Fedor petrovich litke and his expeditions to novaya zemlya
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27 conditions permitted, to survey the entire east coast of Novaya Zemlya. Failing that, he was again to send oared boats through Matochkin Shar; they were then to survey the east coast north and south from there. Alternatively he was to take the brig through Karskiye Vorota and start his survey of the east coast from there. If he encountered no ice in the Kara Sea he was also instructed to survey the mainland coast from Yugorskiy Shar to Obskaya Guba. Presumably if he found the coasts of Novaya Zemlya totally blocked by ice, he was directed to head north across the Barents Sea midway between Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard, to see how far he could penetrate in that direction. He was also asked to instruct and supervise Navigation officer Ivan Nikiforovich Ivanov who was to survey and sound the mouth of the Pechora and survey the coast east from there and to instruct and supervise another officer (still unidentified but it would in fact be Leytenant P. A. Demidov) in carrying out a survey and soundings in the White Sea and in surveying the shoals in the gorlo. In light of the difference in his determinations of the longitude of Kanin Nos from those established earlier, he was directed to check the longitudes of several points on the west side of the gorlo in order to establish its width precisely. And finally he was to determine the longitude of Mys Mikulkin, the southeastern tip of Poluostrov Kaninskiy, in order to establish, by comparison with that of Kanin Nos, the area of the peninsula; and he was even to pinpoint the southern tip of Ostrov Kolguyev, to determine the width of the strait between it and the mainland. 52 While these instructions were identified as only a guide for the season’s operations, they still strike one as being extremely ambitious for one officer, until one realizes that they were written by Litke himself, at the request of the Admiralty. 53 In other words he had given himself the widest possible freedom of action, as might be dictated by ice conditions. Accompanied by his brother Aleksandr Petrovich and seaman Pavel Krupenikov, Litke set off from St Petersburg by sleigh on 15 March 1824 and, to his relief found the sledging route still in quite good conditions. He was anticipating a rapid, accident-free trip to Arkhangel’sk when disaster struck. On the night of 19/20 March a severe blizzard began and the ‘road’ was totally obscured by snow. The horses, hitched in tandem, blundered off the packed road down a steep embankment and the covered sleigh overturned. Litke, his brother, Krupenikov and the driver were all trapped in the snow under the sleigh. Only the young postilion was thrown clear, but he just ran around howling. Litke found himself unable to move and almost suffocated in the snow. The driver finally managed to scramble out and hauled Litke and his brother out and between them they managed to right the overturned sleigh. When they final located Krupenikov he was unconscious and despite their best efforts, rubbing him in front of a fire which they lit, he never regained consciousness. There was no sign of injury, so it had to be assumed that he had suffocated in the snow. The horses had escaped injury and they were able to get the sleigh back on the packed road and to start at a walk towards the nearest station, Chernoslobodskaya. A naval surgeon whom they found there, accompanying a party of sailors to Arkhangel’sk, was unable to revive the unconscious man. To make matters worse for Litke, despite his protests the local priest insisted that he and his brother must remain there until the local ispravnik could be summoned in order to carry out a postmortem. Fortunately, however, another official happened to arrive and, siding with Litke, ordered that he be provided with fresh horses and be allowed to proceed, saving him a further delay of several days. He and his brother reached Arkhangel’sk without further incident on 25 March. 54
ibid, p. 250. 53 Alekseev, Fedor Petrovich Litke, p. 69. 54 Litke, Chetyrekhkratnoye puteshestviye, p. 251. 28 Litke’s first priority was to make the arrangements for the detachment which was to head for the Pechora under Leytenant Ivanov. The latter arrived in Arkhangel’sk on the 29 th and he and his crew set off overland to Pustozersk, on the lower Pechora, a short distance upstream from the site of present city of Naryan-Mar, on 2 April. Litke’s next concern was to get both his own vessel (Novaya Zemlya once again) and the brig Ketti (Katie) which was to carry out the White Sea surveys, ready for sea. The commander of the latter vessel, Leytenant Demidov, did not reach Arkhangel’sk until the end of May, by which time, under Litke’s supervision, his brig was ready for sea. Meanwhile, with the same officers and almost the same crew as in 1823, Litke had also been preparing his own vessel for sea. Both vessels were ready to sail by 14 June but persistent northwesterly winds delayed their departure until the 17 th when the wind veered through north to northeast. Both brigs headed downriver on the morning of the 18 th , and although delayed for a few hours by a northwest wind off Ostrov Mud’yuzhskiy, they were able to cross the bar and head out to sea at 8 pm Katie, being a slower sailer, was soon left astern. Litke wanted to check the longitude of the Zimniye Gory (just inland of the present settlement of Zinmnegorsk on the eastern shore of the White Sea) but, perversely, the wind now swung into the east and strengthened to a gale, enveloping everything in wet fog. Resignedly forced to tack, Litke pushed on, until the evening of the 20 th , when the main topsail yard snapped in the middle. To repair the damage he ran into the lee of Mys Keretskiy, just south of the Zimniye Gory, where he dropped anchor. While the yard was being replaced Litke was able to determine his longitude: 39°48′15″E. The brig got under way with a gentle easterly on the morning of the 22 nd , but the wind soon backed to the northeast. Strong northeasterlies, guided by the alignment of the coasts, were (and are) notorious in the gorlo, and this was no exception. Novaya Zemlya tacked for five days, trying to make some northward progress, but to little avail; by the evening of the 26 th the brig was off Chapoma, a village on the north shore where the coast begins to swing west towards Kandalakshaya Guba. It was not until the 28 th that Litke was able to make some northward progress by tacking; in the morning the brig was off Pulongskiy Mys and by noon on the 29 th off Ostrov Sosnovets. By the morning of the 30 th Novaya Zemlya was off Mys Voronov on the south shore and at noon Litke was able to get a clear sun-shot to determine its longitude. He next planned to head straight north to Konyushin Nos from Ostrov Morzhovets (now Ostrov Bol’shoe Chaich’ye) but when a break in the fog revealed the island on a totally different bearing from what he expected, he decided that tacking in fog in these shoal-strewn waters was very dangerous and he decided instead to head over to the north shore. By the morning of 1 July the brig was off Mys Orlovskiy. It rounded Svyatoy Nos at 4 am on the 2 nd and at 7 dropped anchor at its previous anchorage near the Iokangskie Ostrova. Litke’s purpose in coming here was simply to check his chronometers against the established longitude of this location. He had completed this task by 5 July. During their visit to the Iokangskie Ostrova on the evening of the 4th Litke and his men experienced the phenomenon, rather unusual for the latitude, of a severe thunderstorm with torrential rain and a hailstorm with large hailstones. 55 Litke took the opportunity to fill his water barrels with fresh water while the men enjoyed bathing in a canvas bath-house erected on shore; Litke also stocked up with fresh salmon and reindeer meat purchased from the Sami. When the brig weighed anchor on the 55 ibid, p. 254. Yüklə 1,69 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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