Abstract
AMONG the many skippers and hunters of northern Norway who have taken part in Arctic exploration one of the best known was HANS CHRISTIAN JOHANNESSEN, whose death at Tromsö at the age of seventy-four is announced by the Times. During his sealing and walrus-hunting in the Barents Sea Capt. Johannessen many years ago visited the little-known Wiche Islands to the east of Spitsbergen and the coasts of North-east Land. At a later date he hunted off Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land, penetrating westward to White Island and Spitsbergen. But Capt. Johannessen's principal work was in the navigation of the Kara Sea and the opening of a sea route between Europe and Siberia. When Baron Nordenskjold sailed in the Vega in 1878 to do the North-East passage he was accompanied by the small steamer Lena under the command of Capt. Johannessen. Without the help of a pilot Johannessen took the Lena safely through the difficulties of the Lena delta, and ascended the river for more than 1700 miles to Nyuiskaya, eventually return-ing to Yakutsk. This was the first steamer to reach Siberia by this route. Johannessen returned overland, and the Lena is still in service on the river. Capt. Johannessen piloted many other vessels through the Kara Sea to the Yenisei River. In 1883, in the Nordenskjöld, he rescued the crew of the Dutch expedition in the Varna, crushed in the Kara Sea. In the Gjoa; which he afterwards sold to Amundsen for his North-West passage expedition, Johannessen made many successful hunting expeditions to the Far North.
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[Obituaries]. Nature 106, 155 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106155a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106155a0