Semyon Ivanovich Deschnjow

Semyon Ivanovich Deshnev on a Russian postage stamp (2010)

Semjon Iwanowitsch Deschnjow ( Russian Семён Иванович Дежнёв , scientific transliteration Semën Ivanovič Dežnëv ; * around 1605 in Veliky Ustjug ; † 1673 in Moscow ) was a Russian Cossack and explorer.

Deschnjow undertook his first expedition to Eastern Siberia in 1645, but had to break it off due to unfavorable weather conditions. It was not until 1648 that he sailed around the Chukchi Peninsula together with Fedot Alexejewitsch Popov and discovered the Eastern Cape of Asia , which was later named after him, and the Bering Sea . With his trip through the Bering Strait, he refuted the view that there is a land connection between America and Asia ; However, his report did not become known until 1736: The German-Russian historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller discovered the travelogue written by Deschnjow in the archives of the city of Yakutsk . The governor at the time did not forward the report. Deschnjow had proven the strait between Alaska and Siberia 80 years before Vitus Bering and 130 years before James Cook .

literature

• Salentiny, Fernand: DuMont's Encyclopedia of Navigators and Explorers . Pp. 144-145. Monte von Dumont, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-8320-8718-4
• Peter Littke, From the Tsar's Eagle to the Stars and Stripes. The history of Russian Alaska , Essen 2003, ISBN 3-88400-019-5 . [with interesting biographical facts about Deschnjow]
• Semionov, Youri, La conquête de la Sibérie du IXe siècle au XIXe siècle . Payot, Paris 1938. - German: Jurij N. Semjonow: The conquest of Siberia . Berlin: Ullstein 1937.
• Müller, Gerhard Friedrich, News about Peoples of Siberia (1736-1742) , ed. von Chelimskij, Evgenij A. Institute for Finno-Ugric / Ural Studies at the University of Hamburg, Hamburg 2003.
• Walter Krämer (ed.): The discovery and exploration of the earth , Brockhaus, Leipzig 1949

See also

• Cape Dezhnev