In 1909, the Nevsky shipbuilding plant produced two icebreaking steamers, the Taimyr and the Vaigach.

Both of them were part of a scientific hydrographic expedition undertaken in 1913–1915 in the Arctic Ocean. The expedition was led by Boris Andreevich Vilkitsky, a naval officer, geodesist, and hydrographer, who also made a name for himself as an Arctic explorer and discoverer.

The task of the expedition was to follow the Northern Sea Route from east to west, leaving the Bering Strait and entering the Barents Sea.

The work resulted in over a thousand miles of Arctic coastline mapped, and numerous important studies conducted in astrophysics and hydrography.

Furthermore, the expedition succeeded in making the last and most significant discovery in the Arctic — the land at the border of the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea, previously unknown. It was named the Land of Nicholas II. The unfavorable ice conditions prevented the explorers from sufficiently surveying the discovered land and accurately locating its northern boundaries.

In 1916, the strait separating the mainland of the Taimyr Peninsula from the Land of Nicholas II was named after the heir to the imperial throne, Grand Duke Alexey Nikolaevich.

In 1918, the Tsesarevich Alexey Strait was renamed after Boris Vilkitsky (subsequently simply Vilkitsky Strait) and in 1926 the discovered area itself was renamed the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago.

The Taimyr and Vaigach joined the expedition on 24 June 1914. On board the Taimyr was a Farman-type aircraft. In the autumn of 1915, while making a test flight in Providence Bay, it damaged its tail fins and as an aircraft was virtually out of service. During the winter, the crew of the Taimyr converted the aircraft into an aerosled, which later came in handy for traveling around the bay.

The Taimyr took part in the evacuation of the North Pole-1 polar station in 1938, and during World War I was supplied with arms, including two machine guns.