VASILY MIKHAILOVICH

GOLOVNIN (1776-1831)  , Russian vice-admiral, was born on the loth of April 1776 in the village of Gulynki in the province of Ryazan, and received his education at the Cronstadt naval school . From 18o1 to 18o6 he served as a volunteer in the English navy . In 1807 he was commissioned by the Russian government to survey the coasts of Kamchatka and of Russian America, including also the Kurile Islands . Golovnin sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and on the 5th of October 1809, arrived in Kamchatka . In 181o, whilst attempting to survey the coast of the island of Kunashiri, he was seized by the Japanese, and was retained by them as a prisoner, until the 13th of October 1813, when he was liberated, and in the following year he returned to St Petersburg . Soon after this the government planned another expedition, which had for its object the circumnavigation of the globe by a Russian ship, and Golovnin was appointed to the command . He started from St Petersburg on the 7th of September 1817, sailed round Cape Horn, and arrived in Kamchatka in the following May . He returned to Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and landed at St Petersburg on the 17th of September 1819 . He died on the 12th of July 1831 . Golovnin published several works, of which the following are the most important:—Journey to Kamchatka (2 vols., 1819); Journey Round the World (2 vo1s., 1822) ; and Narrative of my Captivity in Japan, 2811–1813 (2 vols., 1816) . The last has been translated into , French, German and English, the English edition being in three volumes (1824) . A complete edition of his works was published at St Petersburg in five volumes in 1864, with maps and charts, and a biography of the author by N .

Grech .