Hariton Prokofievich Laptev (1700โ1763) was a Russian naval officer and Arctic explorer. He is known for leading the team that mapped the northern coast of Siberia, especially the Taymyr Peninsula, as part of the Great Northern Expedition. The Laptev Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean, is named after him and his cousin Dmitri Laptev.
He was born in 1700 into a noble family in the village of Pokarevo near Velikiye Luki, in the present-day Pskov region. He entered the Russian navy as a naval cadet in 1718, received his first officer rank in 1726 and served in the Baltic Fleet. In 1730 he was in command of a warship. In 1734 he participated in the operations around Gdaลsk during the War of Polish Succession; The frigate Mitava, on which he was assigned, was captured by the French fleet by fraud.
He was among the officers accused of surrendering the ship without conflict and was sentenced to death, but was later acquitted.
Great Northern Expedition
In December 1737, he was appointed head of the detachment tasked with examining the Arctic coast from the west of the Lena River to the mouth of the Yenisei. He set out from Yakutsk on July 9, 1739, on the ship named Yakutsk, sailed from the Lena, proceeded west and spent the winter on the banks of the Khatanga River. In 1740, when his ship got stuck in the ice and was crushed, the crew had to abandon ship.
Laptev continued his work by land, using dog sleds. In 1741-1742, he formed several separate teams and measured the coasts of the Taymyr Peninsula piece by piece. With these studies, in which Semyon Chelyuskin, N. รekin and G. Medvedev took part, the coast from the mouth of Hatanga to the mouth of Pyasina was mapped, and some islands in the region were identified.
Laptev returned to Saint-Peterburg in 1743 with the measurements he collected and the map of Taymyr he prepared.
After the expedition, he commanded various ships in the Baltic again and was promoted to first rank captain. In 1762, he was appointed to a senior position in the navy's quartermaster affairs. He died in Velikiye Luki on December 21, 1763.
The name Laptev lives in the Laptev Sea, as well as the Hariton Laptev Coast and some capes on the Taymyr Peninsula; During the Soviet period, a ship was also named after him. His team's measurements formed the basis for the first reliable maps of Russia's northern coast.
