Gennady Nevelskoy

Gennady Nevelskoy

Nevelskoy on a 1989 Soviet commemorative stamp

Nevelskoy Strait is the narrowest section of the Strait of Tartary

Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy (Russian: Генна́дий Ива́нович Невельско́й; December 5 [O.S. November 23] 1813 in Drakino, now in Soligalichsky District, Kostroma Oblast – April 29 [O.S. April 17] 1876 in St. Petersburg) was a Russian navigator.

In 1848 Nevelskoy led the expedition in the Russian Far East, exploring the area of the Sakhalin and the outlet of the Amur River. He proved that the Strait of Tartary was not a gulf, but indeed a strait, connected to Amur's estuary by a narrow section later called Nevelskoy Strait. On 13 August 1850 he founded Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, the first Russian settlement in the region.

Not knowing about the efforts of Japanese navigator Mamiya Rinzō who explored the same area forty years earlier, the Russians took Nevelskoy's report as the first proof that Sakhalin is indeed an island. They renamed the Gulf of Tartary the Strait of Tartary, and named the northernmost, narrowest section of the strait, the Strait of Nevelskoy, in the captain's honour. It connects the strait's main body (formerly known as the Gulf of Tartary) with the Amur Liman (Amur River estuary).

Memory

The following entities are named after Nevelskoy:

• The Gulf and the Strait of the Far East, the city Nevelskoi in the Sakhalin Oblast, a street in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Kholmsk (and in other cities of the Sah. area), Novosibirsk, village Wrangell Nakhodka and several other places.
• Monuments in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, as the founder of the city.
• The passenger ship '(Project 860)' Amur River Shipping Company.
• The Maritime State University in Vladivostok.
• The Nevelskoi Nautical School, Kholmsk.
• In 1997, the Russian Yacht Admiral Nevelskoi, «Адмирал Невельской», forty-foot-long (12-metre), was found in the lagoon of Rodrigues Island after a two years crew-less voyage. The yacht belonged formerly to the Maritime State University in Vladivostok . It was officially given to Honorable Bernard Eric Typhis Degtyarenko in 2010 by the Government of Russia and declared a Maritime Museum. According to experts it is one of the most expensive yacht of the world in its category due to its historical value reaching several millions US dollars.
• Planes of the Russian airline Aeroflot^[1]
• Since 2007, the Ivanovo-Voznesensk sea cadet corps has been named after Nevelskoy.^[2]
• On 25.07.2011, the name "Admiral Nevelskoi is a large landing ship project 775 (PAC).

Memorials:

• Until the mid-1990s there was a monument of Nevelskoy in Khabarovsk. During the night of 17 to 18 May 1996 the monument in Central Park of Culture and Rest of Khabarovsk was destroyed by minors.^[3] The sculpture was dismantled for reconstruction and has not been restored.
• July 16, 2008, in the city of Irkutsk, on the wall of Holy Cross Church (wedding place Gennady Nevelskoi and Catherine Yelchaninova) was a memorial plaque. The idea belongs to the installation of Irkutsk poet and member of the Board of Navy veterans Irkutsk Gennady Haidee.^[4]
• The monument in the city of Korsakov Sakhalin Oblast. Opened in July 2013^[5]

References