First Russian circumnavigation
The first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth took place from August 1803 to August 1806 and was carried out on two ships, the Nadezhda and the Neva, under the commands of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Yuri Lisyansky, respectively. The expedition had complementary economic, diplomatic, and exploratory goals.
Harbour of St Paul on the Island of Cadiack, Russian sloop-of-war Neva
Nikolay Rumyantsev, Russian statesman who sponsored the expedition
Krusenstern's portrait by Johann Friedrich Weitsch, 1808
Unknown painter. The portrait of the admiral Nikolay Mordvinov, stored in Hermitage
Nadezhda (1802 Russian ship)
Nadezhda was a three-masted sloop, the ex-British merchantman and slave ship Leander, launched in 1799. A French privateer captured her in 1801, but she quickly came back into British hands. Private Russian parties purchased her in 1802 for the first Russian circumnavigation of the world (1803-1806), and renamed her. Although it is common to see references to the "frigate Nadezhda", she was a sloop, not a frigate, and she was never a warship. After her voyage of exploration she served as a merchant vessel for her owner, the Russian-American Company, and was lost in 1808.
The sloop Nadezhda