Conclusion

Abstract Some critics considered the voyage of the Rurik a failure, due to the fact that it did not discover a northern passage connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This was a familiar charge against other expeditions going back centuries. Failure, however, was incredibly common in the practice of exploration and the search for new knowledge. Natural history was a gradual accumulation of new ideas and theories about the natural world, and here the study of the Rurik’s voyage provides an important example of the practice and process of scientific discovery. What may seem like a complete failure often leads to important new routes of knowledge production.