Semen Ivanovich Cheliuskin

Born circa 1700; died sometime after 1760. Russian arctic explorer; naval officer.

The son of a nobleman who held a small pomest’e (fief) in Kaluga Province, Cheliuskin enrolled in the School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in Moscow in 1714 and became a navigator’s assistant in the Baltic Fleet in 1726. He was promoted to navigator in 1733 and assigned to the Second Kamchatka (Great Northern) Expedition, with which he remained until 1743. Cheliuskin worked in detachments led by V. V. Pronchishchev and Kh. P. Laptev.

In the spring of 1741, Cheliuskin journeyed overland from the Khatanga River to the Piasina River, charting the western shore of the Taimyr Peninsula as far as the Gulf of Middendorf. He then traveled from the mouth of the Piasina to the mouth of the Enisei. In the winter of 1741–42, journeying from Turukhansk to the mouth of the Khatanga, Cheliuskin charted the northern coastline of the Taimyr Peninsula from the Cape of Faddei in the east to the mouth of the Taimyr River in the west. En route he discovered the northernmost point of Asia, which in 1843 A. F. Middendorf named Cape Cheliuskin, in his honor. Cheliuskin was discharged from the Baltic Fleet in 1760 with the rank of captain third class.