The Epoch of The Great Geographical Discoveries is a period in the development of human civilization, which is difficult to overestimate. A special contribution to the development of geography was made by freight forwarders who equipped and made round-the-world trips.
Who was the first traveler to circumnavigate the world?
It is believed that the primacy in the matter of round-the-world expeditions belongs to the Spanish flotilla, which was commanded by the Portuguese Fernand Magellan. Under the leadership of the sailor there were 5 ships, each of which had from 260 to 280 crew members: from the starting point they left on September 20, 1519. The expedition returned after 3 years back, but out of 5 ships only one got back, and then without the head of the expedition.
It is established that the main reason for such a difficult fate of the journey was not only the usual difficulties encountered during long expeditions, but also mutinies on ships. Of the 5 ships that departed from the port with Magellan, 3 were under the command of captains from the Spanish nobility. They were not happy to be subordinate to a Portuguese immigrant. Also, Magellan did not share with the rest of the captains the route of the trip, which did not encourage the sailors to trust him.
The mutiny began in April of the following year, and Fernand learned of the betrayal only in the morning, when 3 of the 5 ships out of his control. Magellan was on the ship "Trinidad", and the crew of the ship "Santiago", which was not combat, remained loyal to him. Magellan began to quell the mutiny by attacking the Victoria, ironically the only ship that would be able to return home. The traveler managed to suppress the rebellion and regain control of the fleet, severely punishing the rebels. He quartered the two rebel captains and hanged them, leaving their bodies on ropes for several months for the team's edification. The representative of the King of Spain and the priest who participated in the uprising, Magellan threw on a desert island, and shackled the rebellious sailors.
The next difficulty that the freight forwarders had to face was a skirmish with the inhabitants of the Philippine islands. Magellan arrived on Mactan Island and ordered the local chief to submit to the crown, to which he was refused and decided to attack the aborigines. The sailors had a numerical advantage and firearms, but the inhabitants of the island skillfully used the landscape and defeated the Europeans. During the battle, Magellan himself was killed.
In September 1522, the ship "Victoria" returned to the harbor, and there were only 18 people on board, although more than a thousand Europeans went on the expedition. After some time, another 18 sailors returned to Sanlúcar de Barrameda - they were released from captivity by the Portuguese.
The first circumnavigation of the world took sailors 1081 days, and during it it was possible to prove that the Earth is round, and most of the planet is occupied not by land, but by oceans and seas. Magellan's subordinates brought to Spain data on the open Philippines, the Mariana Islands, as well as on the strait between the Tierra del Fuego archipelago and South America, which was named after Fernand Magellan. Despite the fact that almost all the members of the expedition died from disease, battles or during a revolt, its results are recognized as successful and profitable for the King of Spain, because initially Magellan was assembling an expedition to find a short route to the Moluccas and declare them a territory subordinate to the Spaniards.
Russian Circumnavigation
In early August 1803, two expeditionary sloops under the command of Yuri Lisyansky and Ivan Kruzenshtern left Kronstadt. The ships "Neva" and "Nadezhda" had on board instruments for conducting research and the latest equipment that sailors received from the emperor. On the two ships there were 105 crew members, also on board were German scientists.
By November 1803, Russian sailors managed to cross the equator for the first time, and a festive day was arranged on the ships. When a pair of ships sailed to the Pacific Ocean, the expedition was divided: "Hope" went to the shores of Polynesia, and "Neva" continued to plow the waters. After that, the ships met and jointly headed for Hawaii: "Nadezhda" began to explore the waters near Kamchatka, and "Neva" moved to Alaska.
During the expedition, the ships were off the coast of Japan, the southern part of Kamchatka, discovered the island of Sakhalin, described on maps the Japanese and Kuril Islands. The teams also landed in the Far East, where they communicated with local residents and studied their way of life, habits, traditions and morals. The scientific result of the trip was also impressive: scientists collected a lot of data on the flora and fauna of the places where they visited, engaged in compiling an ethnographic atlas of the studied territories.
The entire expedition of Lisyansky and Kruzenshtern took 3 years and 12 days. To get from Siberian cities to the shores of Japan, previously it was necessary to spend 4-5 years, to change several hundred horses at the crossings. For 3 years of travel, none of the crew members died, and the freight forwarders themselves set a record for that time - they did not enter the port to replenish supplies and repair the ship for as long as 142 days.
How Antarctica was discovered
The famous navigator James Cook, who also made several round-the-world trips, could not get to Antarctica and stated that this continent does not exist. The erroneous opinion was dispelled by freight forwarders Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev , sailors who made the first sea voyage to the Antarctic.
The journey began in the summer of 1819, when the Mirny and Vostok came out of Kronstadt - the sloops of freight forwarders with explorers on board. While the ships sailed to Antarctica, Lazarev and Bellingshausen discovered the islands of Candlemas, Traverse, Leskov, Annenkov and Zavadovsky. Also, travelers made an updated description of the islands of South Georgia, which Cook discovered earlier.
The ships approached the Southern Mainland on January 28, 1820. The sailors were greeted by a huge ice wall that stretched so far that it was impossible to see its edges. The ships decided to sail the continent from its eastern part, but could not move further south even when they entered the Indian Ocean.
Wooden "Vostok" and "Mirny" had to go through the most difficult conditions - in order not to crash, they had to maneuver between blocks of ice. When the expedition reached the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, the sailors were met with a strong storm. The sailors took a break for the winter and went to explore local waters, but in the spring returned to trying to get south through Antarctica. There they discovered the land of Alexander I and the island of Peter the Great.
During the 751 days of the expedition, the ships traveled over 92,000 kilometers, and the researchers managed to map the world almost 30 new islands, and at the same time refute Cook's statement that Antarctica does not exist.
