Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin (; 28 September 1888 in Onega – 1913? in an unknown place in the

Kara Sea The Kara Sea is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Ultimately the Kara, Barents and Laptev Seas are all ...

) was a young

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n oceanographer and Arctic explorer.

Background

Hailing from a humble background, Alexander Kuchin became a seaman in a Norwegian ship already when he was seventeen. The young man loved the

Norwegian language Norwegian ( ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelli ...

, which he mastered in one year. In 1907 Alexander Kuchin worked in

Bergen Bergen (, ) is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, second-largest city in Norway after the capital Oslo. By May 20 ...

, at a Norwegian Biological Station, becoming a student of oceanography expert Professor Bjorn Helland-Hansen. Meanwhile, his enthusiasm for the Norwegian language was such that he wrote a "Small Russian-Norwegian dictionary" ("Малый русско-норвежский словарь") in order to share his knowledge with his compatriots. In 1910–1911, Alexander Kuchin was the only foreigner on Amundsen's expedition to the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is the point in the Southern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True South Pole to distinguish ...

on the '' Fram''. He made numerous observations in the Southern Atlantic as an oceanographer and navigator. After his return to Norway, in December 1911, Alexander Kuchin was engaged to 18-year-old Aslaug Paulson, the daughter of Andreas Paulson, a prominent Norwegian journalist. In 1912, Kuchin returned to Russia, where he joined Vladimir Rusanov's expedition as captain of the ship ''Gerkules'' to

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

. This expedition's goal was to investigate the coal potential of the Archipelago. He sailed from Aleksandrovsk-na-Murmane (now Polyarnyy, near

Murmansk Murmansk () is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast in the far Far North (Russia), northwest part of Russia. It is the world's largest city north of the Arctic Circle and sits on both slopes and banks of a modest fjord, Ko ...

) on 26 June. The personnel consisted of thirteen men and one woman, Rusanov's French fiancée. Apart from Rusanov there was another geologist and a zoologist.

Disappearance

At the end of a very successful summer's field work, three members of the expedition (the geologist, the zoologist and the ship's bosun) returned to Russia via Grønfjorden in Norway. The remaining ten, including Captain Alexander Kuchin, without consultation with the authorities in St. Petersburg, set off with Rusanov in an incredibly rash attempt at reaching the Pacific Ocean via the

Northern Sea Route The Northern Sea Route (NSR) (, shortened to Севморпуть, ''Sevmorput'') is a shipping route about long. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the shortest shipping route between the western part of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region. Ad ...

. However, 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 Novaya Zemlya (, also , ; , ; ), also spelled , is an archipelago in northern Russia. It is situated in the Arctic Ocean, in the extreme northeast of Europe, with Cape Flissingsky, on the northern island, considered the extreme points of Europe ...

, 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

but nothing was heard from the ''Gerkules'' thereafter. It disappeared without trace a year later in the

, off the northern coast of Siberia. Hercules schooner Rusanov

In 1914–15 the almost impossible task of searching for Rusanov's expedition (as well as for similarly disappeared Captain Brusilov from another expedition), was entrusted to Otto Sverdrup with the ship ''Eklips''. His efforts, however, were unsuccessful. In 1937, the Arctic Institute of the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

organized an expedition to the Nordenskiöld Archipelago on ship ''Toros''. Relics of the ill-fated 1912–13 expedition on the ''Gerkules'' were found on one of the

Mona Islands The Mona Islands or Mohn Islands () is a group of a few scattered small islands covered with tundra vegetation. They are located in the Kara Sea, about 30 km north of the western coast of the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia, Russia. Etymology ...

and on Popov-Chukchin Island located at (74° 56'N, 86° 18'E) off Kolosovykh Island in the Kolosovykh group. Two small islets off Salisbury Island in

Franz Josef Land Franz Josef Land () is a Russian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It is inhabited only by military personnel. It constitutes the northernmost part of Arkhangelsk Oblast and consists of 192 islands, which cover an area of , stretching from east ...

have been named after Alexander Kuchin. Aslaug Paulson, Alexander Kuchin's Norwegian fiancée, died in 1987.

Works

* "Малый русско-норвежский словарь" ("Small Russian–Norwegian dictionary"), 1907

References

William Barr William Pelham Barr (born May 23, 1950) is an American attorney who served as United States Attorney General, United States attorney general in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and again in the first adminis ...

, ''Otto Sverdrup to the rescue of the Russian Imperial Navy''. *
Biographical data

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuchin, Alexander 1888 births 1910s missing person cases Explorers of Antarctica Explorers of the Arctic Polar explorers from the Russian Empire Kara Sea Missing person cases in Russia Missing Russian people Norwegian language People lost at sea Russian polar explorers Russian oceanographers Year of death unknown 20th-century Russian explorers

Background

Disappearance

Works

See also

References

External links