Yakov Permyakov (died 1712) was a Russian seafarer, explorer, merchant

Merchant

A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

, and Cossack

Cossack

Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

.

In 1710, while sailing from the Lena River

Lena River

The Lena is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean . It is the 11th longest river in the world and has the 9th largest watershed...

 to the Kolyma River

Kolyma River

The Kolyma River is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia. Itrises in the mountains north of Okhotsk and Magadan, in the area of and...

, Permyakov observed the silhouette of two unknown island groups in the sea. Those islands would later be called Bolshoy Lyakhovsky and the Medvyezhi Islands

Medvyezhi Islands

The Medvezhyi Islands, or Bear Islands is an uninhabited group of islands at the western end of the Kolyma Gulf of the East Siberian Sea. It is located about to the north of the mouths of the Kolyma River. The coast of Siberia is about to the southwest of the largest island, which is about km...

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In 1712, Permyakov and his companion Merkury Vagin

Merkury Vagin

Merkury Vagin was a Russian Arctic explorer.In 1712, together with Yakov Permyakov, Merkury Vagin explored the region of the eastern Laptev Sea coast, including Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, the southermost of the New Siberian Archipelago...

 crossed the Yana Bay

Yana Bay

The Yana Bay is the most important gulf of the Laptev Sea. It is located between Cape Buor-Khaya on its western side and the Ebelyakh Bay at its eastern end....

 from the mouth of the Yana

Yana River

The Yana River , is a river in Sakha in Russia, located between the Lena to the west and the Indigirka to the east.It is 872 km in length. The area of its basin is 238,000 km², whilst its annual discharge totals approximately . Most of this discharge occurs in May and June as the ice on the...

to Bolshoy Lyakhovsky over the ice and explored the then unknown island.
Permyakov and Vagin were murdered on the way back from their exploration by mutineering expedition members. The cossacks took Permyakov's dead body down to the ice and set it on fire. No one knows what the rebellious cossacks did with the ashes, but Yakov Permyakov's remains were never found.