Pronchishchev, Vasili Vasilyevich (1702–1736)

Pronchishchev, Vasili Vasilyevich (1702–1736) – a Russian Navy officer, Arctic explorer, lieutenant, member of the Great Northern Expedition, and explorer of the Laptev Sea and the eastern coast of Taymyr. In 1716, he entered the Moscow School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences; in 1717, he was transferred to the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg. He served in the Baltic Fleet (1718–1724), participated in the Caspian campaign of Peter I in Persia (1722–1723), and worked as a member of the commission for certification of Navy officers. In 1733, he was appointed head of the 3rd detachment of the Great Northern (Second Kamchatka) Expedition to the shores of the Arctic Ocean with the assignment to describe the mouth of the Lena River to the mouth of the Yenisei. In the summer of 1735, P. went down the Lena on the sloop “Yakutsk” (navigated by S. I. Chelyuskin), entered the sea via the Bykovskaya anabranch, doubled the Lena Delta, and stopped for winter at the mouth of the Olenyok...