The first graduating class of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in 1817 gave Russia many bright historical figures, but they all ended up in the shadow of Pushkin’s glory. And it is to them that the heartfelt lines of the sixties poet Alexander Gorodnitsky are dedicated:
- Volkhovsky, the first student,
- Prince Gorchakov and the genius Pushkin…
- The most far-sighted of them all
- There was a navigator named Matyushkin,
- That, having entrusted oneself to the waves,
- I managed to get to know all the countries of the world,
- And it’s a pity that he is known to us
- Only as a poet’s lyceum friend.
The Frenchman and Federnelka
Alexander Pushkin (nicknamed Frenchman at school) and Fyodor Matyushkin (Federnelka) were bound by a warm youthful friendship. They read books about the seas and adventures together, loved to listen to the stories of retired sailors who lived in the outbuilding of Tsarskoye Selo Park, and shared their plans for the future. Some of Pushkin’s biographers believe that it was he who conceived the dream of the sea in his friend’s heart.
Fyodor Matyushkin studied diligently. He was only bad at foreign languages. But when the lyceum students were distributed according to their knowledge of Russian, Matyushkin was fifteenth. Surprisingly, Alexander Pushkin was one step lower, sixteenth.
At the end of his studies, Fyodor Matyushkin shared his secret desire to become a sailor with the Lyceum Director Yegor Antonovich Engelhardt. His friends, the sailors Ivan Fyodorovich Kruzenshtern and Vasily Mikhailovich Golovnin, who led the first Russian round-the-world expeditions, often visited the Director’s house. And soon after graduating from the Lyceum, eighteen-year-old Fyodor Matyushkin, thanks to Engelhardt’s efforts, became a midshipman and set sail as part of Vasily Golovnin’s next round-the-world expedition on the sloop “Kamchatka”.
First voyages
His companions on the voyage were peers – junior watch officer Baron Ferdinand Wrangel and midshipman Fyodor Litke. Both of them, like Fyodor Matyushkin, would become famous Russian admirals. Vasily Golovnin appreciated the diligence and resourcefulness of midshipman Matyushkin and promoted him to midshipman during the voyage.
Upon returning from his round-the-world expedition, Ferdinand Wrangel was appointed head of an expedition to explore the northern shores of Eastern Siberia. In the spring of 1820, Wrangel invited Matyushkin to join him on an expedition to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Fyodor agreed without the slightest hesitation.
Since the 17th century, the northern shores of Siberia, along with the adjacent islands, have been visited many times by Russian Cossacks and industrialists. Some of the lands there were partially described by naval officers. However, by the 19th century, these sea maps were outdated and full of inaccuracies. In addition, there were constant rumors about the existence of inhabited lands in the Arctic Ocean north of the mouth of the Kolyma River, which became known as “Sannikov Land”.
Vasily Golovnin’s sloop “Kamchatka”.
Wrangel was appointed head of the Kolyma expedition. He took as his assistants midshipman Fyodor Matyushkin, navigator Prokopiy Kozmin, doctor Adolf Kiber, as well as mechanic Stepan Ivannikov and sailor Mikhail Nekhoroshkov. They decided to abandon the voyage on the research vessel and explore the unknown lands by dog sled.
Names on cards
The expedition headed for the research area by land across Siberia. As they approached Kolyma, Wrangel sent Matyushkin ahead to set up the expedition base in Nizhne-Kolymsk. The young officer bought a log house for his comrades there, built a tower for astronomical research, and equipped an ice cellar for storing food.
When the research expeditions began, the officers split up. Wrangel went to the sea coast, Matyushkin on an expedition along the Maly Anyuy River, during which he thoroughly studied the life of the Chukchi who inhabited these lands. And he was the first of the expedition members to receive information from them about the land “that can be seen from Cape Yakan.”
This was an island that was later named after Wrangel. And the baron named one of the capes in Chaunskaya Bay on the Chukotka Peninsula after Matyushkin.
F.P. Wrangel.
This polar expedition lasted four years. During it, the coast of Siberia from Indigirka to Kolyuchinskaya Bay, as well as Kolyma, Bolshoy and Maly Anyuy were thoroughly studied. But they failed to discover inhabited land north of the Medvezhyi Islands. In the summer of 1824, Matyushkin, together with a Yukaghir guide, sailed for many months on a raft tied with willow twigs along Maly Anyuy, during which he was on the brink of death more than once.
The outstanding achievements of this polar exploration belong equally to Wrangel and Matyushkin. However, both then and today, any achievements are associated exclusively with the name of the chief. Matyushkin’s merits were overshadowed.
– About our future rewards – I confess that for some time now I have become indifferent to everything – I don’t care whether I will be a captain-lieutenant or remain a midshipman – even if I have done little, at least I have suffered so much that any reward will not be a reward. Who will return four years of my life to me? Who will return my completely lost and ruined health? No, with the change in the weather (it is winter here again) I began to have rheumatism – at my age, at 24 years old – rheumatism – Matyushkin wrote bitterly to Engelhardt.
Friend of the Decembrists and sailors
Upon returning from the polar expedition, Matyushkin was sent to serve in Kronstadt. In December 1825, during the Decembrist uprising, he sailed around the world on the sloop “Krotkiy”. There is no documentary evidence that Fyodor Fyodorovich was a member of any of the secret societies. But the navigator’s closest friends were prominent Decembrists – Pushchin, Volkhovsky, Kuchelbecker, Batenkov. If Matyushkin was not a member of secret societies, he certainly sympathized with them. Until the end of his life, he remained a man of democratic convictions.
Having already become an admiral, during the discussion of the draft of the new naval regulations, he spoke out against the preservation of corporal punishment in the navy, against the disdainful attitude towards the “lower ranks”:
“There is no need to consider a sailor not a man, but a machine; to pray, to walk, to sleep, to sit, to sing, to dance to a pipe – kills a man first morally, then physically… A man is supported most of all by hope, an assumption, a dream. Does a sailor have them? After 20 years of service, he returns home in a worn-out overcoat. That is all that he sees ahead… It is a great pity that the vacations of the lower ranks have been reduced.”
S.G. Chirikov Portrait of Fedor Fedorovich Matyushkin. In the 1810s.
Since 1835, Captain-Lieutenant Matyushkin has served on the Black Sea. During military operations in the Caucasus, his ship patrols the Black Sea coast. In February 1837, terrible news reaches him: Pushkin has been killed. In despair, Matyushkin writes a letter to his lyceum friend Mikhail Yakovlev:
“Pushkin is killed! Yakovlev! How did you allow this? What scoundrel raised his hand against him? Yakovlev, Yakovlev! How could you allow this? Our circle is thinning…”.
In 1849, Matyushkin, already with the rank of rear admiral, returned to the Baltic and a few years later left military service. Until his death in September 1872, Fyodor Fyodorovich served in the Naval Ministry, earning the rank of full admiral. He prepared naval textbooks, organized an exhibition dedicated to the Sevastopol defense during the Crimean War, and spoke at celebrations in honor of famous admirals of the sailing fleet.
- From the threshold of the lyceum
- You stepped onto the ship jokingly,
– Pushkin wrote about the brave sea wolf.
Source: rodina-history.ru
