Vladimir Rusanov Ocean via the Northern Sea Route. Their ship "Gerkules" was too small for the kind of expedition Rusanov had in mind. The last to be heard of Rusanov's expedition was a telegram left at Matochkin Shar on Novaya Zemlya, which reached St. Petersburg on 27 September 1912. In it, Rusanov indicated that he intended rounding the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, and heading east across the Kara Sea but nothing was heard from the "Gerkules" thereafter. He and his 11-man team, including Alexander Kuchin, disappeared without trace a year later in the Kara Sea, off the northern coast of Siberia.
Severnaya Zemlya Sea Route in what was seen as the culmination of the Great Northern Expedition, an ambitious enterprise initially conceived by emperor Peter I the Great in order to map the whole of the northern coast of Russia to the east. On 3 September 1913 (22 August 1913 in the Julian calendar used by Russia at the time), members of Vilkitsky's expedition landed on what is now known as Cape Berg on October Revolution Island. They raised the Russian flag on the shore and named the new territory Tayvay Land (, "Zemlya Tayway"), after the first syllable of their icebreakers' names.