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Voyaging towards the future: the brig Rurik in the North Pacific and the emerging science of the sea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

ALEXANDRA BEKASOVA
ALEXANDRA BEKASOVA*
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History, St Petersburg School of Arts and Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics, 190008 St Petersburg, 16 Soyuza Pechatnikov Ulitsa, Russia. Email: [email protected], [email protected].
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Abstract

This article explores the networking activities of Count Nikolai Rumiantsev and Adam von Krusenstern, his close collaborator. The visionary Russian statesman and the celebrated navigator were deeply involved in northern exploration. They funded and organized a circumnavigating voyage by the brig Rurik in 1815–18, with the explicit goals of searching for a northern passage between Eurasia and North America and conducting a series of scientific investigations in the Bering Strait region. This private exploratory enterprise profoundly influenced the exchange of information and reconfigured both local and global networks of knowledge. Based on an analysis of private correspondence, printed accounts and journal articles related to the Rurik's expedition, this study sheds light on how this transnational network of actors emerged and functioned, and how it promoted a lively circulation of information about exploration in the Bering Strait region in the 1810s–1820s. I argue that a complex interplay of geopolitical and intellectual competition, with exchanges, collaborations and coordination among various actors (e.g. patrons, navigators, scholars, entrepreneurs and publishers), stimulated further research on the global ocean's northern spaces and laid the foundations of marine science.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 469 - 495
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science

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Footnotes

The article was prepared within the framework of the Academic Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2017–19 (grant no. 17-01-0069) and by the Russian Academic Excellence Project 5-100. I am indebted to Ryan Jones, Julia Lajus, Nikolai Krementsov and Denis Show for their support, encouragement and help and to Karen Alexander for kind assistance with language editing. I also would like to thank my referees for their critique and comments that helped to improve the initial version of the paper.

References

1 On Rumiantsev's research network and patronage of the sciences and humanities see Bekasova, Alexandra, ‘“Uchenye zaniatiia” russkogo aristokrata kak sposob samorealizatsii (na primere grapha N.P.Rumiantseva)’, Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki (1995) 1, pp. 24–39Google Scholar; Kozlov, Vladimir, Kolumby rossiiskikh drevnostei, Moscow: Nauka, 1981Google Scholar. Among recent publications on Rumiantsev's life and activities see Molchanov, Viktor, Knizhnaia kul′tura Rossii 19 veka. Epokha, sud′ba, nasledie N.P. Rumiantseva, Moscow: Pashkov dom, 2006Google Scholar. For a list of pre-2001 publications also see Nikolai Petrovich Rumiantsev. Zhizn′ i deiatel′nost′ (1754–1826): Bibliographicheskii ukazatel′ knig, statei iz sbornikov, zhurnalov, gazet na russkom iazyke, Moscow: Pashkov dom, 2001.

2 Pis′ma N.P. Rumiantseva I. Ph. Krusensternu 1816–1825, National Archives of Estonia, Tartu Department (NAE), Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23; Pis′ma Krusensternu, The Russian State Naval Archive (RSNA), Coll. 14, Inv. 1, File 233; Perepiska Ivana Phedorovicha Krusensterna s graphom Nikolaem Petrovichem Rumiantsevym, 1813–1825, Russian State Archives of Early Acts, Coll. 11, Inv. 1, File 162.

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5 Livingstone, David N., Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004Google Scholar; Secord, James A., ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis (2004) 95, pp. 654–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Shapin, Steven, ‘Placing the view from nowhere: historical and sociological problems in the location of science’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (1998) 23, pp. 5–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a detailed overview of this scholarship see Raj, Kapil, ‘Beyond postcolonialism … and postpositivism: circulation and the global history of science’, Isis (2013) 104(2), pp. 337–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, Lissa, ‘Situating science in global history: local exchanges and networks of circulation’, Itinerario (2009) 33(1), pp. 9–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the notion of ‘circulation’ and global history also see Stefanie Gänger, ‘Circulation: reflections on circularity, entity, and liquidity in the language of global history’, Journal of Global History (2017) 12(3), pp. 303–18.

6 Raj, Kapil, ‘Introduction: circulation and locality in early modern science’, BJHS (2010) 43(4), pp. 513–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; Cohen, op. cit. (4), p. 13.

7 For recent scholarship approaching the global ocean as an entangled space in such contexts as the history of science, ecological history, historical geography and global history see Armitage, David, Bashford, Alison and Sivasundaram, Sujit (eds.), Oceanic Histories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018Google Scholar; Rozwadowski, Helen M., Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans, London: Reaktion Books, 2018Google Scholar; ‘Focus: knowing the ocean for the history of science’, Isis (2014) 105, pp. 335–91; Mukherjee, Rila (ed.), Oceans Connect: Reflections on Water Worlds across Time and Space, Delhi: Primus Books, 2013Google Scholar; Lambert, Martins D. and Ogborn, M., ‘Currents, visions and voyages: historical geographies of the sea’, Journal of Historical Geography (2006) 32, pp. 479–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and others.

8 Steinberg, Philip E., ‘Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime regions’, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents (2013) 10(2), pp. 156–69, 165CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

9 Martina Winkler, ‘Russia, Europe, and the Pacific Ocean: a global story?’, in Matthias Middell (ed.), Cultural Transfers, Encounters and Connections in the Global Eighteenth Century, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2014, pp. 211–30; Fisher, Raymond H., ‘The early cartography of the Bering Strait region’, Arctic (1984) 37(4), pp. 574–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Day, Alan, Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006Google Scholar; Williams, Glyn, Voyages of Delusion: The North-West Passage in the Age of Reason, London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002Google Scholar. On the exploration of the north-west passage in cultural perspective as part of the British imperial project see Frédéric Regard (ed.), Arctic Exploration in the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Northwest Passage, London and Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto, 2013; Regard (ed.), The Quest for the Northwest Passage: Knowledge, Nation and Empire, 1576–1806, London: Routledge, 2012. Scholarship in the Russian language includes Vasilii Pasetskii, Puteshestviia, kotorye ne povtoriatsia, Moscow: Mysl′, 1986. Also see Postnikov, Alexei V., ‘The search for a sea passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific via North America's coast: on the history of a scientific competition’, Terrae Incognitae (2000) 32(1), pp. 31–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gough, Barry M., ‘British–Russian rivalry and the search for the northwest passage in the early nineteenth century’, Polar Record (1986) 23(144), pp. 301–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the debates about the legal status of the north-west passage connected with amenable navigation at the beginning of the twenty-first century also see Philip E. Steinberg, ‘Steering between Scylla and Charybdis: the northwest passage as territorial sea’, Ocean Development & International Law (2014) 45(1), pp. 84–106.

11 For a recent overview of Pacific scholarship see Alison Bashford, ‘The Pacific Ocean’, in Armitage, op. cit. (7), pp. 62–84. Also see Sarah Louise Millar, ‘Sampling the South Seas: collecting and interrogating scientific specimens on mid-nineteenth-century voyages of Pacific exploration’, in Diarmid A. Finnegan and Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (eds.), Spaces of Global Knowledge: Exhibition, Encounter and Exchange in an Age of Empire, London and New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 99–118.

12 The scholarship on the history of Russian America, the Russian–American Company and exploration of the North Pacific is very rich. Among recently published comprehensive studies, for example, see Winkler, Martina, Das Imperium und die Seeotter: Die Expansion Russlands in den nordpazifischen Raum, 1700–1867, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ilya Vinkovetsky, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804–1867, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; Andrei Grinev, The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741–1867, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

13 Demuth, Bathsheba, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, London: Norton, 2019Google Scholar; Ryan Tucker Jones, Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific's Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741–1867, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. On the relevance of a maritime approach to Russian history also see Julia Leikin, ‘Across the seven seas: is Russian maritime history more than regional history?’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (2016) 17(3), pp. 631–46.

14 Harry Leibersohn, The Traveler's World: Europe to the Pacific, London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

15 For example, see Eric L. Mills, The Fluid Envelope of Our Planet: How the Study of Ocean Currents Became a Science, Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 2009; Margaret Deacon, Scientists and the Sea, 1650–1900: A Study of Marine Science, 2nd edn, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997 (first published Academic Press, 1971).

16 Vasilii Pasetskii, Russkie otkrytiia v Arktike, St Petersburg: Izdatel′skii dom Admiralteistvo, 2000, p. 393.

17 ‘Dvenadtsatyi god iz zapisok Varvary Ivanovny Bakuninoi’, Russkaia starina (1885) 47(9), pp. 391–410, 398.

18 Kozlov, op. cit. (1), pp. 40–2.

19 On the importance of the episode of Rumiantsev's resignation to understanding his strong motivation to engage in scholarly projects and cultivate an intellectual environment see Bekasova, op. cit. (1), pp. 25–6.

20 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Petr Ricord, 13 February 1817, Pis′ma grapha N.P. Rumiantseva k P.I. Rikordu, Russkii vestnik (1842) 42(6), pp. 148–9.

21 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 2 October 1817, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 21.

22 For example, see Nikolai Rumiantsev to Vasilii Golovnin, 28 October 1818, in N.N. Bolkhovitinov (ed.) Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia i izuchenie Tikhookeanskogo severa, 1815–1841: sbornik dokumentov, Moscow: Nauka, 2005, p. 49.

23 On A.J. von Krusenstern's biography, activities and patronage network see Dmitrii Kopelev, Na sluzhbe Imperii: Nemtsy i Rossiiskii flot v pervoi polovine 19 veka, St Petersburg: Izdatel′stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2010, pp. 266–87; Sergei Kozlov (ed.), Putevye zapiski Yu.M. Lisianskogo i I.F. Krusensterna 1793–1800: Predystoriia pervogo puteshestviia rossiian vokrug sveta, Otvetstvennii redaktor N.V. Korushchenko, St Petersburg: Istoricheskaia illustratsiia, 2007; Ewert von Krusenstjern, Weltumsegler und Wissenschaftler: Adam Johann von Krusenstern. 1770–1846. Ein Lebensbericht, Gernsbach: Casimir Katz Verlag, 1991; Vasilii Pasetskii, I.F. Krusenstern (1770–1846), Moscow: Nauka, 1974. On the interaction between Britain and Russia in navigation during eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in which Krusenstern actively participated, also see Simon Werrett, Navigational Enterprises in Europe and Its Empires, c.1730–1880, in Rebekah Higgitt and Richard Dunn (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 111–33; Cross, Anthony G., By the Banks of the Thames: Russians in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1980, pp. 165–73Google Scholar. His comprehensive Atlas of the Pacific was published in the Russian and French languages by the end of 1820s and improved several times in the 1830s–1840s. For details see Vasilii Pasetskiii, I.F. Krusenstern (1770–1846), Moscow: Nauka, 1974, pp. 89–109; Adam von Krusenstern, Atlas de l'Océan Pacifique, 2 vols., St Petersburg: n.p., 1824–7; Krusenstern, Atlas Iuzhnogo moria, 2 vols., St Petersburg: n.p., 1824–6; Krusenstern, Recueil de mémoires hydrographiques, pour servir d'analyse et d'explication à l'Atlas de l'Océan Pacifique, 2 vols., St Petersburg: n.p., 1824–7; Krusenstern, Atlas de l'Océan Pacifique, 2nd edn, St Petersburg: n.p., [1835]; Krusenstern, Supplémens au recueil des mémoires hydrographiques, publiés en 1826 et 1827, pour servir d'analyse et d'explication à l'Atlas de l'Océan Pacifique, St Petersburg: n.p., 1835; Krusenstern, Beyträge zur Hydrographie der Grössern Ozeane als Erläuterungen zu einer Charte des ganzen Erdkreises nach Mercator's Projection, Leipzig: P.G. Kummer, 1819.

24 John Ross (ed.), Memoir of the Celebrated Admiral Adam John de Krusenstern, the First Russian Circumnavigator with a Portrait and Correspondence (tr. Charlotte Bernhardi), London: Longmans, Green, Brown, and Longmans, 1856, p. i.

25 Ross, op. cit. (24), pp. 53–63.

26 Among publications that inspired my study of communications in close relation to networks of correspondence and patronage practices are the following: Roger Chartier, Alain Boureau and Cécile Dauphin (eds.), Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (tr. Christopher Woodall), Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997; Arthur L. Herman Jr, ‘The language of fidelity in early modern France’, Journal of Modern History (1995) 67(1), pp. 1–24; Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993; Sharon Kettering, ‘Friendship and clientage in early modern France’, French History (1992) 6(2), pp. 139–58. Mario Biagioli, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. A helpful overview of the field and of recent historiographic trends is Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti, ‘Letters and letter writing in early modern culture: an introduction’, Journal of Early Modern Studies (2014) 3, pp. 17–35.

27 Kopelev, op. cit. (23), p. 281.

28 Rumiantsev and Krusenstern discussed this issue when the latter asked permission of his patron to dedicate an important publication to him. See Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 21 February 1821, 2 May, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 62, 140.

29 About the importance of dinners at Rumiantsev's palace in St Petersburg in cultivating an intellectual environment see Igor′ Medvedev, ‘Intellektual′nye besedy za obedom: Iz budnei Rumiantsevskogo krudzka’, Bibliotekovedenie (2012) 4, pp. 16–21.

30 Graph N.P. Rumiantsev i nauka ego vremeni: Perepiska grapha N.P. Rumiantseva i akademika Ph.I. Kruga, Izdanie podgotovil akademik Igor′ Medvedev, Moscow and St Petersburg: Indrik, 2017.

31 Igor′ Medvedev, ‘Akademik Philipp Ivanovich Krug i ego arkhiv’, in Eduard Kolchinskii and Igor′ Medvedev (eds.), Russkaia nauka v biographicheskikh ocherkakh, vypusk 3, St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2003, pp. 179–89; А. Kunik, ‘Sodeistvie Kruga kantsleru graphu Rumiantsevu v pol′zu russkoi istorii’, Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosvezhenia (1850) 65(5), pp. 1–34.

32 Innes M. Keighren, Charles W.J. Withers and Bill Bell, Travels into Print: Exploration, Writing, and Publishing with John Murray, 1773–1859, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.

33 John Barrow to Adam Krusenstern, 3 November 1817, RSNA, Coll. 14, Inv. 1, File 199, l. 85rev.

34 John Barrow to Adam Krusenstern, 3 November 1817, RSNA, Coll. 14, Inv. 1, File 199, l. 85–85rev–86.

35 James Burney, A Chronological History of North-Eastern Voyages of Discovery and of the Early Eastern Navigations of the Russians, London: Payne & Foss, 1819; Burney, ‘A memoir of the geography of the north-eastern part of Asia, and on the question whether Asia and America are contiguous, or are separated by the sea’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1818) 108, pp. 9–23; Burney, Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, 5 vols., London: Printed by Luke Hansard, 1803–17. For the discussion of these ideas see also John Barrow to Adam Krusenstern, 3 November 1817, RSNA, Coll. 14, Inv.1, File 199, l. 86.

36 Michael Dettelbach, ‘Humboldtian science’, in N. Jardine, J. Secord and E.C. Spary (eds.), Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 287–304.

37 Michael S. Reidy, Tides of History: Ocean Science and Her Majesty's Navy, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

38 Deacon, op. cit. (15); Anita McConnell, No Sea Too Deep: The History of Oceanographic Instruments, Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1982.

39 On depth recording, sounding instruments, practices of shipboard science and difficulties faced during British polar expeditions between 1818 and 1845 also see Sarah Louise Millar, ‘Science at sea: soundings and instrumental knowledge in British polar expedition narratives, c.1818–1848’, Journal of Historical Geography (2013) 42, pp. 77–87.

40 John Barrow to Adam Krusenstern, 26 February 1818, RSNA, Coll. 14, Inv.1, File 199, l. 90.

41 Khristophor Liven to Karl Nesel′rode, 30 December 1817, dispatch no. 194, in Vneshniaia politika Rossii 19 nachala 20 veka: Dokumenty rossiiskogo ministerstva inostrannykh del, Moscow: Izdatel′stvo polititicheskoi literatury, 1976, seriia 2, 2(10), p. 799.

42 Pasetskii, op. cit. (16), pp. 462–3.

43 Erki Tammiksaar and Tarmo Kiik, ‘Origins of the Russian Antarctic expedition: 1819–1821’, Polar Record (2013) 49(249), pp. 180–92.

44 On the RAC activities in the exploration of the North Pacific see N.N. Bolkhovitinov (ed.), Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia i izuchenie Tikhookeanskogo severa, 1815–1841: sbornik dokumentov, Moscow: Nauka, 2005; Bolkhovitinov (ed.), Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia i izuchenie Tikhookeanskogo severa, 1799–1815: sbornik dokumentov, Moscow: Nauka, 1994.

45 Adam Krusenstern, ‘Introduction’, in A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, for the Purpose of Exploring a North-East Passage Undertaken in the Years 1815–1818, at the Expense of His Highness the Chancellor of the Empire, Count Romanzoff, in the ship Rurick, under the Command of the Lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Navy, Otto von Kotzebue (tr. H.E. Lloyd), 3 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1821, vol. 1, pp. 8–9.

46 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 12 November 1818, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 31 l. 53–53rev–54.

47 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, December 1817, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 28–28rev, 31.

48 For the instructions, which were drawn up for the surveys and expeditions supported by Rumiantsev in Alaska between 1818 and 1820, see Bolkhovitinov, Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia i izuchenie Tikhookeanskogo severa, 1815–1841, op. cit. (44), pp. 32–3; 38; 51–3; 81–3.

49 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 18 March 1820, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 92.

50 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 17 April 1820, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 93.

51 For example, see the letter from the directors of the RAC, who wrote that Rumiantsev's participation in the discoveries in the north is unpleasant for the Board of Directors, as ‘he steals their fame by introducing the discoveries to the foreign public’, and include an instruction not to provide him with full information about the expeditions’ results. See Venedikt Kramer and Andei Severin to Matvei Murav′ev, 6 October 1821, in Bolkhovitinov, Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia i izuchenie Tikhookeanskogo severa, 1815–1841, op. cit. (44), pp. 41–3.

52 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 3 March 1820, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 101.

53 Dane Kennedy, ‘Introduction’, in Kennedy (ed.), Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the World, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 1–18, 6. Also see Fraser MacDonald and Charles W.J. Withers (eds.), Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2016; Marie-Noëlle Bourguet, Christian Licoppe and H. Otto Sibum (eds.), Instruments, Travels and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 2002. For the Russian case see Simon Werrett, ‘Technology on display: instruments and identities on Russian voyages of exploration’, Russian Review (2011) 70(3), pp. 380–96.

54 Richard Sorrenson, ‘The ship as a scientific instrument in the eighteenth century’, Osiris, 2nd series (1996) 11, pp. 221–36. On the role of the ship as a key temporal and spatial mediator see Martin Dusinberre and Roland Wenzlhuemer, ‘Editorial: being in transit: ships and global incompatibilities’, Journal of Global History (2016) 11(2), pp. 155–62; Anyaa Anim-Addo, William Hasty and Kimberley Peters, ‘The mobilities of ships and shipped mobilities’, Mobilities (2014) 9(3) pp. 337–49; William Hasty and Kimberley Peters, ‘The ship in geography and the geographies of ships’, Geography Compass (2012) 6(11), pp. 660–76.

55 Krusenstern, op. cit. (45), pp. 15–16.

56 Krusenstern, op. cit. (45), pp. 13–14.

57 Extract of a letter from Madame Bernhardi, addressed to the editor, John Ross, Ostend, 13 August 1855, in Ross, op. cit. (24), p. 53.

58 Krusenstern, op. cit. (45), pp. 16–20.

59 On the new technology of canned foods used during the voyage on the Rurik see Krusenstern, op. cit. (45), pp. 18–20. On tasting British canned food and Russian dried meat during the Rurik's voyage see A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, op. cit. (45), vol. 1, pp. 178–80. Canned food was used for the first time by the Admiralty to equip John Ross's expedition of 1818. For more details see C. Thompson, ‘The heroic age of the tin can: technology and ideology in British Arctic exploration, 1818–1835’, in D. Killingray, M. Lincoln and N. Rigby (eds.), Maritime Empires: British Imperial Trade in the Nineteenth Century, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004, pp. 84–99.

60 The special device for getting samples of seawater from depth was called a bathometer in Russia. Its design was undergoing extensive improvement during that period. For more details see Deacon, op. cit. (15), p. 241; Nikolai Zubov, Otechestvennye moreplavateli: issledovateli moreii i okeanov, Moscow: Geografgiz, 1954, pp. 188–92.

61 The text of the navigational instruction was included in the version of Kotzebue's account of the voyage, which was published in the Russian language only. See ‘Morekhodnaia instruktsiia, dannaia flota leitenantu gospodinu Kotzebue’, in Puteshestvie v Iuzhnyi okean i v Beringov proliv dlia otyskaniia severo-vostochnogo morskogo prokhoda, predpriniatoe v 1815, 1816, 1817 i 1818 godakh izhdiveniem ego siiatel′stva, gospodina gosudarstvennogo kantslera, grapha Nikolaia Petrovicha Rumiantseva na korable Rurik pod nachal′stvom flota leitenanta Kotzebue, 3 vols., St Petersburg: v tipographii N. Grecha, 1821–3, vol. 3, pp. xxv–cxlviii.

62 On the comprehensive scientific programme of the expedition see Johann Caspar Horner, ‘Instructions for the astronomical and physical operations on the voyage to the North Pole, under the command of Otto von Kotzebue’, in A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, op. cit. (45), vol. 1, pp. 41–83.

63 Horner, op. cit. (62), p. 69.

64 Johann Caspar Horner, ‘Remarks on the specific gravity of sea-water in different latitudes, and on the temperature of the ocean at different depths’, in A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, op. cit. (45), vol. 3, pp. 425–35. Horner, ‘Areometrical observations’, in A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, op. cit. (45), vol. 3, pp. 403–24.

65 Adelbert von Chamisso, A Voyage around the World with the Romanzov Exploring Expedition in the Years 1815–1818 in the Brig Rurik, Captain Otto von Kotzebue (tr. Henry Kratz), Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986, p. 23, 24.

66 Chamisso, op. cit. (65), p. 22. Also see Leibersohn, op. cit. (14), p. 120.

67 Tat′iana Lukina, Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz, Leningrad: Nauka, 1975, p. 28, 54; A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, op. cit. (45), vol. 1, pp. 180, 185.

68 A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, op. cit. (45), vol. 2, pp. 160–1, 176–7; Chamisso, op. cit. (65), p. 173–4.

69 For example, see Deacon, op. cit. (15), p. 232, 236; Vasilii Esakov, ‘Krugosvetnye plavaniia O.E. Kotsebue i ikh znachenie dlia geograficheskoi nauki’, Trudy Instituta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR (1962) 42(3), pp. 130–50; Zubov, op. cit. (60), pp. 160–5.

70 Andreas W. Daum, ‘German naturalists in the Pacific around 1800: entanglement, autonomy, and a transnational culture of expertise’, in Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess and Ulrike Strasser (eds.), Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019, pp. 79–102; Gerhard Kortum, ‘Germania in Pacifico: Humboldt, Chamisso and other early German contributions to Pacific research, 1741–1876’, in Keith R. Benson and Philip F. Rehbock (eds.), Oceanographic History: The Pacific and Beyond, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2002, pp. 107–17; Barbara Sweetland Smith (ed.), Science under Sail: Russia's Great Voyages to America, 1728–1867, Anchorage, AK: Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 2000, pp. 24–6; Paul Hiepko, ‘Der Naturwissenschaftler Adelbert von Chamisso und das Herbarium am Botanische Museum in Schöneberg’, in Klaus Bździach (ed.), Mit den Augen des Fremden: Adelbert von Chamisso – Dichter, Naturwissenschaftler, Weltreisender, Berlin: Gesellschaft für interregionalen Kulturaustausch and Kreuzberg Museum, 1984, pp. 110–13; P.A. Novikov, ‘Zoologicheskie issledovaniia A. Chamisso i I. Eschscholtza vo vremia krugosvetnoi ekspeditsii O. Kotzebue na “Rurike” (1815–18)’, Trudy Instituta istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR (1962) 40(9), pp. 248–82.

71 Hasty and Peters, op. cit. (54), p. 671.

72 Barrow, John, A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions; Undertaken Chiefly for the Purpose of Discovering a North-East, North-West or Polar Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, London: John Murray, 1818, pp. 357–63Google Scholar.

73 Barrow, John, ‘Kotzebue: Voyage of Discovery’, Quarterly Review (1822) 26(52), pp. 341–64Google Scholar (on currents see 354–5).

74 Adam Krusenstern, ‘Dopolneniia, pisannye v noiabre mesiatze 1819’, in Puteshestvie v Iuzhnyi okean i v Beringov proliv, op. cit. (61), chast′ 1, pp. lxvii–cxviii.

75 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 26 March 1822, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 125.

76 Emil Lenz, ‘Phisicheskie nabludeniia, proizvedennye vo vremia krugosvetnogo puteshestviia pod komandovaniem kapitana Otto von Kotzebue v 1923. 1824, 1825 i 1826’, in Lenz, Izbrannye trudy (ed. T.P. Kravtz), Moscow: Izdatel′stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1950, pp. 9–144. For a detailed description of the bathometer designed by Professor Parrot with the assistance of Lenz see pp. 26–39.

77 Mills, op. cit. (15), pp. 43–52; Deacon, op. cit. (15), pp. 228–42.

78 ‘Patrioticheskoe predpriatie’, Syn Otechestva (1815) 24, pp. 101–14.

79 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 13 August 1817, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 23.

80 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 12 April 1818, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 34.

81 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 11 April 1818, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 33–33rev.

82 Pis′ma grapha Berkhu, N.P. Rumiantseva k V.N., 1817–1822, Letopis′ zaniatii Arkheographicheskoi komissii: 1872–1875 (1877) 6, pp. 130–64Google Scholar; Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 7 July 1818, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 38–38rev. See also Berkh's publications on Arctic exploration, including expeditions led by British officers, which came out in collaboration with Rumiantsev and Krusenstern: Vasilii Berkh, Khronologicheskaia istoriia vsekh puteshestvii v severnye poliarnye strany, s prisovokupleniem obozreniia phizicheskikh svoistv togo kraia, St Petersburg: Voennaia tipographia Glavnogo shtaba, 1821–3; Berkh, ‘Puteshestviia kapitanov Rossa i Bukhana v severnye poliarnye strany’, Syn Otechestva (1822) 75(3), pp. 99–116; 75(4), pp. 147–58; 75(5), pp. 195–207; Berkh, ‘Puteshestvie kapitana Parry v 1819 godu, dlia otkrytiia severo-zapadnogo puti’, Severnyi arkhiv (1822) 10, pp. 277–312; 11, pp. 350–65; 12, pp. 430–44; 13, pp. 36–66.

83 Entdeckungs-Reise in die Süd-See und nach der Berings-Strasse zur Erforschung einer nordöstlichen Durchfahrt: unternommen in den Jahren 1815, 1816, 1817, und 1818, auf Kosten Sr. Erlaucht des Herrn Reichs-Kanzlers Grafen Rumanzoff auf dem Schiffe Rurick unter dem Befehle des Lieutenants der Russisch-Kaiserlichen Marine Otto von Kotzebue, 3 vols., Weimar: Verlegt von den Gebrüdern Hoffmann, 1821; Puteshestvie v Iuzhnyi okean i v Beringov proliv, op. cit. (61); Ontdekkingsreis in de Zuid-Zee en naar de Berings-Straat in de jaren 1815, 1816, 1817 en 1818: onder het bevel van Otto von Kotzebue/uit het Hoogduitsch, Amsterdam: J. van der Hey, 1822.

84 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, June 1824, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 141.

85 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 16 October, 5 November 1818, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 52; 55.

86 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, July 1819, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 77.

87 Louis M. Choris, Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, avec des portraits de sauvages d'Amerique, d'Asie, d'Afrique, et des iles du Grand ocean; des paysages, des vues maritimes, et plusieurs objets d'histoire naturelle; accompagne de descriptions par m. le baron Cuvier, et m. A. de Chamisso, et d'observations sur les cranes humains, par m. le docteur Gall, Paris: Impr. de Firmin Didot, 1822; Choris, Vues et payysages des régions équinoxiales recueiillis dans un voyage authour du monde, Paris: Paul Renouard, 1826. On Choris's activities making contacts in Paris and preparing the drawings he made during the Rurik's voyage for publication see Leibersohn, op. cit. (14), pp. 94–7. About his drawings and participation in the expedition also see Tyler, Ron, ‘“Entirely new and very interesting things”: Louis Choris and the Kotzebue expedition, 1815–1818’, Imprint (2017) 42(2), pp. 2–43Google Scholar.

88 On the issue of publishing the Rurik's voyage in France see Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 20 November 1820, January 1821, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 99–101, 103–103rev. On Krusenstern's emotional reaction concerning the quality of Choris's publication see Nikolai Rumiantsev to Philipp Krug, 11 February 1821, in Graph N.P. Rumiantsev i nauka ego vremeni, op. cit. (61), p. 256.

89 John Barrow to Adam von Krusenstern, 8 November 1820, RSNA, Coll. 14, Inv.1, File 199, l. 95.

90 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 29 January 1821, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 107. On Joseph Banks and his activities see Juterczenka, Sünne, ‘Joseph Banks and the meanings of maritime exploration in eighteenth-century Europe’, Journal for Maritime Research (2020) 21(1–2), pp. 45–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chambers, Neil, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collecting, 1770–1830, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007Google Scholar; Gascoigne, John, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994Google Scholar; Harold Burnell Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 1743–1820, London: British Museum of Natural History, 1988; and many others.

91 Nikolai Rumiantsev to Adam Krusenstern, 24 October 1822, NAE, Coll. 1414, Inv. 1, File 23, l. 131.

92 Barrow, op. cit. (73), p. 346.