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 During the days that followed Vilkitsky's expedition charted parts of the Laptev Sea coast of what they believed to be a single island. Barely six months later in early 1914, by order of the Secretary of the Imperial Navy, the new discovery was renamed "Emperor Nicholas II Land" (, "Zemlya Imperatora Nikolaya II"), after ruling Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. In 1926 the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR renamed the still not fully explored land "Severnaya Zemlya". In May 1928, an attempt was made by Umberto Nobile and his crew in the Airship Italia to overfly