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First Russian circumnavigation

The sloops Nadezhda (Adam Johann von Krusenstern) and Neva (Yuri Lisyansky) made the Russian navy’s first voyage around the world, carrying supplies to Russian America and Nikolai Rezanov’s embassy to Japan.

Date
26 July (7 August) 1803 – 7 (19) August 1806exact date · duration: ≈ 3 yearsJulian calendar (Old Style); the Gregorian date (New Style) is in brackets
Place
Kronstadttoday: Kronstadt, Saint Petersburg, Russia · Eastern Europe
Route
Kronstadt → Copenhagen → Cape Skagen → Strait of Dover → Falmouth → Santa Cruz de Tenerife → Santa Catarina Island (Desterro) → Cape Horn → Nuku Hiva (Marquesas Islands) → Island of Hawaii → Petropavlovsk Harbour (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) → Pacific Ocean east of Japan → Van Diemen Strait (Ōsumi Strait) → Nagasaki → Tsushima Strait → La Pérouse Strait → Aniva Bay → Petropavlovsk Harbour (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) → Pacific Ocean east of Japan → Bashi Channel → Macau → Canton (Guangzhou) → Sunda Strait → Cape of Good Hope → Jamestown (Saint Helena) → Corvo Island (Azores) → Fair Isle (between Orkney and Shetland) → Cape Skagen → Copenhagen → Kronstadt
Participants
Russian Empire, Russian-American Company, Adam Johann von Krusenstern, Yuri Lisyansky, Nikolai Rezanov
Threads
Russia at the turn of the 19th century

Leaving Kronstadt on 26 July (7 August) 1803, the expedition sailed by way of Copenhagen, England, the Canary Islands and Brazil and rounded Cape Horn; at the Hawaiian Islands the ships parted company: the Nadezhda went on to Kamchatka, Nagasaki and Sakhalin, the Neva to Kodiak and Sitka, where she took part in the war with the Tlingit. Reunited at Canton, the sloops sailed together into the Indian Ocean but became separated in the Atlantic.

The map shows the route of the Nadezhda, which returned to Kronstadt via Saint Helena and around Scotland on 7 (19) August 1806 — the date taken here as the end of the voyage; the Neva arrived almost two weeks earlier, and some reference works date the end of the expedition by her return. The expedition’s scientists assembled rich natural history and ethnographic collections.

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Related events

  • First circumnavigation of the globe10 August 1519 – 8 September 1522 · Western and Central EuropeThe first circumnavigation of the globe in history and the first circumnavigation under the Russian flag

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Western and Central Europe

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Balkans and Anatolia

Middle East and Egypt

Africa

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The same period

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): First Russian circumnavigation
  2. Wikipedia (Russian): Первое русское кругосветное плавание
  3. Крузенштерн И. Ф. Путешествие вокруг света в 1803, 4, 5 и 1806 годах… на кораблях Надежде и Неве… — СПб., 1809–1812.
  4. Wikidata: Q4349237