While analyzing Krusenstern's letters, I quite unexpectedly came across a message that N. P. Rumyantsev was going to equip an expedition to Novaya Zemlya in 1819 or 1820, in which Dr. I. I. Eshsholts, a naturalist who sailed on the Rurik, was to take part . The implementation of this plan was postponed only because the Naval Ministry had already sent an expedition to those parts under the command of Andrei Lazarev, the brother of the famous naval commander. The swim was unsuccessful. But still, Kruzenshtern wanted to get acquainted with the map and journal of this expedition. He conveyed his request to Lazarev through the future Decembrist Mikhail Karlovich Kuchelbeker, brother of Wilhelm Kuchelbeker, Pushkin's comrade at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Lazarev himself wanted to show the modest results of his voyage to the famous Russian navigator, who "has already aroused the rivalry of all European powers, and the proudest Britons must agree in it."

Lazarev, in his letter, is trying to convince Kruzenshtern of the senselessness of exploring a distant island.

"Detailed knowledge of the New Earth cannot bring the slightest benefit," he writes. Firstly, because of the cessation of fisheries off the coast of this island due to small benefits. Secondly, Novaya Zemlya is “almost impregnable from ice” and cannot give shelter to sailors. Thirdly, the riches stored in its bowels will require great sacrifices and costs and are unlikely to enrich those who undertake their development "in such ferocious and unfavorable climates."

It was difficult for Kruzenshtern to be embarrassed by such arguments. If we agree with Lazarev, then why explore the Northwest Passage, why look for land north of the Kolyma? Why look for the southern mainland? .. The climate there is no less severe. But the study of these lands and waters can strengthen the political power of Russia. He understood this very well, and by advice and deed he supported the idea of ​​sending a new sea expedition to explore Novaya Zemlya, the shores of which were mapped very approximately.

Despite Andrei Lazarev's skepticism and Gavrila Sarychev's uncertainty about the success of the new voyage, it was decided to send the Novaya Zemlya brig to the polar voyage. Its commander was 25-year-old Fyodor Petrovich Litke, who had recently completed a round-the-world voyage on the sloop Kamchatka.

The appointment of Litke as head of the Novaya Zemlya Expedition turned out to be the beginning of that rapid ascent, which ended several decades later with his election as president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to one of Litke's close friends, from adolescence, all his thoughts and feelings were captured by the dream "to devote himself to pure science", and he did not part with this dream until the end of his life.

Fyodor Petrovich grew up as an orphan. His birth cost his mother's life. The son and mother were together for a little over two hours, and then Fedor was left alone. His father, stepmother, relatives did not care about the baby. They sent him to a private boarding school, from which they only let him go home on Sundays. But even at home he found the same indifferent walls and no less indifferent father.

F. P. Litke.

Published for the first time.

“I don’t remember,” Litke recalled in his Autobiography, “that someone caressed me, even patted me on the cheek, but spanking of a different kind I happened to experience, mostly at the slander of my stepmother.

Soon Litke also lost his father. Neither he nor his sisters and brothers received a pension. Lonely children were dismantled by relatives. After four years of wandering in foreign corners, fate brought Fyodor Litke to the family of Ivan Savich Sulmenev. Sulmenev with a team of sailors made a land crossing from Trieste to St. Petersburg. Passing through Radzivilov, he turned out to be a guest at Uncle Litke's house, saw his sister Natalya Fedorovna, fell in love, got married and took her to Kronstadt. The family of the newlyweds and sheltered Litke. Sulmenev was a sailor of the old school, with a very mediocre education, but he had a very sympathetic soul and "almost female sensitivity."

“In all my life,” Litke wrote, “I have never met a kinder person, more ready to serve and be useful to everyone with complete selflessness. From the very first minute of our acquaintance, he fell in love with me as a son and I him as a father.

They carried this feeling for each other throughout their lives.

Litka was fifteen years old when Napoleon's invasion of Russia began. In the formidable year of 1812, Fyodor Litke begged him to volunteer for the fleet, and a year later he fought the French near Danzig. The courage and courage of a 16-year-old boy did not go unnoticed. He was awarded the Order of Anna of the fourth degree.

The battles of the Patriotic War died down. Napoleon was overthrown. Peace reigned over Europe. But Fyodor Litke did not want to part with the fleet. Soon fate brought him aboard the sloop Kamchatka, commanded by the famous navigator Vasily Mikhailovich Golovnin.

On August 26, 1817, on the very day when everyone was celebrating the fifth anniversary of the “Battle of Borodino, forever memorable for Russia,” the Kamchatka dressed in sails and, after saluting Kronstadt, went towards dangers and trials. A month later she was in the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. A tailwind was blowing it swiftly to the southwest.

Fyodor Litke has experienced storms and storms on three oceans and all latitudes from Cape Horn to the Bering Sea. He was at the helm, steered the sails, passed between the stone reefs, sailed in the fog. He was whipped by tropical downpours and cold rains, he was languishing from the heat and shivering from the icy wind. This life, full of dangers and hardships, fascinated him. He returned to Kronstadt as a real sailor. “... But a sailor of the Golovnin school, who in this, as in everything, was original,” Litke wrote. - His system was to think only about the essence of the matter, not paying any attention to appearance. I remember his answer to Muravyov, who was arming the Kamchatka and probably asked something about the spars. “Remember that we will not be judged by blocks and other trifles, but by what we do good or bad on the other side of the world.”

Contemporaries unanimously admit that Golovnin had a profound influence on Litke. This navigator, straightforward in his judgments and bold in his actions, "was distinguished by a bright mind and a broad, one might say, statesmanlike view." He so mercilessly criticized the policy of the autocracy in relation to the navy that Dmitry Zavalishin considered him a Decembrist. And although he was not a member of a secret society, he certainly knew about its existence and sympathized with the ideas that its members professed. Golovnin possessed deep knowledge not only in maritime affairs, but also in many areas of science, not to mention an outstanding literary talent. Among the navigators of the first half of the 19th century, only Kruzenshtern can be compared with him in terms of the breadth of education, energy and love for the science of the sea. It is no coincidence that these two luminaries often speak together on issues of polar and marine research.

Litke tried to take an example from his teacher. Apart from the sea, nothing existed for him.

To get acquainted with the Arctic Ocean, Litke asked to join the Arkhangelsk naval crew and made the transition to Kronstadt on a frigate. And a year later he was to test his strength in independent swimming.

His strict and demanding teacher never forgot about his pets. Ferdinand Wrangel, who was one of Litke's closest friends and sailed on the Kamchatka, he sent as the head of the Kolyma expedition, Matvey Ivanovich Muravyov, the chief ruler of Russian America. Now it was Fyodor Petrovich's turn. On Golovnin's recommendation, he was appointed commander of the Novaya Zemlya brig.

V. M. Golovnin.

Without hesitation, Litke accepted this flattering offer. “But there was something to think about,” he recalled in his old age, believing that he lacked experience, knowledge, and the ability to lead people on a difficult polar expedition. Golovnin was well aware that he was dooming his pupil to a difficult test, and during all four voyages he helped him with advice, deed and intercession. Golovnin's letters have been preserved - vivid evidence of the sensitive concern of the famous navigator for the labors and fate of Fyodor Litke. He takes care of the appointment of capable officers on his ship, of providing the expedition with tools and supplies, reports naval news and comes to the rescue in difficult times.

Before Litke's departure from Petersburg, this stern man sends him a cordial letter in which he wishes him a good journey and good luck in his research. As soon as one of the midshipmen falls ill, Golovnin seeks the appointment of Nikolai Chizhov, a gifted officer, to the expedition. With Chizhov, he sends a letter to Litka, in which he reports on his efforts for the expedition, on the progress of the procurement of meat and other supplies. As a result of this care, during four voyages in the Arctic Ocean, the expedition did not lose a single person.

On July 14, 1821, the brig Novaya Zemlya leaves Arkhangelsk. Litke remembers by heart the mean lines of the order issued by the Minister of Marine:

“The purpose of the assignment made to you is not a detailed description of Novaya Zemlya, but only a review for the first time of the shores of it and knowledge of the size of this island by determining the geographical location of its main capes and the length of the strait, called Matochkin Shar, if ice and other things do not prevent it important annoyances."

The prescription does not really constrain his intentions. Apparently, the compiler of the instructions understood that in the Arctic Ocean the actions of the expedition leader would depend mainly on ice, storms and winds. But it is strictly forbidden to stay for the winter ...

Five days later, the brig reaches the entrance to the Arctic Ocean. Travelers have to pass several cans. Sailors know about their existence, but they are “shown differently on different maps”.

“On our brig,” wrote Litke, “there were two maps of the White Sea: one Mercator, printed, the writings of Lieutenant General Golenishchev-Kutuzov; the other is a flat handwritten, compiled in Arkhangelsk ... by the navigator Yadrovtsev on the basis of those maps that served as the basis for the first one. The printed map showed a two-sat jar, almost on the parallel of Orlov Nos, 19 miles from it, on the second one and a half yards long bank on the parallel of Konushin Nos, 20 miles from the coast.

Litke headed for the passage between these banks. A few hours later, the brig Novaya Zemlya was aground.

The tide had begun. The water quickly subsided, and the ship could easily capsize. They lowered the upper spars to make bases for the sides of the brig, but "the trees broke one after another into chips." “And finally, the ship tilted so much that I expected every minute that it would completely capsize,” Litke recalled this difficult hour. But the brig suddenly straightened up. Soon the jar dried up completely. It was possible, as in the dock, to repair the damage, but for now it was necessary to take care not to get them.

As soon as the tide reached full strength, the sailors leaned on deliveries, and soon the ship was "on free water."

Litke assumed that the expedition, having discovered the shoal, made a discovery. But a few months later, in Arkhangelsk, he received another “map of the White Sea, compiled in 1778 by Captain Grigorkov and Domazirov, on which two small banks are marked almost in the same place, drying up when the water is low.”

On the night of August 1, from the watch, they let me know that they were seeing the ship. Litke rushed to the bridge. No, the watchmen were deceived. It was ice, and behind them was a small island. A tiny patch of land called and beckoned sailors who were impatiently waiting for the shores of Novaya Zemlya to open. But the ice stood in their way as a continuous, insurmountable strip. We decided to descend to the south, hoping to find a passage closer to the mainland to the shores of Novaya Zemlya. Impatience seized the entire crew. Forty-three sailors peered intently at the eastern horizon. More and more often there was a cry: “Earth!” But it soon became clear that bizarre clouds were mistaken for the shore. Instead of solid ground, ice again rose in front of them on August 5. The ice was in the west, the ice was in the north, the ice was in the east, the ice hit the sides of the ship - it seemed that ice was everywhere. Then the brig was picked up by a strong current from the Kara Sea and carried to the place where the expedition was five days ago.

Day after day passed in fruitless attempts to reach the shores of Novaya Zemlya.

“So,” said Litke, “wherever we have hitherto turned, everywhere we have encountered obstacles insurmountable to our intentions, it was all the more regrettable for us that we had to miss, without the slightest benefit, several days of fine weather, which in these places must be so cherished. We were surrounded on all sides by ice giants flashing through the darkness, like ghosts. The dead silence was interrupted only by the lapping of waves on the ice, the distant roar of collapsing ice floes, and the occasional dull howl of walruses. All together it was something dull and terrible.

Calm and fog gave way to fresh winds. There was little hope for the success of the expedition, but the sailors did not lose their presence of mind. On August 11, for the first time, they saw the shores of Mezhdusharsky Island, but they could not get close.

A few more days were lost in fruitless attempts. We decided to make our way through the ice to the north. Only on August 22 did we manage to see the shores of Novaya Zemlya. In front of Litke and his companions rose a high stone mountain, in the cracks of which the snow that had not melted in summer sparkled; they called her the First Seen.

Off the coast of Novaya Zemlya.

For a whole week, sailors have been persistently looking for Matochkin Shar. But failure again haunts them. They inspect the unknown bays one by one, mistaking them for the entrance to the strait. The maps they have are more misleading than helpful. Litke knows that the positions of prominent capes, mountains, and Matochkin Shar itself are probably shown inaccurately on them due to the "imperfection of marine science" in former times, but he has no reason to change their positions yet.

Ice, driven by north winds, forces sailors to stop searching. The brig is heading for the southern tip of Novaya Zemlya. But here, too, ice and winds interfere with research work.

September 11, 1821 Litke returns to Arkhangelsk. He sends a report to the Minister of Marine de Traverse and at the same time writes bitterly to Golovnin that his expedition had little better success than the previous voyage of Andrei Lazarev.

“Although, after many efforts and dangers, we managed to approach the shore and survey it between the parallels 72 ° and 75 °, our main purpose - measuring the length of Matochkin Shar - remained unfulfilled, despite the fact that, following along the coast to the north, and then back to the south, we had to pass it 2 times.

Litke is afraid that this failure will be attributed to his negligence, and asks for intercession. Golovnin uses his position and influence to protect his student from a big misfortune. He does not answer for a long time, trying to find out de Traversay's reaction to Litke's report. Finally, after a few weeks, he informs Fyodor Petrovich that the Minister of Marine "was very unhappy that you did not see Matochkin Shar." Golovnin presented de Traverse with an explanation in which he stated that the reason for the failure of the search for Matochkin Shar should be sought in the inaccuracy and inconsistency of the existing maps. So, on the map of Fyodor Rozmyslov, it is shown at 73 ° 40 "N, and on the latest English printed maps it is placed at 75 ° 30", and if the British are to be believed, then, therefore, Litke could not get through to the main goal of his journey due to heavy ice.

Golovnin not only succeeded in reassuring the minister. He was able to show Litke's voyage in such a favorable light that the leader of the expedition was declared for his zeal and courage the gratitude that he really deserved. It was decided to continue searching for the entrance to Matochkin Shar and exploring the shores of Novaya Zemlya.

Meanwhile, Litke lived in Arkhangelsk for two and a half months, putting journals and maps in order. Putting on the map the points of Novaya Zemlya he described, he thought with anxiety about where Matochkin Shar was actually located. And at that time, fate brought him together with the navigator Pospelov, who in 1806 participated in an expedition to Novaya Zemlya, equipped by N.P. Rumyantsev. Pospelov kept handwritten maps and a sailing journal. They almost exactly matched the inventory of Litke, who made sure that, swimming near Mityushev, or Dry Cape, he was not far from Matochkin Shar. Then, comparing his maps with the maps of the coast-dwellers, he found on them the bays and bays he had explored and retained the old names for them.

In 1822, Litka again had to go to Novaya Zemlya. But since this island is freed from ice late, he was instructed to describe the Lapland coast from Svyatoy Nos to the Kola River. The travelers toured the islands of Nokuev, Bolshoi and Maly Oleniy, Kildin, Seven Islands and nearby areas of the Murmansk coast. The inventory was based on a network of astronomical points, but was not complete, since the expedition could not explore many bays and bays of the mother coast due to the short time.

August 4 Litke leaves the Kola Bay. Now he is heading for the shores of Novaya Zemlya. Four days later, in the gaps of fog, the very highest mountain that they first saw last year appears in front of the sailors. The expedition easily finds the Matochkin Shar Strait. Now that it has been found, Litke is in no hurry to start researching it. He heads on, in search of the northern tip of the island. The brig follows the unexplored shores. Dozens of new names appear on the map. He names one of the largest bays of Novaya Zemlya after Captain Sulmenev, in whom, after the death of his father, he found shelter and who taught him to love the sea.

Day after day, the brig sails along the picturesque rocky shores with blue glaciers. He is accompanied, like an honorary escort, by flocks of transparent icebergs. In each new cape, Litke is ready to see the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya. And when it seems to him that he is about to reach the goal, the eternal enemy of polar travelers again stands in his way - thick solid ice. A sailing ship cannot get through it. Meanwhile, from the mast, the “cape covered with snow” is already visible, behind which, as it seemed to the sailors, the sea stretched. Litke consoles himself with the hope that he has reached the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, that he will succeed in penetrating the Kara Sea and charting its eastern shores. But the ice is getting closer and closer to the ship.

“The emptiness that surrounds us here,” writes Litke in his diary, “surpasses any description. Not a single animal, not a single bird broke the cemetery silence. In all fairness, the words of the poet can be attributed to this place:

And it seems that life in that country

It hasn't happened for a century.

Extreme dampness and cold quite corresponded to such deadness of nature. The thermometer was below freezing, the wet mist seemed to penetrate to the bone. All this together made a particularly unpleasant impression on the body, as well as on the soul. Remaining for several days in a row in this position, we already began to imagine that we were forever separated from the entire inhabited world. Despite this, however, our people were all healthy and, with the carelessness characteristic of sailors, they sang and amused themselves as usual, as much as circumstances allowed.

Soon Litka had to give up the idea of ​​penetrating further north. Escaping from ice captivity, he goes south. After a short stay at the mouth of the Matochkin Shara, the expedition continues its exploration of the western shores of the Southern Island of Novaya Zemlya.

Litke takes revenge for last year's failure.

On September 6, 1822, he returned to Arkhangelsk with a map of almost the entire western coast of Novaya Zemlya.

Both Golovnin and his friend Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel rejoice at the success of the navigator, wandering on dogs over the ice of the icy sea north of the coast of Chukotka ... St. Petersburg magazines provide their pages for Litke's articles. Kruzenshtern asks to tell in more detail about the results of the voyage, about the position of the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya. Scientist Karl Baer, ​​head of the department at the University of Königsberg, intends to take part in a polar expedition and would like to know what a rich harvest awaits him, a biologist, in the polar seas, on the shores of Lapland and on Novaya Zemlya. First, they correspond with the mediation of Kruzenshtern, then they write to each other personally and write until the last day of Baer's life ...

In the summer of 1823, Litke sails again in the Arctic Ocean. As in the previous year, he is first taking inventory of the coast of Murman, this time to the west of the Kola Bay.

Litke described the Motovsky Gulf, Rybachy Peninsula, determined the location of the Norwegian fortress Vardeguz, thus linking to this point the completed inventory, in which there were many omissions due to unfavorable weather and lack of time. Three years later, Litke's friend, Lieutenant Mikhail Frantsevich Reinecke, had to deal with its clarification.

In July 1823, Litke appeared off the coast of Novaya Zemlya for the third time. He hurries north and soon becomes convinced that the cape, at which he was stopped by ice a year ago, is not the northern tip of the island. That is not Cape Desire, but Cape Nassau. But he again fails to penetrate to the north. Ice blocks the expedition's path again. Litka follows to Matochkin Shar. He is engaged in an inventory of its shores, depth measurements, observations of currents, and astronomically determines the western and eastern mouths of the strait. He wants to go to the Kara Sea, but solid ice closes the exit from Matochkin Shar.

Having finished work in the strait, Litke descends to the south, on the way refining the inventory of the western coast of the South Island of Novaya Zemlya. Soon it reaches Kusov Nos at the southern tip of the island. Further, as far as the eye can see, the ice-free Kara Sea stretches. It seems that travelers had the opportunity to explore the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya.

Litke is indecisive. He is aware that the cause of the icelessness was the steady westerly winds, and that with the first easterly wind the ice would again move towards the shores of Novaya Zemlya. Fedor Petrovich faces a choice - whether to go to the Kara Sea or return to Arkhangelsk. And then a catastrophe strikes, almost ending in the death of the expedition. Unexpectedly, the brig runs into pitfalls. First he hits the bow, then the stern. The blows follow one after the other. The rudder was knocked out, the stern was damaged. Fragments of a keel float on the surface of the sea. The ship is terribly cracking, and it seems that it is about to shatter into pieces. Litke orders to cut down the mast. The axes have already been raised, but at this time a huge wave lifts the brig and it is removed from the stones.

Although the expedition escaped destruction, its position was extremely dangerous. A strong wind blew and made a big wave. Night was approaching, and the ship, having lost its rudder, was unable to steer. Thanks to the dedication and ingenuity of the team, the steering wheel was hung. But he kept himself very unreliable, and Litke decided to abandon the continuation of work. The brig headed for Arkhangelsk.

At the end of August, the brig Novaya Zemlya entered the mouth of the Northern Dvina and anchored in Solombala. The ship was pulled ashore for inspection. It turned out that the damage was very serious: the iron fastenings in the stern were bent, the copper sheathing was broken, and almost nothing was left of the keel.

In St. Petersburg, they were very satisfied with the results of Litke's work and decided in 1824 to expand research in the north on a larger scale. Two new detachments were attached to the expedition: one of them, under the command of navigator Ivanov, was ordered to complete the description of the Pechora River, the other, under the command of Lieutenant Demidov, had the task of measuring depths in the White Sea.

Litka himself was asked to repeat the attempt to reach the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya and make an attempt to the north between these islands and Spitsbergen in order to search for unknown lands. This year the ice conditions turned out to be more difficult than in previous voyages. Litke was unable to rise north of Cape Nassau. Encountering here the edge of dense ice, he headed along it to the west, hoping to find a passage to the north. But soon the expedition was convinced that such a passage did not exist. The brig headed for Vaygach Island. An attempt by Litke to penetrate into the Kara Sea was not successful: the eastern mouth of the Kara Gate Strait turned out to be clogged with ice. Fulfilling the instructions, he went to the island of Kolguev and the Kaninsky coast and, having carried out research work there, returned to Arkhangelsk.

Litke was depressed by the failure of his fourth voyage. He wrote to Krusenstern:

“Verily, it rarely happens in any enterprise that everything is arranged to such an extent contrary to the beginners. From the very beginning, opposing, strong winds delayed us so much that we had to use a whole month to complete the work that could easily be completed in a week, I mean, the definition of various points of the White Sea prescribed by the department. Turning to the north after that, on a three-week painful, and partly dangerous voyage, we only learned that even now, like in the days of Captain Wood, there can exist ice continent across the entire sea between Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard. We had no more luck in the south. At first they found that the entire southern coast of Novaya Zemlya was surrounded by solid ice for a long distance, but when it was broken by a storm from the west and we reached Vaigach Island without hindrance, we began to hope that finally our efforts would be more successful, but we were mistaken, strong westerly winds could not to drive away ice from the very, so to speak, threshold of the Kara Sea, why it was possible to judge their number in the eastern and northern parts of it! Forced to finally leave the shores of Novaya Zemlya, I wanted at least to do something near Kolguev Island and Kaninskaya land, but, having cruised here until the end of August, I had to take the return trip to the city of Arkhangelsk with equally little success. ... We did everything in our power to bring success to our cause, but against physical obstacles, human efforts very often mean nothing.

On the same day, he sent a letter to Golovnin stating that his fourth voyage "had even less success" than the voyage in 1821.

The teacher reproached his student for being too strict with himself.

“According to my thoughts,” wrote Golovnin to Litke, “you are needlessly worried that the authorities might have reason to be dissatisfied with you for failure in such an enterprise, the success of which depends more on chance than on art and enterprise. At least that’s how I judge, it’s not always possible to cross the Neva, and you can’t swim on the ice.

As a result of four voyages, Litka managed to explore and reliably map a significant part of the western shores of Novaya Zemlya, which until that time were “signified in the most guesswork way.” According to the famous German traveler Adolf Ermann, “he so surpassed all his predecessors in scientific thoroughness and impartiality of his judgments that these works cannot be passed in silence either in the history of navigation or in the history of geography.”

Russian scientists compared the "Fourfold Journey" with Humboldt's "Pictures of Nature", seeing in this work Litke an invaluable contribution to science.

In addition to Litke, interesting remarks about Novaya Zemlya were made by one of his sailing companions, Nikolai Irinarkhovich Zavalishin, brother of the famous Decembrist Dmitry Zavalishin. He was gifted with the talent of a naturalist, which he first announced in the article "The latest news about Novaya Zemlya", published in the "Northern Archive" for 1824. He gave the first in Russian literature a deep and surprisingly vivid description of the nature of Novaya Zemlya, its climate, and expressed the bold idea that to the northeast and east of this island there should be lands still unknown to man.

“Overview of the Kara Sea,” Zavalishin wrote, “in all its vastness would be no less entertaining ...

Navigation map of Litke, Pakhtusov and Baer.

I even dare to think whether there is a long chain of islands to the northeast from Cape Zhelaniya, which constitute the continuation of the chain of the Novaya Zemlya Mountains, and whether it extends to Kotelny Island ... ".

This bold guess about chains of islands in the Kara Sea was confirmed by brilliant discoveries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

After the end of the expedition, Litke asked N. Zavalishin to write notes about Novaya Zemlya. The researcher fulfilled this order. In 1830, he presented the manuscript of his book to the authorities of the naval headquarters. Prince Menshikov, who expelled science from the navy, ordered that the manuscript be sent to the Scientific Committee, where it disappeared without a trace. Of course, the fact that Zavalishin was the brother of a state criminal sentenced to hard labor played a significant role in this.

Nikolai Chizhov, who participated in the voyage of 1821, devoted two articles to the nature and history of the exploration of Novaya Zemlya. He wrote in them about the need to revive the Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard industries, which had almost ceased recently. Unlike Andrei Lazarev, he believed that Novaya Zemlya and the waters surrounding it hold wealth that could lead to a revival of the economic life of the European North. Indeed, after the voyages of Litke, the Pomors again rush to Novaya Zemlya. It is known that in the thirties more than 130 ships sailed to this island annually.

Litke spent all of 1825 and part of 1826 in St. Petersburg. He and his friend Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel often visited the Bestuzhevs' house, where heated literary, political and scientific disputes took place.

Title page of F. P. Litke's book "Four-fold Journey to the Arctic Ocean" with the author's dedication.

And in 1826, his dream of a new round-the-world voyage came true. He was appointed (again at the insistence of Golovnin) commander of the Senyavin sloop. He was supposed to deliver the cargo to Unalaska, and then take up the inventory of the northeastern coast of Russia. In particular, he had to explore all the bays of the "Land of the Chukchi and Koryaks", the Anadyr Sea and the Olyutorsky Bay, which had not been explored since the voyage of Bering.

F. P. Wrangel.

Published for the first time From the collection of the Central Naval Museum.

He begged to give Nikolai Zavalishin as a companion. He sought to appoint his brother Alexander, but he was refused "under the pretext that he was involved with the crew in the story of December 14."

On June 11, 1827, the sloop Senyavin arrived in the inner harbor of Novo-Arkhangelsk. After handing over the cargo and repairing the damage, the travelers headed for Kamchatka, making an inventory of the Aleutian Islands along the way. In the winter of 1827/28, the expedition sailed in the tropical zone of the Pacific Ocean, studying the Caroline Archipelago.

Litka was to devote the summer of 1828 to exploring the shores of Kamchatka and Chukotka. First of all, he examined the island of Karaginsky. Near it, according to local residents, there was a harbor, to the shore of which whales allegedly approached. If it turned out to be suitable for laying the ship, then Litke could stay here until late autumn and explore the coast of Kamchatka.

“Clouds of mosquitoes made this work unusually difficult,” he wrote about the inventory of the island. - During astronomical observations, two people had to constantly whip branches on the face and hands, and magnetic observations could not be made otherwise than by lighting a fire from brushwood and peat in the tent, the acrid smoke of which drove out not only mosquitoes, but often the observer himself: I recalled suffering of Humboldt on the banks of the Orinoco".

The dimensions of Karaginsky Island turned out to be much larger than could be concluded from previous maps. The harbor that Litke was interested in was found, but it turned out to be shallow and could not serve as a shelter for his sloop.

Having explored the small island of Verkhoturovsky, where a kind of reserve for silver foxes was set up by local residents, the expedition headed for the Bering Strait. On July 14, the sailors reached Cape Vostochny (Dezhnev) and astronomically determined its coordinates. Litke was concerned that the mainmast had been damaged in a recent storm. Therefore, he decided to go to St. Lawrence Bay, where he also hoped to compare chronometers (according to the previous inventories of Kotzebue and Shishmarev) and perform magnetic observations. The Chukchi greeted the travelers very hospitably. He patted one of the inhabitants of Litke on the cheek as a sign of friendship and "in response received such a slap in the face, from which he almost fell off his feet."

“Recovering from surprise,” Fedor Petrovich recalled, “I see a Chukchi in front of me with a smiling face, expressing the self-satisfaction of a man who successfully showed his dexterity and friendliness, he also wanted to pat me, but with his hand, accustomed to pat some deer.”

The expedition made its next stop in the Mechigmen Bay, where they discovered the island of Arakamchechen. Travelers not only described it, but also visited the high mountain Aphos, from the top of which a view of the Bering Strait with islands and the majestic Vostochny Cape opened. Wrapped in a faint mist, it seemed like a mysterious medieval castle, jealously guarding the entrance to the Arctic Ocean.

The Senyavin Strait, Ittygran Island, Ratmanov and Glazenap Bays, Pekengey, Postels and Elpingin Mountains, Ledyanaya and Aboleshev Bays, Mertens and Chaplin Capes were put on the map.

Fishing in Kamchatka.

Meeting with the Chukchi.

The inventory is kept by Litke's companions, and he himself, together with the scientists Martens and Postels, travels around the environs of the Mechigmenskaya Bay, all the time communicating with the Chukchi, studying their life, customs and rituals. Meetings are warm and relaxed. The atmosphere of friendship and trust surrounds the sailors during the entire voyage off the coast of Chukotka. Litke does not find any traces of "ferocity" and "ruthlessness", about which travelers of the 18th century wrote a lot. Like his recent predecessors Kotzebue and Shishmarev, he sees the Chukchi as equal people, respects their human dignity and rejoices when he sees medals on the chest of many Chukchi, which were given to them by the sailors of the "Good-meaning", who came to these places to buy reindeer. The Chukchi, according to Litke, wear these medals so often that "the images on many of them have almost completely smoothed out." They told him: "We have nothing to fear from you, we have one sun, and you have nothing to harm us."

When travelers leave the Senyavin Strait, which separates the island of Arakamchechen from the mainland, the slopes of the mountains are covered with the first snow. But although the weather deteriorated sharply, for a whole month Litke was still exploring Chukotka, the northern shores of the Anadyr "sea" and the Gulf of the Cross. Only some of these places were visited a hundred years ago by Vitus Bering during his first voyage, and since then they have not been seen, and if they were seen, then from afar. The sailors correct the old maps and draw new points: Cape Century, in honor of Bering's first expedition, Cape Navarin, in honor of the famous naval battle, Cape Chirikov, in honor of Bering's assistant ...

On August 18, a blizzard falls on travelers. Wet snow dresses the ship in a fantastic dress. Then frost strikes, and ice freezes on the yards and topmasts.

“Protected by the shore, we stood calmly,” recalled Litke, “but in inaction, all the more boring because we were surrounded by the dullest picture in the world: occasionally bare, snow-covered cliffs appeared in front of us; behind the stern - a cat, also under the snow, washed by huge breakers ... This time proved to us that autumn is much closer here than we expected.

In order to quickly complete the inventory of the Gulf of the Cross, which was much larger than first thought, Litke divided the expedition into two detachments, which completed the work on September 5, 1828. Storms and blizzards fell to the lot of sailors, their lives were in danger more than once. Bad weather bothered the Chukchi. One of the shamans tried to speak to the raging elements. But the wind picked up even more. It seemed to Litka that he would carry the yurts into the sea along with their inhabitants, among whom, while doing pendulum observations, he spent more than a week.

In the Caroline Islands.

September 7, 1828 the sloop "Senyavin" left the parking lot in the Gulf of the Cross. Storms swooped in almost every day, driving the rolled ship farther and farther from the northern regions of Russia, the study of which was continued by Litke, which many researchers forget to mention.

On the other hand, some of them reproach him for losing interest in the North, for the fact that, through his fault, the notion of extremely difficult ice conditions in the Kara Sea has taken root in science, which even allegedly delayed "the practical resolution of the issue of the Northern Sea Route to Western Siberia."

But let's get to the facts. In the Central State Archive of Ancient Acts, where the bulk of the Litke archive is located, there are documents (correspondence with M.F. Reinecke and P.I. Klokov), from which it appears that Litke and Reinecke, his younger comrade, who continued to seas, were the organizers of the Northern Expedition of 1832, which consisted of two detachments: one was to explore the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya, the second was to sail from Arkhangelsk to the mouth of the Yenisei by the same Kara Sea, which Litke supposedly considered always clogged with ice ... But after all, on the pages In his "Fourfold Journey to the Arctic Ocean" he says something quite different.

Although his own attempts to penetrate the Kara Sea were unsuccessful, he believed that "several unsuccessful voyages can by no means serve as evidence of the everlasting ice cover of the sea."

He analyzed previous voyages and made sure that in different years the ice coverage of the Kara Sea was different: in some years, travelers sailed on clear water, in others they encountered a lot of ice.

“The reason for this amazing difference is that,” Litke wrote, “that the amount of ice in any place depends not so much on its geographical latitude or the average temperature of the year, but on the combination of many circumstances that we consider accidental, on a greater or lesser degree of cold, who reigned in the winter or spring months; from the greater or lesser severity of the winds that stood in these different seasons, from their direction and even from the sequence of the order in which they passed from one direction to another, and, finally, from the combined effect of all these causes.

Thus, almost a century and a half ago, Litke brilliantly formulated the idea of ​​the influence of numerous natural phenomena on the ice cover of the Arctic seas, the study of which is successfully continued by Soviet scientists. This idea contributed to the development of scientific ideas about the Arctic Ocean and in no way could adversely affect the study of the western section of the Northern Sea Route, especially since the only attempt to navigate the Kara Sea in the first half of the 19th century was organized with the participation of Litke.

On August 1, 1832, the Yenisei schooner, under the command of Lieutenant Krotov, left Arkhangelsk and headed for Matochkin Shar in order to further head to the mouth of the Yenisei. And it’s not Litke’s fault that this expedition disappeared without a trace, especially since the second detachment of the expedition under the command of Pakhtusov successfully completed its research, describing the eastern coast of the South Island of Novaya Zemlya, having traveled several hundred miles along the same Kara Sea. And finally, the Novaya Zemlya expeditions of Litke served as an impetus for the activation of fisheries in the waters of this island, which, in turn, was a kind of preparatory step for sailing along the Kara Sea ... The delay in the practical development of the western section of the Northern Sea Route was caused not by someone's delusions, but deep economic and political reasons. As for Litke, he rendered more than one service to Russia in the exploration of the North. He chose to continue research in Lapland and the White Sea, Mikhail Frantsevich Reinecke, "this most worthy and capable worker of science."

The following essay of this book is devoted to his life and wanderings.

About his stay on one of the Koralin Islands, Litke wrote: “... Our three-week stay on Yualan not only did not cost a single drop of human blood, but ... we could leave the good islanders with the same incomplete information about the operation of our firearms, which they consider to be intended only for killing birds ... I don’t know if there is a similar example in the annals of early travels to the South Sea ”(F.P. Litke. Traveling around the world on the Senyavin military sloop in 1826-1829).

In the first half of the XIX century. Russian navigators made more than 20 round-the-world voyages, which significantly exceeded the number of such expeditions undertaken by the British and French combined. And some Russian navigators circumnavigated the world twice and thrice. In the first Russian circumnavigation of the world, Bellingshausen was the midshipman on Krusenstern's sloop Nadezhda, who after some time would be the first to approach the shores of Antarctica. On the same ship, O. Kotzebue made his first voyage, who later led two round-the-world trips: in 1815-1818 and in 1823-1826.

In 1817, Vasily Mikhailovich Golovnin, who had already completed his legendary circumnavigation on the sloop Diana, set out on his second circumnavigation. To get into the team of the famous navigator was considered a great honor. On the recommendation of the captain of the 2nd rank I. S. Sulmenev, later admiral, Golovnin took on board his pupil, 19-year-old midshipman Fyodor Litke, who had already managed to take part in naval battles with the French and earn an order as head of the hydrographic service.

On the sloop "Kamchatka", which was preparing to sail around the world, a wonderful company gathered - the future of the Russian fleet. Litke met here with volunteer Fyodor Matyushkin, a former lyceum student and classmate of Pushkin, a future admiral and senator, and with junior watch officer Ferdinand Wrangel, later a famous explorer of the Arctic, admiral. The team also included a very young midshipman Feopempt Lutkovsky, who at first would be carried away by the ideas of the Decembrists, and then become a rear admiral and a naval writer. In the course of a two-year voyage, the Kamchatka passed the Atlantic from north to south, rounded Cape Horn, reached Kamchatka across the Pacific Ocean, visited Russian America, Hawaii, the Marianas and the Moluccas, then crossed the Indian Ocean and, bypassing Africa, on September 5, 1819. returned to Kronstadt.

In 1821, on the recommendation of Golovnin, Litke, who had already become a lieutenant, was appointed head of the Arctic expedition on the Novaya Zemlya brig. The expedition explored the Murmansk coast, the western coast of Novaya Zemlya, the Matochkin Shar Strait, and the northern coast of Kolguev Island. Astronomical observations were made. Having processed the expedition materials, Litke published the book "Four-fold trip to the Arctic Ocean on the military brig Novaya Zemlya in 1821-1824." This work was translated into several languages ​​and brought the author well-deserved recognition in the scientific world. The maps compiled by the expedition served sailors for a century.

In 1826, Lieutenant Commander Litke, who at that time was not even 29 years old, took command of the Senyavin sloop, built specifically for the new circumnavigation. In August of the same year, the ship left Kronstadt, accompanied by the second sloop Moller, commanded by M. N. Stanyukovich (father of the famous writer). According to the instructions, the expedition was to make an inventory of the shores of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Bering Sea, as well as the Shantar Islands, and carry out research in Russian America. In winter, she had to conduct scientific research in the tropics.

Stanyukovich's sloop turned out to be much faster than the Senyavin (for some reason, in most Russian round-the-world expeditions, pairs were made up of ships with significantly different driving characteristics), and the second had to catch up with the first all the time, mainly in ports. Almost immediately, the ships separated and then sailed mostly separately.

After stops in Copenhagen, Portsmouth and Tenerife, the Senyavin crossed the Atlantic and arrived in Rio de Janeiro at the end of December, where the Moller was already moored. In January 1827, the sloops headed for Cape Horn together. Rounding it, they fell into a fierce storm - one of those that seem to be specially waiting for ships entering the Pacific Ocean - and again lost each other. In search of the Moller, Litke went to Concepción Bay, and then to Valparaiso. Here the ships met, but Stanyukovich was already leaving for Kamchatka, in transit through the Hawaiian Islands.

Litke stopped at Valparaiso. There he carried out magnetic and astronomical observations, and the naturalists of the expedition made excursions in the surroundings and collected collections. In early April, the Senyavin went to Alaska. We reached Novoarkhangelsk on June 11 and stayed there for more than a month, repairing the sloop, collecting collections, and doing ethnographic research. Then the expedition explored the Pribylov Islands and surveyed the island of St. Matthew. In mid-September, "Senyavin" came to Kamchatka, where the expedition, waiting for mail, remained until October 29, studying the surroundings.

Moving south, Litke reached the Caroline Islands at the end of November. At the very beginning of 1828, the expedition discovered a hitherto unknown part of this vast archipelago, naming it the Senyavin Islands after their ship. Then the sloop went to Guam and other Mariana Islands. Hydrographic work was constantly carried out; Litke, moreover, performed astronomical, magnetic and gravimetric measurements. On the islands, naturalists continued to add to their collections. At the end of March, the sloop went north to the Bonin Islands (Ogasawara). The sailors examined them and picked up two Englishmen who had been wrecked. In early May, Litke headed for Kamchatka.

They stood in Petropavlovsk for three weeks, and in mid-June, Litke's second northern campaign began. "Senyavin" carried out hydrographic surveys in the Bering Sea. Moving north, the expedition determined the coordinates of points on the Kamchatka coast, described Karaginsky Island, then headed for the Bering Strait and determined the coordinates of Cape Vostochny (now Cape Dezhnev). Work on the inventory of the southern coast of Chukotka had to be interrupted due to unfavorable weather. At the end of September, the Senyavin returned to Kamchatka, and a month later, together with the Moller, they entered the Pacific Ocean.

In early November, the ships were again separated by a storm. The agreed meeting place was in Manila. Before moving to the Philippines, Litke decided to once again go to the Caroline Islands. And again, successfully: he managed to discover several coral atolls. After that, he headed west and approached Manila on 31 December. Moller was already there. In mid-January 1829, the sloops moved home, passed through the Sunda Strait, and on February 11 ended up in the Indian Ocean. Then their paths parted again: "Moller" went to South Africa, and "Senyavin" to the island of St. Helena. There, at the end of April, the sloops were reunited, and on June 30 they reached Le Havre together. From here, Stanyukovich headed straight for Kronstadt, and Litke also went to England to check the instruments at the Greenwich Observatory.

Finally, on August 25, 1829, the Senyavin arrived at the Kronstadt raid. He was greeted with a cannon salute. Immediately after returning, Litke was promoted to captain of the 1st rank.

This expedition, which lasted three years, became one of the most fruitful in the history of navigation, and not only in Russia. 12 islands were discovered, the Asian coast of the Bering Sea and a number of islands were explored for a considerable extent, the richest materials on oceanography, biology, ethnography were collected, an atlas was compiled from several dozen maps and plans. Of great interest to physicists were Litke's experiments with a permanent pendulum, as a result of which the magnitude of the polar compression of the Earth was determined, and measurements of magnetic declination at various points in the world's oceans. In 1835-1836. Litke published a three-volume "Journey around the world on the sloop-of-war "Senyavin" in 1826-1829", translated into several languages. It was awarded the academic Demidov Prize, and Litke was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.

However, Litke's journey on the Senyavin was his last - against his own will. In 1832, Emperor Nicholas I appointed an officer and scientist as the educator of his second son Konstantin. Litke remained at court as an educator for 16 years. He was not happy with this highest mercy, but he did not dare to disobey. It was during these years that Fyodor Petrovich Litke became one of the founders of the Russian Geographical Society (along with the sailor Wrangel and academicians Arseniev and Baer) and was elected its vice-chairman, while Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, a pupil of Litke, became the honorary chairman. By the way, he was an intelligent naval officer and rose to the rank of admiral, played a prominent role in carrying out liberal reforms in Russia, and in 1861 became chairman of the State Council. Good upbringing.

In 1850-1857. there was a break in Litke's geographical activities. At this time, he was the commander of the Revel port, and then of Kronstadt. On his shoulders lay the organization of the defense of the Gulf of Finland from the British and French during the Crimean War (1854-1855). For the brilliant performance of this task, Litke received the rank of admiral and was appointed a member of the State Council, and in 1866 received the title of count. In 1857, Litke was again elected vice-chairman of the Society; Petr Petrovich Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky became his deputy. The achievements of national geography are largely connected with the activities of the Society, and not least with the ability of Litke and his successors to attract talented young people to their enterprises. In 1864, Litke took over as president of the Academy of Sciences and continued to lead the Geographical Society until 1873.

NUMBERS AND FACTS

Main character

Fedor Petrovich Litke, Russian navigator, geographer

Other actors

Sailors V. M. Golovnin, M. N. Stanyukovich, F. P. Wrangel; Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich; geographers K. I. Arseniev, K. M. Baer, ​​P. P. Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky

Time of action

Route

Around the world from east to west

Goals

Description of the Far Eastern coast of Russia, research in Russian America and in the tropical region of the Pacific Ocean

Meaning

The Asian coast of the Bering Sea was explored, the richest scientific materials were collected, the magnitude of the polar compression of the Earth was determined, 12 islands were discovered

Private bussiness

Fedor Petrovich Litke(1797 - 1882) was the son of state councilor Peter Litke. His mother died on the day he was born. The father soon married a second time. At the age of six, Fyodor Litke was sent to the private boarding school of Meyer. When he was eleven, his father died, and his stepmother refused to pay for her stepson's education. Then the boy was taken to his house by his maternal uncle, a member of the State Council, Fyodor Engel. The boy did not receive a systematic education, but read books with enthusiasm. Since 1811, he often visited Kronstadt, where his sister lived, who became the wife of the captain of the second rank Ivan Sulmenev. Under his influence, Fyodor Litke decided to become a naval officer. Sulmenev invited teachers, under whose guidance Fedor mastered the basics of mathematics and navigation and was able to pass the exam, becoming a midshipman. He served in the detachment of gunboats commanded by Sulmenev and in 1812 was promoted to midshipman for participation in the battles at Danzig.

On the recommendation of Sulmenev, Fyodor Litke was included in the round-the-world expedition on the sloop "Kamchatka" under the command of Vasily Golovnin. According to Fyodor Litke, he returned from a voyage "a real sailor, a sailor of the Golovin school." After returning, he was sent to serve in Arkhangelsk. Soon, on the recommendation of Golovin, the young Litka was entrusted with the leadership of the expedition, which was setting off for the Arctic Ocean. Litke made four expeditions, the results of which were described by him in the essay “Four-time trip to the Arctic Ocean, made by order of Emperor Alexander I on the military brig Novaya Zemlya in 1821, 1822, 1823 and 1824 of the fleet by Lieutenant Commander Fyodor Litke”. The book was soon translated into German and became famous among European geographers and naval officers.

On August 14, 1826, Litke was appointed head of a new round-the-world expedition, which included two sloops: Moller, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Stanyukovich, and Senyavin, under the command of Litke himself. Swimming lasted three years. Upon his return - on September 4, 1829 - Litke was, in the form of a special distinction, promoted through the rank to captain of the 1st rank. A description of this journey was published in 1834-1836 in Russian and French under the title: “A journey around the world, made by order of Emperor Nicholas I on the sloop-of-war “Senyavin” in 1826, 1827, 1828 and 1829. Fleet Captain Fyodor Litke.

In 1829, Litke was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th class "for impeccable service, in officer ranks, for 18 six-month naval campaigns." In the same year he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.

In the spring and summer of 1830, Litke led the voyage of senior class midshipmen to the shores of Iceland, from there to Brest and back to Kronstadt. On February 1, 1832, Litke was appointed adjutant wing, and on November 3 of the same year he was appointed to be under the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, who was appointed to serve in the navy by his father, Emperor Nicholas I. In 1835, Litke was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral. In 1836 he received the Demidov Prize for describing his travels,

In 1842 Fyodor Litke became adjutant general, in 1843 - vice admiral. In 1850 he was appointed chief commander of the Revel port and military governor of Revel. In 1852 he was awarded the Order of Saint Alexander.

During the Crimean War of 1853-1856, Litke organized the defense of the Gulf of Finland from the superior forces of the Anglo-French squadron, for which he received the rank of full admiral and was appointed a member of the State Council.

On February 23, 1864, Fyodor Litke was appointed president of the Academy of Sciences and left this post only a few months before his death, when he became completely blind. On October 28, 1866, by royal decree, Litke was elevated with descending offspring to the dignity of a count of the Russian Empire "in commemoration of the special Monarchic favor and in gratitude for long-term, diligent and useful service, which gained him European fame in the scientific world, as well as for unchanging devotion proven by him in the performance of special important duties entrusted to him by the highest confidence.

What is famous

An outstanding navigator who made two round-the-world voyages and headed one of them, Fyodor Litke was at the same time a prominent scientist who made a significant contribution to several areas of physical geography at once.

In 1833, he published "Experiments on a permanent pendulum, carried out on a trip around the world on the sloop-of-war Senyavin." Later, on the basis of the materials he collected, Professor Lenz created the work “On the Inclination and Tension of the Magnetic Needle According to Litke’s Observations”, and Professor Gelshtrem - “On Litke’s Barometric and Sympiezometric Observations and on Heat in Tropical Climates”. Fedor Litka himself also owns the works “On the Ebb and Flow in the Northern Arctic Ocean”, “Report to. book. Konstantin Nikolayevich about the expedition to the Sea of ​​Azov” and others.

In 1845, Litke became one of the founding members of the Russian Geographical Society - he developed the charter of the society and took the post of its vice-president (Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich became president).

What you need to know

During his circumnavigation on the Senyavin sloop, Fyodor Litke described the coast of Kamchatka to the north of Avacha Bay to the north. He also described the previously unknown Karaginsky Islands, Matvey Island and the coast of Chukotka. The Caroline Islands were studied in detail, in which Litke discovered a group of islands, which he called the Senyavin Islands (now belong to the Federated States of Micronesia).

Direct speech

“Much more was accomplished on the second expedition than on the first. The higher authorities were satisfied with our labors, and according to their representation, all those who participated in them were honored with the mercy of the monarchs. But for all that, much still remained unfulfilled. The coast of Lapland required a new and detailed inventory, since in 1822 only some of the main anchorages and harbors could be described; the intermediate coast, where a few more good harbors could be found, was either not examined at all, or examined superficially. The part of the coast extending from the Kola Bay to the west to the border remained completely undescribed; all that was known about it was that it was depicted completely incorrectly on all maps, that the so-called Fishing Island (Fischer Eilant) is a peninsula that protrudes into the sea much further and in a completely different form, etc. There were also several points on the side of Novaya Zemlya doubtful and unknown. By comparing our map with the navigation map of the Dutch sailors, located in the Great Atlas, Blau turned out to be between the longitude of the cape, which we took for Cape Zhelaniya, and the longitude of the Barents Cape of this name, the difference is up to 15 degrees. Such an error in the definition of Barents seemed completely impossible, all the more so because in the position of other points the difference was very small; and from this a suspicion was revived whether we had taken some other cape, for example, Nassau, for Cape Desire. Although the inventory of the navigator Rozmyslov was not particularly reason to suspect infidelity; It would be desirable to take this rather important point in Novaya Zemlya's geography once and for all out of doubt by a new measurement of Matochkin's Shar. The southern coast of Novaya Zemlya was still completely unknown. Even less eastern coast, which, however, there was no great hope of describing on a seaworthy vessel. The position of the Vaigach and Kolguev Islands was not determined. Finally, the longitude of Kanin Nos required a new check. To fulfill all this, it was ordered to send me on the same brig.

From the book “Four-time trip to the Arctic Ocean, made by order of Emperor Alexander I on the military brig Novaya Zemlya in 1821, 1822, 1823 and 1824 of the fleet by Lieutenant Commander Fyodor Litke”

“Litke's extensive knowledge in the field of natural sciences was generally expressed in the fact that he excellently made many observations that did not have an indispensable connection with his journey, but were very important for resolving certain scientific questions. His observations over a permanent magnet are especially remarkable - such experiments determine the compression of the globe, an element whose exact knowledge is very important for various geodetic works and for the most accurate study of certain complex movements in the solar system; Litke's experiments and observations are among the best in their field.

Nikolai Chechulin

“I had no intention of writing my complete biography. The purpose of this note is to convey to my children what information is available about the past of our family, and to present an outline of the first half of my life, from which they can see how an orphan, in the first years of his youth, almost abandoned, without any patronage, maybe with with the help of God, by one’s own labors, to make a way for oneself in life and leave a good, spotless name to one’s descendants.”

From the autobiography of Fyodor Litke.

7 facts about Fyodor Litka

• The Litke family traces its history back to Johann Philipp Litke (?—1771/1772), a master of philosophy who studied physics and theology, a man of versatile knowledge. He was invited to Russia during the reign of Anna Ioannovna as the director of the academic gymnasium in St. Petersburg and the rector of the Petrishula school. Fyodor Petrovich Litke was his grandson.
• Litka came up with the idea of ​​the first recording "tide gauge" (1839), built and installed in 1841 on the shores of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.
• In the late 1870s, in disputes that arose between Germany and Spain over the Caroline Islands, the basis for decisions was the descriptions made by Litke during his trip around the world.
• The diaries of Fyodor Litke, which he kept from 1832 to 1868, occupy eleven volumes in the manuscript.
• The son of Fyodor Litke Konstantin also became a famous navigator.
• A cape, a peninsula, a mountain, a bay on Novaya Zemlya are named after Fyodor Litke; cape in Chukotka; islands in the Franz Josef Land archipelago, Baidaratskaya Bay, Nordenskiöld archipelago, the strait between Kamchatka and Karaginsky Island, as well as a crater on the far side of the Moon
• The Russian Geographical Society awards the Fyodor Litke Medal.

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