SS Chelyuskin
68°18′05″N 172°49′40″W / 68.3014°N 172.8278°W
 Chelyuskin
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name | Chelyuskin |
| Owner |  Sovtorgflot |
| Operator | Glavsevmorput[1] |
| Builder | Burmeister and Wain (B&W) Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Launched | 11 March 1933 |
| Christened | Semion Chelyuskin |
| Completed | 1933 |
| Maiden voyage | 6 May 1933 |
| Fate | Sank 13 February 1934 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Steam ship |
| Tonnage | 7,500t |
| Length | 310.2’ |
| Beam | 54.3’ |
| Height | 22.0’ |
| Installed power | 2400hp |
| Speed | 12,5 knots |
| Crew | 111 |
SS ChelyuskinNorthern Maritime Route in a single navigation season.
It was built in
V. I. Voronin. There were 111 people on board the steamship, including Soviet cinematographers Mark Troyanovsky and Arkadii Shafran
who documented on film the entire voyage, including the rescue. The crew members were known as Chelyuskintsy, with the singular form "Chelyuskinets".
Mission
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (February 2013) |
After leaving
Anatoly Liapidevsky on March 5 after 29 rescue flight attempts, but the men in the crew were not rescued until April after over two months on the ice. The crew managed to escape onto the ice and built a makeshift airstrip using only a few spades, ice shovels and two crowbars. They had to rebuild the airstrip thirteen times, until they were rescued in April of the same year and flown to the village of Vankarem on the coast of the sea. From there, some of the Chelyuskinites were flown further to the village of Uelen
, while fifty-three men walked over 300 miles to get there.
The aircraft pilots who took part in
Mikhail Vodopianov, Nikolai Kamanin and Ivan Doronin. Liapidevsky flew an ANT-4, the civilian version of the TB-1 heavy bomber, while Slepnev and Levanevsky flew a Consolidated Fleetster specially brought in from the US for the mission, and the other pilots flew the Polikarpov R-5. Two American air mechanics, Clyde Goodwin Armitstead, and William Latimer Lavery,[3] also helped in the search and rescue of the Chelyuskintsy, on 10 September 1934, and were awarded the Order of Lenin
.
As the steamship became trapped at the entrance to 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. The following year part of the Soviet Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where an armed conflict with Japan
was looming.
-
Sinking of the Chelyuskin -
Chelyuskin, 1933, photo by Novitsky -
Chelyuskin survivors building the airstrip -
Greeting the first rescue airplane -
Photo titled as "Scientific observations never ceased" -
Location of Kolyuchin Island -
From left to right: Joe Crosson (brother of Marvel Crosson), Mavriky Slepnyov, Georgy Ushakov, Sigizmund Levanevsky, radio operator of Ladd Army Airfield in Alaska during the expedition to rescue the crew of SS Chelyuskin.
Legacy
In the wake of the catastrophe, a central square in
Marina Tsvetayeva wrote a poem applauding the rescue team. Nine days after the two Soviet cameramen aboard reached Moscow, their footage was developed, edited and released as a feature documentary motion picture. In 1970, East German television produced Tscheljuskin, a film about the ship's voyage, directed by Rainer Hausdorf and featuring Eberhard Mellies as Prof. Schmidt, Dieter Mann as the surveyor Vasiliev and Fritz Diez as Valerian Kuybyshev.[4]
Efforts to find the wreck of the ship were made by at least four different expeditions, and it was finally discovered in September 2006, at a depth of about 50 metres in the Chukchi Sea.[5] The polar explorer Artur Chilingarov argued that the ship should be raised and converted into a museum.
Michael Roberts, an English poet, wrote a poem "Chelyuskin", which was included in his collection Poems, published by Jonathan Cape in 1936.
The story was dramatised in the radio drama The Cruise of the Chelyuskin.
See also
Further reading
- Davies, R.E.G.; Salnikov, Yuri (2005). The Chelyuskin Adventure - Эпопея "Челюскина". McLean VA, USA: Paladwr Press. ISBN 978-1888962239. (bilingual edition)
References
- ^ (in Russian)Chelyuskin and Pijma: All dots above i Archived 2009-06-08 at the Wayback Machine by Lazar Freidgame
- ^ Also Cheliuskin.
- ^ The Junior Aircraft Year Book, 1935, p.8
- ^ Tscheljuskin on the IMDb.
- ^ В Чукотском море найдены фрагменты «Челюскина» — in Russian
External links
- (in Russian) Chelyuskin-70 - Official site of the underwater archeological expedition
- (in Russian) Rescue of Chelyuskin
- The Chelyuskin and the Dzhurma in 1933
Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1934 | |
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| Shipwrecks |
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| Other incidents |
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