Mikhail Vasilyev

Mikhail Nikolayevich Vasilyev (Михаил Николаевич Васильев) (1770 – June 23, 1847) was a Russian explorer and vice admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. He is reputed for having surveyed the then little-known coast of Alaska as navigator. Vasiliev was sent by the Russian Imperial Hydrographic Service in 1819 to explore the northern parts of the Pacific ocean and particularly the area around the Bering strait. Certain geographic features of the Alaskan coast, like the Lindenberg Peninsula and Sealion Island were named by him in the maps that were subsequently published.

In 1820 Mikhail Vasiliev on the ship Otkrytiye entered the Chukchi Sea and explored the coast of Alaska from Kotzebue Sound to Icy Cape and later from Norton Sound to Cape Newenham. He was accompanied by Gleb Shishmaryov, who was in command of the ship Blagonamereniye. After these surveys, in which he is credited to be the first European having sighted Nunivak Island, Vasiliev sailed to Petropavlovsk and returned to Kronstadt, arriving there on August 2, 1822.

Ensign Mikhail Nikolaievich Vasiliev should not be confused with navigator Ivan Vasilyev or with another Captain Vasiliev or Vasilief about whom Adam Johann von Krusenstern says

"It is much to be regretted that the hydrographic works of a naval officer, Vasilief, who was in the employment of the American Company, were lost... Provided with a sextant and chronometer and with much zeal and attachment for his profession, he had during his sojourn in our American colonies made a complete survey of all of the Aleutian Islands without having had specific instructions to do so. Unfortunately he was drowned in Okhotsk harbor on his return from America to Russia, and what became of his precious papers and drawings is unknown. He is not to be confounded with the Captain (Mikhail Nikolaievich) Vasilief..."

Vasilyev's name is spelt as "Vasilief" in the United States, where Vasilief Bay in Atka and Cape Vasilyev in Nunivak Island were named after him by Captain Fyodor Petrovich Litke; Cape Vasilyev was later renamed "Cape Corwin" by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1909. There are other geographic features in the coast of Alaska and the Aleutians bearing the name "Vasilief", but it is not clear after which Vasilyev they were named.