Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences

Of the European explorers who visited Aotearoa in the 19th Century, perhaps the lowest profile visitor was Commander Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, sent by the Russian Government in 1820, mainly to confirm the existence of the 'Great Southern Continent' (Antarctica).

And he was successful in his visit to our shores, because he got away without the tiniest scrap of conflict, and with plenty of food and supplies as well as a massive cargo of precious taonga (treasures). Most of which still resides at the Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences, on University Embankment opposite St Petersburg's Winter Palace.

The Vostok sailed, with her little sister ship, the Mirnyi, via Rio de Janiero, to the South Pacific on a wide ranging mission to check out the Southern Ocean and to sight Antarctica, which they did near St Martha Island. Before heading home they visited Sydney (Port Jackson). Then, thanks to the accounts of James Cook, available due sharing of records and maps at that time between British and Russian sailors, and some wild winds, the Vostok and Mirnyi ended up in Queen Charlotte Sound (Totaranui) which was a place of trade, where the North and South Island Iwi did business.

Those who came to greet Bellingshausen's massive tall ship and it's mate were the traditional trading tribes of Totaranui; Rangitane, Ngati Tara, Ngati Apa, Ngati Tahu, Ngati Kuia and Ngati Tumatakokiri and they knew how to trade. European tools and vegetable seeds were exchanged for fresh food, and then carved pieces, of increasing value, including fish hooks and adzes, carved panels and tekoteko. Flax seeds which were traded were duly planted in Southern Crimea where great swathes remain in production today.

Only seven years after that visit, Te Rauparaha and his raiding parties of Ngati Toa and Te Atiawa all but decimated the Iwi and Hapu of the Marlborough Sounds, as well as other tribes. This made the Russian collection all the more irreplaceable.

Thanks to painstakingly particular Russian journal keeping, there is a good record of what is involved. Some of it went to another institute, named for the Vostok's ethnographer who led the trading, Simonov, at the Smirnov Collection at the University of Kazan.

It may or may not be that the collecction is intact and in place here, and NZPlaces doesn't know how one would go about visiting it. If you happen to work that out, please take a photo and send it in.

The Russians didn't come again, at least not immediately, although there was a lot of fear about the possibility, which sparked the construction of all manner of Coastal Defences, from the 1880s onwards. Curiously, the mysterious sinking of the Russian cruise ship Mikahel Lermentov, in 1986, took place only a short distance from Totaranui where the 1820 Bellingshausen first meeting took place.

There is a translation of the journals here, and Gerard Hindmarsh gives a full account of the story in NZGeographic, his final comment being "Bellingshausen followed Cook but they came as equals."

Image Credits: Google Maps