The Arctic Ocean hydrographic expedition 1910–1915

Abstract

Abstract The Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition of 1910–1915 represented a sustained and impressive effort by the Imperial Russian Navy to explore, survey, and chart the Northern Sea Route with a view to developing it as a commercial route. The expediton was provided with two specially‐built icebreaking research vessels, Taymyr and Vaygach. The two ships made a brief sortie through Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea in the fall of 1910. Thereafter, for the following three years, they pushed steadily farther west along the arctic coast of Siberia, sounding, surveying, and pursuing scientific work as they went, and each year returning to Vladivostok for the winter. In 1914 they were ordered to attempt the through‐passage to Arkhangel'sk (in part because of the anticipated need for icebreakers in the White Sea in the event of the outbreak of war). Both icebreakers became beset in the eastern part of the Kara Sea and both suffered some damage from ice pressures, but having survived an enforced wintering they reached Arkhangel'sk safely in the fall of 1915. Apart from the impressive volume of scientific data which it accumulated, the major attainments of the expedition were the first Russian landing on Wrangel Island (in 1911), and the discovery (in 1913) of the archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya (originally named Nikolay II Land).