Product Description
The pin represents a stylized image of a goldish roll of a sea chart with the contours of two hemispheres of emerald green color and a koch, i.e. a sea-going wooden one-masted one-decked sailing oar-propelled catching vessel. The Koch rides the waves from right to left. A koch was built without using any metal. It was provided with a mast, hinged rudder and oars. The body of the vessel was resistant to compression in ice. The term “koch” means “icy coat”, i.e. a second ice lining. This type of vessels was popular on the Russian North and in Siberia in the 11-19th centuries.
The text on the pin reads: “Dezhnev’s Boat, 1643”.
Semyon Dezhnev was a Cossack ataman (leader), explorer, arctic navigator, one of the discoverers of the Strait between Asia and North America, of the Chukchi Sea, of the northern part of the Pacific Ocean and of the Chukchi peninsula. He became the first of the famous European navigators who sailed through the Bering Strait separating Alaska from the Chukchi Peninsula in 1648, thus he did it eighty years earlier than Vitus Bering.
It’s interesting that Bering did not manage to sail through the whole Strait but only through its southern part while Dezhnev did it from north to south and along the full length. In summer 1642 together with Siberian Cossacks he built a koch –one-masted wooden vessel – on which he discovered the Kolyma River – one of the biggest rivers of Russia.
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