Monument to Admiral Faddei Bellingshausen
Faddei Bellingshausen (1778-1852) was the military governor of Kronstadt from 1839. This monument was set up in 1870 on the boulevarde that runs along the northern side of the Obvodny Canal. It was designed by the sculptor I. Schroeder, together with the architect Hyppolito Monighetti.
The celebrated navigator is depicted resting on a model of the globe supported by a small base decorated with sculptural figures of dolphins - symbols of the sea.
In 1819 Bellingshausen was appointed to command the first Russian expedition to the Antarctic with instructions to go as near to the South Pole as possible. The Vostok commanded by Bellingshausen and the Mirny under Mikhail Lazarev, sailed from Kronstadt in July 1819 and surveyed the South Georgia Islands.
The Vostok and the Mirny arrived at Sydney in March-April 1820 where they received a warm welcome from Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who gave them permission to establish an astronomical observatory on the North Head. The degree of interest and support provided by Macquarie was related directly to the treatment and assistance that he felt he had received from Russian naval officers at Kronstadt and in the Caspian Sea in 1807.
After visiting Fiji and the Sandwich Islands the expedition, under the command Bellingshausen, returned again to Sydney for supplies in September 1820, and on 12 November sailed for the Antarctic continent. On this voyage Peter I Island and Alexander I Land were discovered and Macquarie Island was mapped. The ships returned to Russia in 1821.
