Mikhail Lavrov Mikhail Lavrov Mikhail Andrianovich Lavrov () (1799–1882) was a Russian rear-admiral and Arctic explorer. Mikhail Lavrov was born on 13 September 1799 in the city of Arkhangelsk. He graduated from Cadets Corps in Saint Petersburg and served at the Baltic Fleet. He participated in the voyage of the cargo ship "Mezen" from Kronstadt to Arkhangelsk and back in 1819–1820. In 1821–1824, in the rank of senior officer, he participated in the expedition of Fyodor Litke on board of the brig "Novaya Zemlya", making description of coast line of Murmansk and Novaya Zemlya archipelago. In 1825–1827, he made a round-the-world voyage
Novaya Zemlya due south. Anticipating the breakout, the German Task Force commander Rear Admiral Hubert Schmundt (Fig. 40) pre-positioned several U-boats near the strait’s western entrance. Six of the seventeen Allied ships exiting the strait were subsequently sunk. The badly-damaged American freighter "Alcoa Ranger" was beached on Novaya Zemlya’s west coast. Its crew found temporary shelter and were eventually rescued by a Russian vessel which took them to Belushya Bay. The Germans also damaged the Soviet tankers "Donbass" and "Azerbaijan," both of which reached the sanctuary of Archangel. Of the thirty-four merchant ships in PQ-17, twenty-four were destroyed. The American contingent alone