Severnaya Zemlya any traces of land to the north of the wide strait between the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea that they navigated. The archipelago was not put on the map until the 1913–1915 Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition of icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach". The chief organiser and first captain of the Vaygach was officer Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak of the Imperial Russian Navy. The expedition was privately financed and was launched in 1910, being led by Boris Vilkitsky on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service. This venture accomplished its goal of exploring the uncharted areas of the continental side of the Northern
Novaya Zemlya detected by German U-boats and visually confirmed by German reconnaissance aircraft. On the night of July 4, the German battleship "Tirpitz" and the heavy cruisers "Admiral Scheer", "Lutzow", and "Hipper," closed on PQ-17 and sank four allied merchant ships. The British Admiralty responded by diverting the convoy’s escort vessels to the west to engage the German warships, and ordered the now-vulnerable merchant vessels to scatter. Seeking the hoped-for sanctuary of Matochkin Strait, several of the ships headed toward Novaya Zemlya at flank speed. S.A. Kerslake, a crew-member aboard the British Trawler "Northern Gem", recorded in his diary: …we were making