Semyon Dezhnev
His exploit was forgotten for almost a hundred years and Bering is usually given credit for discovering the strait that bears his name.
Dezhnyov was a Pomor Russian, born in 1605, possibly in the town of Veliky Ustyug or the village of Pinega.
In any case, no later than 1639 he was sent to Yakutia, where he married a Yakut captive and spent the next three years collecting yasak (otherwise known as fur tribute) from the natives.
[3] In 1641, Dezhnyov moved northeast to a newly discovered tributary of the Indigirka River where he served under Mikhail Stadukhin.
From about 1642, Russians began hearing of a 'Pogycha River' to the east which flowed into the Arctic and that the nearby area was rich in sable fur, walrus ivory and silver ore. An attempt to reach it in 1646 failed.
In 1647, Fedot Alekseyev, an agent of a Moscow merchant, organized an expedition and brought in Dezhnyov because he was a government official.
The expedition reached the sea but was unable to round the Chukchi Peninsula because it had to turn back due to thick drift ice.
She said that Fedot died of scurvy, that several of his companions were killed by the Koryaks, and that the rest had fled in small boats to an unknown fate.
About 320 miles upriver they built a zimov'ye (winter quarters) somewhere near Anadyrsk and subjected the local Yukaghirs to tribute.
Dezhnyov rounded the eastern extremity of Asia, East Cape, now known to Russians as Cape Dezhnyov, possibly made landfall on the Diomede Islands, sailed through the Bering Strait, reached the Anadyr River, ascended it and founded the Anadyr ostrog.
It was widely believed at the time that these vessels had reached the American shore and that their men had founded a Russian settlement there.
The first Western map to show a Strait of Anian between Asia and North America was probably that of Giacomo Gastaldi in 1562.
He certainly did not sail across to Alaska, prove that there was no land bridge to the north or south, or compare his knowledge to that of learned geographers.
In 1736 Gerhardt Friedrich Müller found Dezhnyov's reports in the Yakutsk archives and parts of the story began filtering back to Europe.
The reasons are: 1) poor documentation, 2) that no one was able to repeat Dezhnyov's route until Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld in 1878/79 (eight unsuccessful attempts were made between 1649 and 1787; there is some evidence that 1648 was unusually ice-free), 3) and most important, that the documents can be read to imply only that Dezhnyov rounded a cape on the Arctic coast, was wrecked on that coast and wandered for 10 weeks south to the Anadyr.
[9] In 1955, a lighthouse on the East coast of Chukotka was dedicated to Dezhnev with a plaque baring his name and details of his journey across the Bering Strait.
