Dmitry Laptev was a lieutenant in the Navy assigned to the Second Kamchatka Expedition in 1735 under Vitus Bering. With the death of the head of the "Yakutsk" captain Vasili Pronchishchev in 1736, Bering appointed Laptev to be the head of the "Yakutsk" crew and chart the coast of the Arctic Ocean from the Lena River eastward. With permission from Bering, Laptev returned to Saint Petersburg for the winter. A second attempt the next year similarly failed to reach the eastern fleets of the expedition.