Clashes with Indians, Tolstoy's drunken brawls, conflicts of captains: How was the first Russian round the world

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On August 7, 1803, two sloops left the port in Kronstadt. On their sides the names "Nadezhda" and "Neva" flaunted, although not long ago they bore other names - "Leander" and "Thames". It was under the new names that these ships, bought by Emperor Alexander I in England, were to go down in history as the first Russian ships to circumnavigate the globe.

The idea of the round-the-world expedition belonged to Alexander I and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Nikolai Rumyantsev. It was assumed that its participants will collect as much information as possible about the countries that will be on their way - about their nature and about the life of their peoples. And besides, it was planned to establish diplomatic relations with Japan, through which the travelers' route also passed.

Conflicts on board

Ivan Kruzenshtern was appointed captain of the "Nadezhda", and Yuri Lisyansky became the captain of the "Neva" - both at that time were already quite famous sailors who had been trained in England and participated in sea battles. However, another co-director, Count Nikolai Rezanov, who was appointed ambassador to Japan and endowed with very great power, was "hooked" on the ship to Kruzenshtern, which, of course, the captain did not like. And after the sloops left Kronstadt, it turned out that Rezanov was not Krusenstern's only problem.

As it turned out, among the members of the "Nadezhda" team there was a well-known brawler, duelist and lover of eccentric antics Fyodor Tolstoy in those years. He never served in the navy and did not have the necessary education for this, and got on the ship illegally, replacing his cousin, who bore the same name and surname and did not want to go on a long journey. And the brawler Tolstoy, on the contrary, was eager to sail - he was interested in seeing the world, and even more wanted to escape from the capital, where he was threatened with punishment for another drunken brawl.

During the trip, Fyodor Tolstoy entertained himself as best he could: he quarreled with other crew members and pitted them against each other, joked, sometimes very cruelly, over the sailors and even over the priest who accompanied them. Kruzenshtern several times put him in the hold under arrest, but as soon as Fedor's imprisonment ended, he was taken to the old. During one of his stops on an island in the Pacific Ocean, Tolstoy bought a tame orangutan and taught him various pranks. In the end, he launched the monkey into the cabin of Krusenstern himself and gave her ink, with which she ruined the captain's travel notes. This was the last straw, and in the next port, in Kamchatka, Kruzenshtern dropped Tolstoy ashore.

By that time, he had finally quarreled with Count Rezanov, who refused to recognize his captaincy. The rivalry between them began from the very first days of the voyage, and now it is already impossible to say who was the initiator of the conflict. In the surviving letters and diaries of these two, directly opposite versions are expressed: each of them blames the other for everything. Only one thing is known for sure - Nikolai Rezanov and Ivan Kruzenshtern first argued about which of them was in charge on the ship, then they stopped talking to each other and communicated with the help of notes transmitted by the sailors, and then Rezanov completely locked himself in his cabin and stopped answering to the captain even for notes.

Reinforcements for the colonists

Autumn 1804 "Neva" and "Nadezhda" were divided. Kruzenshtern's ship went to Japan, and Lisyansky's ship went to Alaska. Rezanov's mission in the Japanese city of Nagasaki was unsuccessful, and this was the end of his participation in the round-the-world expedition."Neva" at this time arrived in Russian America - the settlement of Russian colonists in Alaska - and her team took part in the battle with the Tlingit Indians. Two years earlier, the Indians ousted the Russians from the island of Sitka, and now the governor of Russian America, Alexander Baranov, was trying to reclaim this island. Yuri Lisyansky and his team provided them with very important assistance in this.

Later "Nadezhda" and "Neva" met off the coast of Japan and moved on. "Neva" went ahead along the east coast of China, and "Nadezhda" explored the islands in the Sea of Japan in more detail, and then set off to catch up with the second ship. Later, the ships met again at the port of Macau in southern China, for some time they sailed together along the shores of Asia and Africa, and then the "Nadezhda" fell behind again.

Triumphant return

The ships returned to Russia at different times: "Neva" - on July 22, 1806, and "Nadezhda" - on August 5. The members of the expedition collected a huge amount of information about the many islands, created maps and atlases of these lands, and even discovered a new island, called Lisyansky Island. The previously unexplored Aniva Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk was described in detail and the exact coordinates of Ascension Island were established, about which it was only known that it was "somewhere between Africa and South America."

All participants in this round the world, from captains to ordinary sailors, were generously rewarded, and most of them continued to make a naval career. Among them was midshipman Faddey Bellingshausen, who traveled on the "Nadezhda", who 13 years later led the first Russian Antarctic expedition.

And in continuation of the theme, a story about 10 great Russian travelers whose names are immortalized on a geographical map.