Mikhail Stadukhin
Mikhail Vasilyevich Stadukhin (
To the Kolyma and Anadyr
In 1641 he led an overland expedition to a tributary of the
Sea of Okhotsk
In February or March 1651 he set off south and reached the
Given the poor records, it is not clear what he was doing in the 6 years it took to go from the Penzhina to Okhotsk. It is possible that he explored some part of western Kamchatka Peninsula and may have crossed the northern neck to a point where he could see the Pacific. The story that he sailed completely around the peninsula is probably a legend.
He seems to have a fairly rough fellow. Many of the surviving documents record his quarrels with other Russians and mistreatment of the natives. He is not to be confused with Taras, Garasim and Yakob Stadukhin, probably his two brothers and his son respectively, who were also in Siberia at this time.
References
Raymond H Fisher, The Voyage of Semen Dezhnev in 1648, The Hakluyt Society, 1981.