Bellingshausen's first accounts of his Antarctic voyage of 1819–1821

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Bulkeley, Rip
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2011
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; South Shetland Islands; Antarc*; Antarctica; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247411000544; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247411000544

ABSTRACT In 1949 a reassessment of the Imperial Russian Navy's Antarctic expedition of 1819–1821 was promulgated in the Soviet Union. The contention was that Russian seamen had made the first discovery of the mainland of Antarctica, two or three days before the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula was sighted by a British expedition, under William Smith and Edward Bransfield, sent to take formal possession of the South Shetland Islands. The new Soviet line apparently required that an important passage in a report which Captain Bellingshausen had sent from Australia in 1820 should, as far as possible, be overlooked or downplayed. Nineteenth century editions of the report and its covering letter are translated, the contemporary ice vocabulary in which they were phrased is explained, and the practice of discounting parts of them in the past and continuing to ignore those passages today is discussed.