Mikhail Vasilyev (explorer)

Vasiliev was sent by the Russian Imperial Hydrographic Service in 1819 to explore the northern parts of the Pacific Ocean and particularly the area around the Bering Strait.

Certain geographic features of the Alaskan coast, like the Lindenberg Peninsula and Sealion Island were named by him in the maps that were subsequently published.

In 1820 Mikhail Vasiliev on the ship Otkrytie (Discovery) entered the Chukchi Sea and explored the coast of Alaska from Kotzebue Sound to Icy Cape and later from Norton Sound to Cape Newenham.

He was accompanied by Gleb Semenovich Shishmarev (1781-1835), who was in command of the ship Blagonamerennyi (Good Intent).

[1] After these surveys, in which he is credited to be the first European having sighted Nunivak Island, Vasiliev sailed to Petropavlovsk and returned to Kronstadt, arriving there on August 2, 1822.