page_title: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Coat of arms of Bellingshausen family
context_page_description: Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, a Russian naval officer, cartographer and explorer of Baltic German extraction, who ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. He participated in the First Russian circumnavigation of the globe and subsequently became a leader of another circumnavigation expedition that discovered the continent of Antarctica.
  Bellingshausen was born on Osel Island. He started his service in the Russian Baltic Fleet, and after distinguishing himself joined the First Russian circumnavigation of the Earth in 1803–1806, serving on the merchant ship Nadezhda under the captaincy of Adam Johann von Krusenstern. After the journey he published a collection of maps of the newly explored areas and islands of the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, he commanded several ships of the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets.
  As a prominent cartographer, Bellingshausen was appointed to command the Russian circumnavigation of the globe in 1819–1821, intended to explore the Southern Ocean and to find land in the proximity of the South Pole.
context_section_description: Bellingshausen was born to a Baltic German noble Bellingshausen family in the Lahhentagge manor, Ösel County in the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire; now Saare County, Estonia. His paternal family had Holsteinish origins, the surname Bellingshausen was first recorded in Lübeck. He enlisted as a cadet in the Imperial Russian Navy at the age of ten. After graduating from the Kronstadt naval academy at age eighteen, Bellingshausen rapidly rose to the rank of captain.
caption: Coat of arms of Bellingshausen family
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