Historical Reference.

Since 1991 the Adventure Club is involved in organizing the work of searching and investigation of the graves of the Russian pioneer explorers. One of the objectives of this work is restoration by the method of plastic reconstruction (by a scull) of their lifetime images. The first experience in this field was the expedition to the Commander Islands (1991), the result of which was the discovery of the grave of the Captain-Commander Vitus Bering (1681–1741), the Chief of the Great North Expedition. Scientists of the Russian Forensic Centre reconstructed the actual portrait of this outstanding navigator.

The Great North Expedition (1733–1743), the official name – the Second Kamchatskaia Expedition, under the leadership of the Captain-Commander Vitus Bering, compiled the chart of the Russian territories. They described all north and east margins of Russia from Arkhangelsk to Okhotsk, enormous interior spaces of the Eastern Siberia, the Kuril and Aleutian Islands, discovered routes to Japan and America. The Expedition collected unique data about the nature and history of Siberia and the Far East.

This was the largest exploring expedition in the history of the mankind. As a result of its activities the domains of Russia extended to the three parts of the world: Europe, Asia, and America. In the course of the expedition the Russian ships "St. Peter" and "St. Pavel" under the command of V.Bering and A.Chirikov for the first time in the Russian history carried out the transoceanic voyage and reached the shores of America.

In 1999 the Club organized the expedition to the north of Yakutia, which achieved outstanding results: reconstruction of the portraits of Lieutenant Vasily Pronchishchev, the chief of one of the detachments of the Great North Expedition, and his wife Tatiana Pronchishchev, who was the first in history woman – Arctic explorer. Specialists determined the actual reason of the death of Vasily Pronchishchev: adipose embolism, caused by an open fracture of the cannon-bone of the left leg, and not a scurvy, as was thought before.

In July 2001 the Adventure Club organized a new historical-geographical expedition with the objective to find and to investigate the place of death of the detachment of the Great North Expedition under the command of Lieutenant Peter Lassenius. But all search works did not give any results.

In 1735 one of the detachments of the Great North Expedition under the command of the lieutenant Peter Lassenius, stayed for the winter at the mouth of Khara-Ulakh River, the north of Yakutiya. The detachment had the task to chart the coastal line of Russia from the Lena River to the Strait, separating Asia and America. In accordance with the historical version all members of the detachment had the scurvy. 36 people out of 46 died. Their burial place was lost.

The Great North Expedition required employment of enormous human and material resources. 13 ships built in Arkhangelsk, Tobolsk, Yakutsk and Okhotsk, supported 7 research detachments, which had sufficient amount of equipment and food. The crews of the ships were at full strength.

The number of participants of the main and subsidiary detachments amounted to around 5000 people. But for the present we have the reliable portraits only of three persons: Stepan Krasheninnikov, the first Russian academician – geographer, Professor Johan Gmelin and Professor Herard Miller (half-face). There were no portraits of the other participants of the Bering expedition 1991. The portraits of the first Russian explorers: navigators, kasaks, merchants did not exist as there was no secular painting in Russia before Peter the Great.

Consequently the existing portraits of the participants of the Second Kamchatskaia expedition are essentially the first portraits of the Russian explorers.