Chelyuskin steamship

"Chelyuskin" ( _ru. «Челюскин») was a Soviet steamship reinforced to navigate polar ice that became ice-bound in Arctic waters during navigation along the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok. The expedition's task was to determine possibility of travel by non-icebreaker through Northern Maritime Route in a single navigation season.

It was built in Denmark in 1933 by Burmeister and Wain (B&W, Copenhagen) and named after the 18th century Russian polar explorer Semion Ivanovich Chelyuskin. The head of the expedition was Otto Yuliyevich Shmidt and the ship's captain was V. I. Voronin. There were 111 people on board the steamship. The crew members were known as "Chelyuskintsy", "Chelyuskinites".

After leaving Murmansk on August 2, 1933, the steamship managed to get through the bulk of the Northern Route before it was caught in the ice fields in September. After that it had been drifting in the ice pack before sinking on February 13 1934, crushed by the icepacks near Kolyuchin Island in the Chukchi Sea. The crew managed to escape onto the ice and built a makeshift airstrip using a tractor. They were rescued in April of the same year and flown to the village of Uelen.

The aircraft pilots who took part in search and rescue operations were among the first people to receive the newly established highest title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Those pilots were Anatoly Liapidevsky, Sigizmund Levanevsky, Vasili Molokov, Mavrikiy Slepnev, Mikhail Vodopianov, Nikolai Kamanin and Ivan Doronin. They were flying ANT-4, civilian version of a TB-1 heavy bomber. Two American air mechanics, Clyde Armistead and William Latimer Lavery, [The Junior Aircraft Year Book, 1935, p.8 ] who also helped to search and rescue the steamship, on September 10 1934 were awarded the Order of Lenin.

As the steamship became trapped in the mouth of the Bering Strait, the USSR considered the expedition mainly successful, as it had proven that a regular steamship had a chance to navigate the whole Northern Maritime Route in a single season. After a few additional trial runs in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially opened and commercial exploitation began in 1935. Next year, part of the Soviet Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where an armed conflict with Japan was looming.

In the wake of the catastrophe, a central square in Yaroslavl was renamed after the "Chelyuskintsy", while Marina Tsvetayeva wrote a poem applauding the rescue team. Efforts to find the wreck of the ship have been made across at least four different expeditions.

The wreck of the ship was finally discovered in September, 2006 at the depth of about 50 metres in the Chukchi Sea [http://www.rian.ru/science/20070213/60678107.html В Чукотском море найдены фрагменты «Челюскина»] — in Russian] . The polar explorer Arthur Chilingarov argued that the ship should be raised and converted into a museum.

References

ee also

*Cape Serdtse-Kamen

External links

* [http://www.testpilot.ru/review/ppt/cheluskin.htm Rescue of "Chelyuskin"] ru icon
* The Chelyuskin and the Dzhurma in 1933: [http://www.gulags.co.uk/]