English navigator Stephen Borough, a thirty-one-year-old veteran of the Willoughby expedition, sails as commander of the Searchthrift for the Muscovy Company in 1556.

In his attempt to reach the Ob River, he sails as far as the island of Novaya Zemlya, unmapped but probably known to Norse sailors and Novgorod hunters since the eleventh century.

Probably the first Englishman to sail this far east, he is turned back at the entrance to the Kara Sea by ice storms and fog.