The First Russian Antarctic Expedition took place in 1819–1821 under the direction of Fabian Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev. The expedition aimed to reach the Southern Ocean in order to prove or disprove the existence of a suspected seventh continent, Antarctica. The sloop Vostok was under the command of Bellingshausen, while Lazarev commanded the sloop Mirny. Overall, the crew (ru) consisted of 190 people.
Due to extreme haste in equipping the voyage (the order was released on March 15, and the departure took place on July 4, 1819), it was impossible to assemble a science team. Thus, almost all scientific observations in the fields of geography, ethnography, and natural history were conducted by officers and the only scientist on board, associate professor Ivan Mikhailovich Simonov, who taught at the Imperial Kazan University. A novice painter, Pavel Mikhailov (ru), was hired to depict the events, landscapes, and biological species encountered during the expedition. His paintings of the South Shetland Islands were used in English sailing directions until the 1940s.