Martin Spangberg

Martin Petersen Spangberg , also Morten Pedersen Spangsberg ( Russian Мартын Петрович Петрович Шпанберг , Martyn Petrowitsch Schpanberg; born December 31, 1696 in Strandby, Jerne Sogn , Denmark ; † September 26, 1761 in Kronstadt , Russian Empire ) was a Danish explorer in Russia. He found the sea route from the Russian Far East to Japan .

Life

Spangberg joined the Imperial Russian Navy in 1720 . He served on the Baltic Sea for a few years before taking part in the First Kamchatka Expedition in 1725 with the rank of lieutenant under the direction of his compatriot Vitus Bering as his deputy . He distinguished himself in such a way that he was subsequently promoted to captain of the third degree.

When Bering was commissioned with the Second Kamchatka Expedition (also known as the Great Nordic Expedition ), Spangberg was again assigned to him as a deputy. He headed the Pacific Department, whose mission was to find a sea route from Kamchatka to the mouth of the Amur and on to Japan in order to facilitate direct trade relations between Russia and Japan. Spangberg traveled to Okhotsk in 1734 and oversaw the construction of two expedition ships, the brigantine Archangel Michail and the sloop Nadeshda . Together with St. Gavriil , who came from the First Kamchatka Expedition and had meanwhile served on the Shestakov expedition , he had three ships at his disposal when he lifted anchor in Okhotsk in 1738. He first drove to Bolsheretsk on Kamchatka and then sailed alone with the Sankt Gavriil to the Kuril Islands , many of which he mapped before returning to Kamchatka to winter. In 1739 he found his way to Honshū , mapped the east coast of Hokkaidō and returned to Okhotsk via Kamchatka. After this great achievement Bering sent him to report to Saint Petersburg, where his report was questioned and asked to repeat the trip. So he set off again in 1742, but this time was unsuccessful. At least one of his ships reached Sakhalin .

After Bering's death, Spangberg traveled back to Saint Petersburg on his own initiative in 1745. He was tried and sentenced to death, but then pardoned and merely demoted to lieutenant. When he was shipwrecked off Arkhangelsk , he was tried again but acquitted. He served in the Baltic Fleet until his death in 1761 .

An island, a mountain on Sakhalin, two capes and a strait are named after Spangberg .

Familiar

Martin Spangberg was married. With his wife Marija Andrejewna he had the children Andrei (1722–1756) and Anna († before 1761).

literature

• Tatjana Fjodorova, Birgit Leick Lampe, Sigurd Rambusch, Sorensen Days: Martin Spangsberg: A Danish Explorer in Russian Service . Fiskeri- og Søfartsmuseet, Esbjerg 2002, ISBN 87-90982-05-3 (English).
• Gerhard Friedrich Müller : News of sea voyages, and discoveries made at sea, which have long since happened from Russia on the coasts of the Eißmeer and on the Eastern Ocean towards Japan and America . In: Collection of Russian History , Volume 3, 1st - 3rd Item, Saint Petersburg 1758 ( available online from the Goettingen SUB Digitization Center).
• Kaj Birket-Smith: Morten Spangberg in Dansk biografisk leksikon (Danish)
• Martin Spangberg . In: John Rosén, Theodor Westrin, Bernhard Meijer (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 1st edition. tape 15 : Socker – Tengström . Gernandts boktryckeri, Stockholm 1891, Sp. 110 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
• Lexicon entry in the Russian Biographical Lexicon, Saint Petersburg 1911, p. 376 f. (Russian).

Web links

• А. С. Зуев: Шпанберг, Мартин in the history dictionary of Siberia (2009, Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Genealogy of the Spangsberg family (Slægten Spangsberg) ( Memento from August 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Kaj Birket-Smith: Morten Spangberg in Dansk biografisk leksikon (Danish).
3. ↑ ^{a b} А. С. Зуев: Шпанберг, Мартин in the history dictionary of Siberia, 2009.