), may be the northern edge of the great continent. Half a century later, Francis Drake established that Magellan's supposed "continent" was just a series of islands near the tip of South America. It became clear that if indeed there is a southern continent, then it is located further to the south.

XVII century: a hundred years of approaching the goal

In the future, from time to time, sailors, carried off course by storms, again discovered new lands. They often lay further south than any previously known. So, when trying to navigate around Cape Horn in 1619, the Spaniards Bartolomeo and Gonzalo García de Nodal veered off course, only to find tiny patches of land that they called the Diego Ramirez Islands. They remained the southernmost of the open lands for another 156 years.

The next step on a long journey, the end of which was to mark the discovery of Antarctica, was taken in 1622. Then Dutch navigator Dirk Gerritz reported that in the region of 64 ° south latitude, he allegedly discovered a land with snow-capped mountains, similar to Norway. The accuracy of his calculation is doubtful, but it is possible that he saw the South Shetland Islands.

In 1675, the ship of the British merchant Anthony de La Roche was carried far to the southeast of the Strait of Magellan, where at a latitude of 55 ° he took refuge in an unnamed bay. During his stay on this stretch of land (which was almost certainly the island of South Georgia), he also saw what he thought was the coast of the Southern Continent to the southeast. In reality, these were most likely the Clerk Rocks Islands, which lie 48 kilometers southeast of South Georgia. Their location corresponds to the shores of Terra Australis incognita, placed on the map of the Dutch East India Company, which at one time studied de La Roche's reports.

18th century: the British and French take over

The first truly scientific search, the purpose of which was the discovery of Antarctica, took place at the very beginning of the 18th century. In September 1699, the scientist Edmond Halley sailed from England to establish the true coordinates of the ports in South America and Africa, measure the Earth's magnetic field and look for the mysterious Terra Australis incognita. In January 1700, he crossed the border of the Antarctic Convergence Zone and saw icebergs, which he recorded in the ship's log. However, cold stormy weather and the danger of colliding with an iceberg in the fog forced him to turn back to the North.

The next forty years later was the French navigator Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozière, who saw an unknown land at 54 ° south latitude. He named it "Cape of Circumcision", suggesting that he had found the edge of the Southern Continent, but it was actually an island (now called Bouvet Island).

The Fatal Delusion of Yves de Kergulen

The prospect of making the discovery of Antarctica attracted more and more new sailors. Yves-Joseph de Kergulin sailed with two ships in 1771 with specific instructions to search for the southern continent. On February 12, 1772, in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, he saw land shrouded in fog at 49 ° 40 ", but could not make a landing due to rough seas and bad weather. A firm belief in the existence of the legendary and hospitable southern continent blinded him and made him believe that that he really discovered it, although the land he saw was an island.Back in France, the navigator began to spread fantastic information about the densely populated continent, which he modestly called "New Southern France".His stories convinced the French government to invest in another expensive expedition.In 1773 Kergulen returned to the said object with three ships, but never set foot on the island that now bears his name.Worse, he was forced to admit the truth and, returning to France, spent the rest of his days in disgrace.

James Cook and the search for Antarctica

The geographical discoveries of Antarctica are to a large extent connected with the name of this famous Englishman. In 1768 he was sent to southern part Pacific Ocean to search for a new continent. He returned to England three years later with a variety of new information of a geographical, biological, and anthropological nature, but found no sign of the southern continent. The desired shores were again pushed further south from their previously assumed location.

In July 1772, Cook sailed from England, but this time, on the instructions of the British Admiralty, the search for the southern continent was the main mission of the expedition. During this unprecedented voyage, which lasted until 1775, he crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time in history, discovered many new islands and deepened south to 71 ° south latitude, which no one had previously succeeded in.

However, fate did not give James Cook the honor of becoming the discoverer of Antarctica. Moreover, as a result of his expedition, he gained confidence that if there is an unknown land near the pole, then its area is very small and is of no interest.

Who was lucky enough to make the discovery and exploration of Antarctica

After the death of James Cook in 1779 European countries for forty years they stopped searching for the great southern continent of the Earth. Meanwhile, in the seas between the previously discovered islands, near the still unknown continent, whalers and hunters of sea animals: seals, walruses, and fur seals were already in full swing. Economic interest in the subpolar region grew, and the year of the discovery of Antarctica was steadily approaching. However, only in 1819, the Russian Tsar Alexander I ordered to send an expedition to the southern polar regions, and thus the search was continued.

The head of the expedition was none other than Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen. He was born in 1779 in the Baltic States. He began his career as a naval cadet at the age of 10 and graduated from the Naval Academy in Kronstadt at the age of 18. He was 40 when he was called to lead this exciting journey. Its purpose was to continue Cook's work during the voyage and move as far south as possible.

The already well-known navigator Mikhail Lazarev was appointed deputy head of the expedition. In 1913-1914. he made a round-the-world trip as a captain on the sloop "Suvorov". What else is Mikhail Lazarev known for? The discovery of Antarctica is a bright, but not the only impressive episode from his life dedicated to serving Russia. He was the hero of the Battle of Navarino at sea with the Turkish fleet in 1827, and for many years he commanded the Black Sea Fleet. His students were the famous admirals - the heroes of the first Sevastopol defense: Nakhimov, Kornilov, Istomin. His ashes deservedly rest with them in the tomb of the Vladimir Cathedral in Sevastopol.

Expedition preparation and composition

Its flagship was the 600-ton Vostok corvette, built by British shipbuilders. The second ship was the 530-ton Mirny sloop, a transport vessel built in Russia. Both ships were made of pine. Lazarev commanded the Mirny, who was in charge of preparing the expedition and did a lot to prepare both ships for sailing in the polar seas. Looking ahead, we note that Lazarev's efforts were not in vain. It was the Mirny that showed excellent driving performance and endurance in cold waters, while the Vostok was put out of service a month ahead of schedule. A total of 117 crew members had the Vostok, and 72 were on board the Mirny.

Start of the expedition

She started on July 4, 1819. In the third week of July, the ships arrived in Portsmouth, England. During a short stay, Belingshausen went to London to meet with the president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banky. The latter forty years ago sailed with Cook and now supplied the Russian sailors with books and maps left over from the campaigns. September 5, 1819 polar expedition Bellingshausen left Portsmouth, and by the end of the year they were near South Georgia Island. From here they headed southeast to the South Sandwich Islands and made a thorough survey of them, discovering three new islands.

Russian discovery of Antarctica

On January 26, 1820, the expedition crossed the Antarctic Circle, the first time since Cook did so in 1773. The next day, her journal reveals that the sailors saw the Antarctic mainland from 20 miles away. The discovery of Antarctica by Bellingshausen and Lazarev took place. Over the next three weeks, the ships cruised continuously in coastal ice, trying to approach the mainland, but they failed to land on it.

Forced sailing in the Pacific

February 22 "Vostok" and "Mirny" suffered from the strongest three-day storm for the entire time of the campaign. The only way to keep the ships and crews was to return to the north, and on April 11, 1820, the Vostok arrived in Sydney, and the Mirny entered the same harbor eight days later. After a month of rest, Bellingshausen took his ships on a four-month exploratory voyage to Pacific Ocean. Arriving back in Sydney in September, Bellingshausen was informed by the Russian consul that an English captain named William Smith had discovered a group of islands at the 67th parallel, which he called the South Shetland and proclaimed them part of the Antarctic continent. Bellingshausen immediately decided to take a look at them himself, hoping in the process to find a way to continue further south.

Return to Antarctica

On the morning of November 11, 1820, the ships left Sydney. On December 24, the ships crossed the Antarctic Circle again after an eleven-month break. They soon encountered storms that pushed them northward. The year of the discovery of Antarctica was ending hard for Russian sailors. By January 16, 1821, they crossed the Arctic Circle at least 6 times, and each time the storm forced them to move north. On January 21, the weather finally calmed down, and at 3:00 they noticed a dark speck on the background of the ice. All the spyglasses on the Vostok were pointed at him, and as the day dawned, Bellingshausen became convinced that they had found land beyond the Arctic Circle. The next day, the land turned out to be an island, which was named after Peter I. Fog and ice did not allow us to land on land, and the expedition continued on its way to the South Shetland Islands. On January 28th they were enjoying fine weather near the 68th parallel when land was again sighted about 40 miles to the east. Too much ice lay between the ships and land, but a number of snow-free mountains were seen. Bellingshausen named this land the Alexander Coast, now known as Alexander Island. Although not part of the mainland, it is nonetheless connected to it by a deep and wide strip of ice.

Completion of the expedition

Satisfied, Bellingshausen sailed north and arrived in Rio de Janeiro in March, where the crew remained until May, making major repairs to the ships. August 4, 1821 they anchored in Kronstadt. The journey lasted two years and 21 days. Only three people were lost. The Russian authorities, however, turned out to be indifferent to such a great event as the discovery of Antarctica by Bellingshausen. Ten years passed before the accounts of his expedition were published.

As in any great undertaking, the Russian sailors found rivals. Many in the West doubted that it was our compatriots who first discovered Antarctica. The discovery of the mainland at one time was attributed to the Englishman Edward Bransfield and the American Nathaniel Palmer. However, today almost no one questions the superiority of Russian sailors.

The discovery of Antarctica dates back to 1820.

However, the fact that there is a mainland at the South Pole was guessed before. The ancient Greeks were the first to express the idea of Antarctica. They knew about the Arctic - Arktos is an icy region in the Northern Hemisphere. And they decided that in order to balance the world, there should be a similar cold area in the Southern Hemisphere, the opposite area "Ant - Arktos" - opposite the Arctic.

Assumptions about Antarctica arose among the participants of the Portuguese expedition of 1501-1502., in which the Florentine traveler Amerigo Vespucci took part (his name, thanks to a bizarre coincidence, was subsequently immortalized in the name of the huge continents). But the expedition could not advance further than the island of South Georgia, which lies quite far from the Antarctic continent. “The cold was so strong that none of our flotilla could bear it,” Vespucci testified.

James Cook penetrated the Antarctic waters furthest, debunking the myth of the giant Unknown Southern Land. But even he was forced to confine himself to a mere assumption: “I will not deny that there may be a continent or a significant land near the pole. On the contrary, I am convinced that such a land exists, and it is possible that we have seen part of it. Great cold, huge number ice islands and floating ice - all this proves that the land in the south must be ... ". He even wrote a special treatise "Arguments for the existence of land near the South Pole."

Naval Cadet Corps. From an early age, he dreamed of sea spaces. “I was born in the middle of the sea,” he wrote, “as a fish cannot live without water, so I cannot I can live without the sea." In 1803-1806. Bellingshausen took part in the first Russian round-the-world voyage on the ship "Nadezhda" under the leadership of Ivan Kruzenshtern.

Was ten years younger Lazarev who has made three world travel. In 1827 he took part in the naval battle of Navarino against the Turks; later, for almost 20 years, he commanded the Black Sea Fleet. Among the students of Lazarev were outstanding Russian naval commanders Vladimir Kornilov, Pavel Nakhimov, Vladimir Istomin.

Fate brought Bellingshausen and Lazarev together in 1819. The Naval Ministry planned an expedition to the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Two well-equipped ships were to make a difficult journey. One of them, the Vostok sloop, was commanded by Bellingshausen, the other, bearing the name Mirny, was commanded by Lazarev. Many decades later, the first Soviet Antarctic stations would be named after these ships.

July 16, 1819 the expedition set sail. Its goal was formulated briefly: discoveries "in the possible vicinity of the Antarctic Pole." Mariners were ordered to explore South Georgia and Sandwich Land (now the South Sandwich Islands, once discovered by Cook) and "continue their explorations to the remotest latitude that can be reached", using "every diligence and the greatest effort to reach as close to the pole as possible, looking for unknown lands". The instruction was written in a "high calm", but no one knew how it could be implemented in practice. However, luck accompanied the "East" and "Mirny". The island of South Georgia has been described in detail; it has been established that Sandwich Land is not one island, but an entire archipelago, and the most big Island Bellingshausen named the archipelago Cook Islands. The first prescriptions of the instruction were fulfilled.

Already one could see endless expanses of ice on the horizon; along their edge, the ships continued their journey from west to east. On January 27, 1820, they crossed the Antarctic Circle and the next day came close to the ice barrier of the Antarctic continent. Only more than 100 years later, Norwegian explorers of Antarctica visited these places again: they called them the Princess Martha Coast. On January 28, Bellingshausen wrote in his diary: “Continuing our journey south, at noon at latitude 69 ° 21 "28", longitude 2 ° 14 "50" we met ice, which seemed to us through the falling snow in the form of white clouds. After going another two miles to the southeast, the expedition found itself in " solid ice»; all around stretched "an ice field dotted with mounds."

Lazarev's ship was in conditions of much better visibility. The captain observed "seasoned (i.e., very powerful, solid) ice of extraordinary height", and "it extended as far as vision could only reach." This ice was part of the Antarctic ice sheet. And January 28, 1820 went down in history as the date of the discovery of the Antarctic continent. Two more times (February 2 and 17) Vostok and Mirny came close to the coast of Antarctica.

The instruction ordered "to search for unknown lands", but even the most determined of its compilers could not foresee such an amazing implementation.

On January 22, 1821, an unknown island appeared to the eyes of travelers. Bellingshausen called it the island of Peter I - " high name culprit of existence Russian Empire navy." January 28 - exactly one year has passed since the day historical event- in a cloudless sunny weather the crews of the ships observed a mountainous coast that extended south beyond the line of sight.
On geographical maps Alexander I Land first appeared. Now there is no doubt left: Antarctica is not just a giant ice massif, not a “continent of ice”, as Bellingshausen called it in his report, but a real “terrestrial” continent.

However, he himself never spoke about the discovery of the mainland. And the point here is not a sense of false modesty: he understood that it was possible to draw final conclusions only by “stepping over the side of the ship”, having carried out research on the shore. Neither the size nor the outlines of the continent F. Bellingshausen could not form even a rough idea. This took many decades.

Completing its "odyssey", the expedition examined in detail the South Shetland Islands, about which it was previously known only that the Englishman W. Smith observed them in 1818. The islands were described and mapped. Many satellites of Bellingshausen participated in Patriotic war 1812. Therefore, in memory of her battles, individual islands received the corresponding names: Borodino, Maloyaroslavets, Smolensk, Berezina, Leipzig, Waterloo. However, later they were renamed by English sailors, which seems unfair. By the way, at Waterloo ( modern name his - King George) in 1968 the northernmost Soviet scientific station in Antarctica - Bellingshausen was founded.

The voyage of Russian ships lasted 751 days, and its length was almost 100 thousand km (the same amount will be obtained if two and a quarter times go around the Earth along the equator). 29 new islands have been mapped. Thus began the chronicle of the study and development of Antarctica, in which the names of researchers from many countries are inscribed.