Rusanov expedition
Artefacts found decades later on islands off the Taymyr Peninsula show that Rusanov managed to round Novaya Zemlya and cross the Kara Sea, and suggest that at least some of the party survived well into 1913, and possibly later.
It is generally thought the expedition met an unknown fate in the area of the Pyasina estuary: it has also been suggested that Rusanov, an experienced Arctic explorer, went as far east as Severnaya Zemlya and the Laptev Sea.
While in prison he developed an interest in polar exploration after reading about Fridtjof Nansen’s voyages; he was then sent into internal exile in Siberia before emigrating to France to complete a doctorate in geology at the Sorbonne.
[5] The other personnel included geologist Rudolf Samoylovich and biologist Zénón Svatoš; Konstantin Semenov, a student at the St Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, was taken on as engineer after his department head asked him to join.
Rusanov then had to return quickly to Paris to buy scientific instruments before travelling to St Petersburg to produce a progress report; he then organised the transfer of the expedition equipment at Alexandrovsk to Hercules, which Kuchin had sailed from Norway.
On completion of work in Spitsbergen, Rusanov announced to the expedition members he planned to sail east rather than returning to port, and it became clear he was considering taking the opportunity to investigate the Northern Sea Route.
He seems to have asked for volunteers to accompany him: Samoilovich and Svatoš returned home via Norway on a passing steamer along with the expedition field reports and scientific collections, as did A. Popov, who was in poor health.
[11] He was by this time a seasoned Arctic traveller, with a great deal of experience of small boat navigation around Novaya Zemlya, while Amundsen had successfully traversed the Northwest Passage in 1902–5 in an even smaller vessel.
However given the unknown conditions in the east of the Kara Sea, the northerly route proposed around Novaya Zemlya, and the late time of year, Rusanov's plan remained an extremely risky, possibly irresponsible, undertaking.
He was ordered to abandon the search for Hercules after making radio contact with the Imperial Navy icebreakers Vaygach and Taymyr, wintering 280 km to the north; Sverdrup was asked to assist an overland evacuation of part of their crew.
[17] The most controversial find was reported in 1949, when A. S. Kosoy wrote that in 1947 a surveying party found bones and the traces of a campsite on the eastern shores of Bolshevik Island in Severnaya Zemlya.
A theory based on Kosoy's report suggests that thanks to northeasterly winds in the summer of 1912, the expedition could have found a relatively ice free passage in the northern Kara Sea as far as Severnaya Zemlya, wintering there in 1912, but then became trapped there.
A 1921 search party looking for Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen, two men lost from Amundsen's Maud expedition in 1919 while attempting to reach the weather station at Dikson overland, found several old camp fires on the Mikhailov Peninsula on the Taymyr mainland, along with artefacts such as shotgun shells, coins, and a boat hook.
These were for many years linked with Tessem and Knudsen, but a later comparison of the records matched the shells with a type found at the site in the Minina Skerries, showing that the campsites in fact related to Rusanov's expedition.
