Geographical discoveries of the 21st century: the “Alps” in Antarctica, the “Gulf Stream” in the Barents Sea! Expeditions of the 20th century.

Chapter 1 NATIONAL RESEARCH EXPEDITIONS IN THE FIRST YEARS OF THE XX CENTURY (1901-1905)

The VI International Geographical Congress, held in London in 1895, was attended by many famous polar explorers. Among them were members of the James Ross expedition in 1840-1841 - the outstanding botanist Joseph Hooker and Admiral Ommeney; John Murray, a member of the oceanographic expedition on the Challenger; the head of the famous American expedition to Grant's Land in the Arctic, Adolph Greeley; the leader of the Austro-Hungarian polar expedition on the Tegetthof ship, which discovered the Franz Josef Land archipelago, Julius Payer.

Discussing many geographical problems, the congress noted that the study of the Antarctic regions is the most important geographical task, and recommended that scientific societies around the world do everything possible to begin this work.

German geophysicist Georg Neumeier spoke at the congress with an appeal to unite the efforts of scientists from different countries in the study of the Antarctic. At his call, general plans for future research were determined.

Following the recommendations of the Congress, England, Germany, Sweden and France organized new expeditions to Antarctica in the first years of the 20th century. These expeditions became primarily national and, along with a wide range of scientific research, aimed to provide their governments with as many rights as possible for future territorial claims to Antarctic lands.

First expedition of R. Scott

England again chose the Ross Sea region as a field of activity for its research. The initiator of the expedition was the President of the London Geographical Society, Clemente Markham. He obtained large funds from the government and private individuals for the expedition and took care of its first-class equipment. On Markham's recommendation, naval sailor Robert Falcon Scott was appointed head of the expedition. His assistants were also military sailors, and among them Ernst Shackleton.

The expedition ship was built specifically for navigation in ice and was well equipped for scientific work. It was called "Discovery". The expedition included

there were famous scientists and experienced expedition workers - the doctor and botanist Köttlitz, a researcher of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic; biologist Hodgson, geologist Ferrar and physicist Bernacci - member of the Borchgrevink expedition.

The first stage of the expedition repeated the voyages of Ross and Borchgrevink. Having overcome the belt of floating ice on the approaches to the Ross Sea, Discovery approached Cape Adare on January 9, 1902 and proceeded further south, along Victoria Land to the Erebus and Terror volcanoes, and then along the Great Ross Ice Barrier to the east. This voyage confirmed Borchgrevink's opinion that in the 60 years since Ross's expedition, the barrier had retreated 20-30 miles to the south.

Having traveled to approximately 150° west longitude, that is, even further east than Borchgrevink’s “Southern Cross,” the expedition members on January 30, 1902 saw the dark peaks of the mountains of an unknown country. The Great Barrier ended here. Scott named the discovered land King Edward VII's Land.

It was subsequently established that this is one of the peninsulas of Antarctica.

James Ross came close to it in 1842, saw signs of land, but was not sure that it was land.

Further east, the path was blocked by impassable floating ice.

The expedition turned back. In the bay where Borchgrevink landed, Discovery moored to the low part of the barrier. The expedition dragged a tethered balloon onto the barrier. First Scott rose on this ball, and then Shackleton. The steel cable that held the ball was heavy, and the ball only rose 200 meters. From this height they saw only a continuous wavy snow surface going to the south.

The Antarctic winter was approaching, so only small excursions were made in the vicinity of the wintering area. On April 23, the sun disappeared below the horizon. The polar night began for four months. The winter went well. Each member of the expedition did his own thing: the physicist spent hours in the magnetic pavilion; a biologist caught marine life through holes in the ice; many were engaged in meteorological observations. In addition to the meteorological station on board the ship, another special one was built on the top of Crater Hill, at an altitude of 320 meters above sea level.

The emergency hut built on the shore remained uninhabited. Everyone lived in comfortable quarters on the ship.

Scott was planning a trip into the interior of the continent for the spring, secretly hoping to reach the South Pole. He chose Shackleton and Wilson as his companions. Shackleton prepared the dog harness and practiced riding dogs, since no one on the expedition had experience riding dogs.

On November 2, 1902, Scott, Wilson and Shackleton, accompanied by an auxiliary party, set out on a campaign to the south. On November 15, the auxiliary party turned back.

The surface of the barrier ice turned out to be uneven, covered with deep, loose snow. Therefore, three travelers with a heavy load moved south on average 7-8 kilometers per day. Often one or the other suffered from snow blindness. Blizzards often raged, forcing us to pitch a tent and sit in it. The travelers trudged along a high mountainous country with peaks up to 3,500 meters, but could not approach them due to a belt of wide cracks and a steep ice cliff at their feet. In clear weather it was clear that the mountain range turned to the east, and new peaks loomed far to the south. It became obvious that there was no chance of reaching these mountains, much less the Pole, at such rates of movement.

Therefore, having passed parallel to the Victoria Land mountain range to 82° 17x south latitude, 163° east longitude, they turned back on December 31, 1902.

On the way back, the travelers showed signs of scurvy. The dogs died from exhaustion, the weakest were killed and fed to the rest.

Even before Scott and his companions returned from the southern campaign, in January 1903, the auxiliary ship Morning arrived at Ross Island with coal and fresh food. The strait had not yet opened, and the Morning was forced to stop at the edge of the ice, 18 kilometers from the Discovery. Only on February 28 did the ice in the strait break and the schooner was able to approach the Discovery within five miles.
"Morning" took home 9 sailors who refused a second winter, and Ernst Shackleton, a future contender for conquering the South Pole.

Scott's second winter also went well. And in the spring, Scott and Skelton went on a hike again, only not to the south, but to the west. They explored 400 kilometers of the mountainous country of Victoria Land. In the mountains, they discovered layers of sandstone and sedimentary rocks, indicating that once, in a distant geological era, there was a sea here. The geological collections collected by the party were of great scientific interest.

The second party, led by Bernacci and Royds, traveled 260 kilometers southeast of the base and proved that the Ross Ice Barrier was the edge of a giant flat glacier extending far to the south. Since it was afloat above a shallow sea, and the shallow part of the sea bordering the land is usually called “shelf” by geologists, such glaciers subsequently began to be called shelf glaciers. This glacier was named the Ross Ice Shelf.

In February 1904, two steamships arrived from England to Ross Island - the Morning and the Terra Nova. With the help of explosions, Discovery was freed from two years of ice captivity, and the expedition returned safely to England. The scientific results of the expedition were very significant.

The expedition finally established that the South Geographic Pole is located on a high-mountain continent. Scott tried to go to him during his first winter, but was convinced that more thorough preparation was needed to overcome the difficulties of a more than 1,300-kilometer journey.

Without Russian discoverers, the world map would be completely different. Our compatriots - travelers and sailors - made discoveries that enriched world science. About the eight most noticeable ones - in our material.

Bellingshausen's first Antarctic expedition

In 1819, the navigator, captain of the 2nd rank, Thaddeus Bellingshausen led the first round-the-world Antarctic expedition. The purpose of the voyage was to explore the waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, as well as to prove or disprove the existence of the sixth continent - Antarctica. Having equipped two sloops - "Mirny" and "Vostok" (under the command), Bellingshausen's detachment went to sea.

The expedition lasted 751 days and wrote many bright pages in the history of geographical discoveries. The main one was made on January 28, 1820.

By the way, attempts to open the white continent had been made before, but did not bring the desired success: a little luck was missing, and perhaps Russian perseverance.

Thus, the navigator James Cook, summing up the results of his second voyage around the world, wrote: “I went around the ocean of the southern hemisphere in high latitudes and rejected the possibility of the existence of a continent, which, if it could be discovered, would only be near the pole in places inaccessible to navigation.”

During Bellingshausen's Antarctic expedition, more than 20 islands were discovered and mapped, sketches of Antarctic species and the animals living there were made, and the navigator himself went down in history as a great discoverer.

“The name of Bellingshausen can be directly placed alongside the names of Columbus and Magellan, with the names of those people who did not retreat in the face of difficulties and imaginary impossibilities created by their predecessors, with the names of people who followed their own independent path, and therefore were destroyers of barriers to discovery, which designate epochs,” wrote the German geographer August Petermann.

Discoveries of Semenov Tien-Shansky

Central Asia at the beginning of the 19th century was one of the least studied areas of the globe. An undeniable contribution to the study of the “unknown land” - as geographers called Central Asia - was made by Pyotr Semenov.

In 1856, the researcher’s main dream came true - he went on an expedition to the Tien Shan.

“My work on Asian geography led me to a thorough acquaintance with everything that was known about inner Asia. I was especially attracted to the most central of the Asian mountain ranges - the Tien Shan, which had not yet been touched by a European traveler and was known only from scanty Chinese sources.

Semenov's research in Central Asia lasted two years. During this time, the sources of the Chu, Syr Darya and Sary-Jaz rivers, the peaks of Khan Tengri and others were mapped.

The traveler established the location of the Tien Shan ridges, the height of the snow line in this area and discovered the huge Tien Shan glaciers.

In 1906, by decree of the emperor, for the merits of the discoverer, the prefix began to be added to his surname - Tien Shan.

Asia Przhevalsky

In the 70−80s. XIX century Nikolai Przhevalsky led four expeditions to Central Asia. This little-studied area has always attracted the researcher, and traveling to Central Asia has been his long-time dream.

Over the years of research, mountain systems have been studied Kun-Lun , ridges of Northern Tibet, sources of the Yellow River and Yangtze, basins Kuku-nora and Lob-nora.

Przhevalsky was the second person after Marco Polo to reach lakes-swamps Lob-nora!

In addition, the traveler discovered dozens of species of plants and animals that are named after him.

“Happy fate made it possible to make a feasible exploration of the least known and most inaccessible countries of inner Asia,” Nikolai Przhevalsky wrote in his diary.

Kruzenshtern's circumnavigation

The names of Ivan Kruzenshtern and Yuri Lisyansky became known after the first Russian round-the-world expedition.

For three years, from 1803 to 1806. - that’s how long the first circumnavigation of the world lasted - the ships “Nadezhda” and “Neva”, having passed through the Atlantic Ocean, rounded Cape Horn, and then through the waters of the Pacific Ocean reached Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. The expedition clarified the map of the Pacific Ocean and collected information about the nature and inhabitants of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands.

During the voyage, Russian sailors crossed the equator for the first time. This event was celebrated, according to tradition, with the participation of Neptune.

The sailor, dressed as the lord of the seas, asked Krusenstern why he came here with his ships, because the Russian flag had not been seen in these places before. To which the expedition commander replied: “For the glory of science and our fatherland!”

Nevelsky Expedition

Admiral Gennady Nevelskoy is rightfully considered one of the outstanding navigators of the 19th century. In 1849, on the transport ship “Baikal”, he went on an expedition to the Far East.

The Amur expedition lasted until 1855, during which time Nevelskoy made several major discoveries in the area of ​​the lower reaches of the Amur and the northern shores of the Sea of ​​Japan, and annexed the vast expanses of the Amur and Primorye regions to Russia.

Thanks to the navigator, it became known that Sakhalin is an island that is separated by the navigable Tatar Strait, and the mouth of the Amur is accessible for ships to enter from the sea.

In 1850, Nevelsky’s detachment founded the Nikolaev post, which today is known as Nikolaevsk-on-Amur.

“The discoveries made by Nevelsky are invaluable for Russia,” wrote Count Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky “Many previous expeditions to these regions could have achieved European glory, but none of them achieved domestic benefit, at least to the extent that Nevelskoy accomplished this.”

North of Vilkitsky

The purpose of the hydrographic expedition of the Arctic Ocean in 1910-1915. was the development of the Northern Sea Route. By chance, captain 2nd rank Boris Vilkitsky took over the duties of the voyage leader. Icebreaking steamships "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" went to sea.

Vilkitsky moved through the northern waters from east to west, and during his voyage he was able to compile a true description of the northern coast of Eastern Siberia and many islands, received the most important information about currents and climate, and also became the first to make a through voyage from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk.

The expedition members discovered the Land of Emperor Nicholas I., known today as Novaya Zemlya - this discovery is considered the last significant one on the globe.

In addition, thanks to Vilkitsky, the islands of Maly Taimyr, Starokadomsky and Zhokhov were put on the map.

At the end of the expedition, the First World War began. The traveler Roald Amundsen, having learned about the success of Vilkitsky’s voyage, could not resist exclaiming to him:

“In peacetime, this expedition would excite the whole world!”

Kamchatka campaign of Bering and Chirikov

The second quarter of the 18th century was rich in geographical discoveries. All of them were made during the First and Second Kamchatka expeditions, which immortalized the names of Vitus Bering and Alexei Chirikov.

During the First Kamchatka Campaign, Bering, the leader of the expedition, and his assistant Chirikov explored and mapped the Pacific coast of Kamchatka and Northeast Asia. Two peninsulas were discovered - Kamchatsky and Ozerny, Kamchatka Bay, Karaginsky Bay, Cross Bay, Providence Bay and St. Lawrence Island, as well as the strait, which today bears the name of Vitus Bering.

Companions - Bering and Chirikov - also led the Second Kamchatka Expedition. The goal of the campaign was to find a route to North America and explore the Pacific Islands.

In Avachinskaya Bay, the expedition members founded the Petropavlovsk fort - in honor of the ships "St. Peter" and "St. Paul" - which was later renamed Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

When the ships set sail to the shores of America, by the will of an evil fate, Bering and Chirikov began to act alone - due to fog, their ships lost each other.

"St. Peter" under the command of Bering reached the west coast of America.

And on the way back, the expedition members, who had to endure many difficulties, were thrown onto a small island by a storm. This is where Vitus Bering’s life ended, and the island where the expedition members stopped for the winter was named after Bering.
Chirikov’s “Saint Paul” also reached the shores of America, but for him the voyage ended more happily - on the way back he discovered a number of islands of the Aleutian ridge and safely returned to the Peter and Paul prison.

“Unclear Earthlings” by Ivan Moskvitin

Little is known about the life of Ivan Moskvitin, but this man nevertheless went down in history, and the reason for this was the new lands he discovered.

In 1639, Moskvitin, leading a detachment of Cossacks, set sail to the Far East. The main goal of the travelers was to “find new unknown lands” and collect furs and fish. The Cossacks crossed the Aldan, Mayu and Yudoma rivers, discovered the Dzhugdzhur ridge, separating the rivers of the Lena basin from the rivers flowing into the sea, and along the Ulya River they reached the “Lamskoye”, or Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Having explored the coast, the Cossacks discovered the Taui Bay and entered the Sakhalin Bay, rounding the Shantar Islands.

One of the Cossacks reported that the rivers in the open lands “are sable, there are a lot of all kinds of animals, and fish, and the fish are big, there are no such fish in Siberia... There are so many of them - you just need to launch a net and you can’t drag them out with fish...”.

Geographic data collected by Ivan Moskvitin formed the basis of the first map of the Far East.

FOLLOWING RUSANOV'S EXPEDITION

(Material by F. Perfilov)

In 1912, the then-famous polar explorer Vladimir Rusanov decided to make a daring attempt to sail a small boat along the Northern Sea Route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Rusanov's expedition disappeared, and only in 1934 its first traces were discovered off the western coast of Taimyr. In the 1970s, it was possible to find another site for the Rusanovites, but the circumstances of the tragic death of the expedition still remain a mystery.

In the summer of 1912, three Russian expeditions set out to explore the expanses of the Arctic: G.L. Brusilova, V.A. Rusanova and G.Ya. Sedova. None of the polar explorers knew then that the winter of 1912/13 would be very harsh and only Sedov’s group and two members of Brusilov’s team would be able to return...

Vladimir Rusanov was born in 1875 in the city of Orel, in the family of a merchant of the Second Guild. From 1908 to 1911, he took part in expeditions to Novaya Zemlya, walked hundreds of kilometers through uncharted lands, discovering new bays, bays, glaciers, lakes and islands, which still bear the names given to them.

In February 1912, Vladimir Rusanov was entrusted with leading an expedition to the islands of the Spitsbergen archipelago. In Norway, a motor-sailing vessel “Hercules” was purchased for her. This ship had already been tested in the ice, sailed well, and had good maneuverability.

Rusanov invited captain Alexander Kuchin, whom he met in Arkhangelsk, to take part in the voyage. He agreed. Kuchin was a hereditary Pomor, participated in Amundsen's Antarctic expedition to the South Pole and, despite his youth, was considered an experienced sailor. As a doctor on the expedition, Rusanov took his fiancée, Frenchwoman Juliette Jean, whom he had known for 5 years.

On July 3, travelers saw the shores of Spitsbergen. The research work was successful. Coal deposits were discovered, a mineral map was compiled, and rich scientific material was collected. At the beginning of August, Rusanov sent three members of the expedition - Samoilovich, Svatosh and Popov - on one of the ships they met. With them, he handed over to the Russian Geographical Society a report on the work done, zoological and geological collections.

As Samoilovich recalled, he poorly understood Rusanov’s further intentions. It seemed to him that he was going to go to New Earth, and then act according to circumstances. From the letter of sailor Vasily Cheremkhin and the memoirs of Father Kuchin, it becomes obvious that Rusanov, even before the start of the expedition, after surveying Spitsbergen, intended to go east to the Kara Sea. That is why the maximum amount of food and fuel was loaded onto the ship.

On August 18, “Hercules” reached Matochkin Shar, where Rusanov left his last message: “I’m going to the northwestern tip of Novaya Zemlya, from there to the east. If the ship dies, I will head to the islands closest along the route: Solitude, Novosibirsk, Wrangel. Supplies for a year. Everyone is healthy. Rusanov."

The year 1913 arrived. There was no news from all three expeditions that left for the Arctic - Rusanov, Brusilov and Sedov. The public and the Russian Geographical Society began to sound the alarm. But only in 1914 was it decided to organize rescue expeditions, and three ships and an airplane went in search of Sedov, and only the bark “Eclipse” under the command of the Norwegian polar explorer Otto Sverdrup went to search for Brusilov and Rusanov. However, the Eclipse fell into an ice trap and spent the winter without reaching Solitude Island. The searches of Sedov's expedition also ended without results. But unexpectedly “St. Foka" returned to his homeland, however, without his leader. On board were navigator Albanov and sailor Konrad from Brusilov's yacht, picked up along the way. On March 6, 1915, a decision was made to provide assistance to Brusilov’s expedition (“St. Anna” was never found), and on May 7, the search for the Rusanovites, on the contrary, was stopped. It was only thanks to public protests that Sverdrup was ordered to continue the search in the summer of 1915. This time, the Eclipse reached Solitude Island, but no traces of Rusanov were found there...

Only on September 9, 1934, off the western coast of Taimyr, on one of the islands in the Minin skerries, topographer M.I. Tsyganyuk discovered traces of Rusanov’s men: scraps of clothing and a backpack, cartridges of various calibers, a Kodak camera, Popov’s personalized watch and documents of sailors Popov and Chukhchin from Rusanov’s expedition.

After this discovery, another topographer - A.I. Gusev reported that a month earlier, on one of the islands in the Mona archipelago, he saw a pillar lined with stones with the inscription “Hercules, 1913” carved on it. Unfortunately, no attempts were made to find out the fate of the Rusanovites then. Only new names of previously unnamed islands appeared on the map: one is Hercules, the other is Popova-Chukhchina Island.

In 1935, new finds were made on the island of Popova-Chukhchina: nail scissors, a comb, a penknife, iron spoons, cartridges, copper coins, a compass, a fragment of the manuscript “V.A. Rusanov. On the issue of the northern route through the Siberian Sea." Many items were found in duplicate, for example, two mugs, two spoons... Together with the documents of two sailors, this suggested that two members of the Hercules crew died here, perhaps sent by Rusanov to the mainland with a report about wintering or with a request about help. However, when the cartridges were examined, it turned out that they were 10 different types, which suggested the presence of at least six types of weapons. It became clear that not only two sailors had visited the island, but perhaps the entire Hercules crew.

In the 1970s, Komsomolskaya Pravda expeditions led by Dmitry Shparo and Alexander Shumilov explored the coast of the Arctic Ocean from Dikson to Middendorf Bay for 8 years. On the island of Hercules they managed to find a hook and fragments of a sledge. On the island of Popova-Chukhchina there are cartridges, buttons, a strip of leather with the inscription “Insurance Company “Russia”” (Hercules was insured with it) and a small anchor emblem, possibly from Kuchin’s shoulder strap.

A lot of interesting things were discovered in the archives. It is known that in 1918, Roald Amundsen tried to cross the Arctic Ocean on a drifting ship. In 1919, he sent two sailors to Dixon to deliver the materials collected over the year. Both died. One of them did not reach Dikson only 3 km; his remains were found in 1922. For a long time it was believed that the second sailor died at Cape Primetny, 400 km to the east. There, a rescue expedition sent in 1921 to search for missing Norwegians discovered the remains of a large fire, charred bones, foreign cartridges, coins and many other items. However, in 1973, polar explorer N.Ya. Bolotnikov suggested that a Rusanov camp was located near Cape Primetny. Now his hypothesis is considered proven: a French coin, a button made in Paris, and a frame of glasses were found at this place (the Norwegians did not wear them, but the Hercules mechanic Semenov had similar glasses).

Analyzing the finds and available information about Rusanov’s expedition, Shparo and Shumilov suggested that the “Hercules” sailed into the Kara Sea in 1912 and stopped for the winter at the end of September. In the spring of 1913, during a short sleigh ride, the Rusanovites visited the island of Hercules, where they installed a pillar with an inscription. There was summer ahead and the expected release of the ship from the ice trap, so they did not leave any report in the pyramid at the base of the pillar. However, in the summer the ship failed to free itself, and for the second winter there was no longer enough food and fuel. Probably in August the Rusanovites left the ship and headed to Cape Sterlegov. It was here that sleds were discovered in 1921, clearly made on some kind of ship, as evidenced by fastenings made of copper ship pipes. Part of the team apparently moved on water, and part on land. This is evidenced by the fire in the parking lot near the Mikhailov Peninsula. It was lit in a high place, for which it was necessary to drag driftwood from the spit, although it was much easier to stop there for a rest. Probably, the fire played the role of a beacon - a signal for those who moved on the water. At that moment, the situation of the Rusanovites, apparently, was not yet tragic: not the most important things from the equipment were left here.

Something irreparable happened on the island of Popova-Chukhchina - it is difficult to imagine that people could throw away their own documents without good reason. What happened to the Hercules crew? In 1988, in the magazine “Around the World,” V. Troitsky reported on two interesting letters, possibly related to the tragedy of the Rusanovites. One of them spoke of two mysterious graves in the area of ​​the Avam River on Pyasina, which were seen by nurse Korchagina in 1952. She managed to find out that even under the king, nomadic reindeer herders found a boat on the coast, next to which there were dead people. The reindeer herders buried the corpses under stones, and then found two or three more people from this group who managed to reach the Tagenar portage, where they froze to death. The dead were buried along with documents and manuscripts.

In another letter - L.N. Abramova - it was reported that in 1975 an old Dolganka showed her in the village. Novorybnoye, on the shore of Khatanga, there are two sagging graves, where, according to her, Russians were buried - a pregnant woman and her husband, whom the Dolgan’s parents brought back alive from somewhere in the tundra a long time ago. They died, and handwritten books, which the dead treasured very much, were placed in their graves with them.

V. Troitsky reported that an expedition was being prepared to check these letters. Alas, this expedition did not take place. Everything would have been much simpler if, when traces of Rusanov’s expedition were discovered in 1934, large-scale searches had been immediately carried out. Perhaps then it would be enough to interview local hunters and reindeer herders to find out about the fate of the missing polar explorers.