Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T15:15:22.014Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Bellingshausen-Palmer meeting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2015

Rip Bulkeley
Rip Bulkeley*
Affiliation:
38 Lonsdale Road, Oxford, OX2 7EW (rip@igy50.net)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The celebrated meeting between Captain Bellingshausen of the Imperial Russian Navy and the American sealing skipper Nathaniel Brown Palmer, off the South Shetland Islands in February 1821, has often been described by following just one or other of the two men's divergent and in some respects irreconcilable accounts. The most contentious issue is whether or not Palmer told Bellingshausen about the existence of a body of land to the south of the South Shetlands, known today as the Antarctic Peninsula. This note attempts to reach a balanced assessment of the matter by examining evidence from both sides, including several previously unconsidered items. It concludes that, although the truth will never be known with absolute certainty, the basic American account is more plausible, by the narrowest of narrow margins, than the Russian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 51 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 644 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anon. (Anonymous). 1820–1821. Logbook of Hero, vol. 1, 31 July 1820 to 7 May 1821. Washington DC: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Palmer-Loper family papers, Box I:8.Google Scholar
Anon. (Anonymous). 1996. Topographic map, Trinity Peninsula, SP 21–22/13. Cambridge and Frankfurt/Main: British Antarctic Survey and Institut für angewandte Geodäsie.Google Scholar
Bellingshausen, F.F. 1831. Dvukratnyye izyskaniya v yuzhnom ledovitom okeane i plavaniye vokrug sveta v prodolzheniye 1819, 1820, i 1821 godov [Two seasons of exploration in the Southern Ice Ocean and a voyage around the world, during the years 1819, 1820 and 1821]. St Petersburg: Glazunovs.Google Scholar
Belov, M.I. 1963. Pervaya russkaya antarkticheskaya ekspeditsiya 1819–1821 gg. i yeyë otchëtnaya navigatsionnaya karta [The first Russian Antarctic Expedition of 1819–1821 and its official navigational map]. Leningrad: Marine Transport.Google Scholar
Berg, L.S. 1949. Ocherki po istorii russkikh geograficheskikh otkrytii [Essays on the history of Russian geographical discoveries]. Moscow: Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Berg, L.S. 1951. ‘Bellinsgauzen i Palmer’ [Bellingshausen and Palmer]. Proceedings of the Soviet Geographical Society 83 (1): 25–31.Google Scholar
Bertrand, K.J. 1971. Americans in Antarctica, 1775–1948. New York: American Geographical Society.Google Scholar
Brue, A. 1826. Carte générale de l’Amérique Méridionale et des îles qui en dependent. Paris: self published.Google Scholar
Bulkeley, R. 2014. Bellingshausen and the Russian Antarctic Expedition, 1819–21. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Burkhanov, V.F. 1956. K beregam Antarktidy [To the shores of Antarctica]. Moscow: Marine Transport.Google Scholar
Bush, F.T. 1881. History of the discovery of Palmer's Land. Daily Globe (New London), 10 September 1881. (Republished in E.S. Balch. 1909. Stonington Antarctic explorers. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 41 (8): 473–492).Google Scholar
Carroll, L. 1872. Through the looking-glass, and what Alice found there. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Debenham, F. 1945. Introduction. In: [F.F.] Bellingshausen. 1945. The voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic seas, 1819–1821 (Debenham, F. editor) . London: Hakluyt Society, Second Series 91 and 92.Google Scholar
Fanning, E. 1833. Voyages round the world; with sketches of voyages to the South Seas, North and South Pacific Oceans, China etc. New York: Collins and Hannay.Google Scholar
Firsov, I.I. 1998. I Antarktida i Navarin [Both Antarctica and Navarino]. Moscow: Armada.Google Scholar
Fyodorovskii, Ye.P. 2001. Bellinsgauzen. Moscow: Astrel’.Google Scholar
Grigor’ev, S.G. 1937. Vokrug yuzhnogo polyusa [Around the South Pole]. Moscow: State Textbooks Press.Google Scholar
Hobbs, W.H. 1939. The discoveries of Antarctica within the American sector, as revealed by maps and documents. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (new series) 31 (1): 1–71.Google Scholar
Krusenstern, Captain Commander. 1824. Atlas de l’Océan Pacifique. St Petersburg: By Imperial Order.Google Scholar
Krusenstern, Vice Admiral. 1836. Dopolneniye k izdannym v 1826 i 1827 godakh ob’yasneniyam osnovanii posluzhevshikh dlya sostavleniya atlasa Yuzhnago Morya [Supplement to the explanatory data published in 1826 and 1827 in support of the Atlas of the Pacific Ocean]. St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Lapie, M. 1828. Carte de la Plata, du Chili, et de la Patagonie. Paris: Eymery Fruger & Co.Google Scholar
Loper, M.M. 1907. no title. Globe (New London), 28 January 1907.Google Scholar
Lukin, V.V. 2005. Poisk nevedomogo kontinenta [The search for an unknown continent]. Vlast’ 10: 75–81.Google Scholar
Magidovich, I.P. 1957. Ocherki po istorii geograficheskikh otkrytii [Essays on the history of geographical discoveries]. Moscow: Min. Education Press.Google Scholar
Martin, L. 1940. Antarctica discovered by a Connecticut Yankee, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer. Geographical Review 30 (4): 529–552.Google Scholar
Novosil'skii, P.M. 1853. Yuzhnyi polyus: iz zapisok byvshago morskago ofitsera [The South Pole: from the memoirs of a former naval officer]. Panteon 11 (10): 19–62.Google Scholar
Ostrovskii, B.G. 1966. Lazarev. (Shvede, Ye. Ye. editor). Moscow: Young Guard.Google Scholar
Palmer, N.B. 1876. Letter to F.T. Bush, 13 March 1876 (extract). In: Martin, L. 1940. Antarctica discovered by a Connecticut Yankee, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer. Geographical Review 30 (4): 537.Google Scholar
Purdy, J. 1822. Memoir, descriptive and explanatory, to accompany the new chart of the Ethiopic or South Atlantic Ocean. London: Laurie.Google Scholar
Reynolds, J.N. 1828. Letter to the editors. Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), 13 December 1828: 2.Google Scholar
Reynolds, J.N. 1836. Address on the subject of a surveying and exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Sabine, E. 1819. Remarks on the account of the late voyage of discovery to Baffin's Bay published by Captain J. Ross, R.N. London: Booth.Google Scholar
Spears, J.R. 1922. Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer: an old-time sailor of the sea. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stackpole, E.A. 1955. The voyage of the ‘Huron’ and the ‘Huntress’: the American sealers and the discovery of the continent of Antarctica. Mystic, Con.: Marine Historical Association.Google Scholar
Treshnikov, A.F. 1963. Istoriya otkrytiya i issledovaniya Antarktidy [A history of Antarctic discovery and research]. Moscow: State Geographical Press.Google Scholar
Vadetskii, B.A. 1957. Obreteniye schast’ya [A stroke of fortune]. Moscow: Kirov Press.Google Scholar
Vandermaelen, Ph. 1827. ‘Iles Shetland Méridionale’. Atlas universel de géographie physique, politique, statistique et minéralogique. Part 5, Amérique Méridionale, Sheet 43. Brussels: self published.Google Scholar