The first through voyage of icebreakers from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The world's first voyage from east to west along the northern shores of Russia was also remembered for the last great discoveries in the geography of the Earth. Later, one of these discoveries will make it possible to find the northernmost site of an ancient man - the northernmost in polar Yakutia, and in all of Russia, and in general on our planet. Alexey Volynets will tell about all these events, significant for the history of the Russian Far East, especially for DV.

Icebreakers will sail from the equator to Kola for a long time …

The terrible defeat of the Russian fleet in the war with Japan is largely due to the fact that our ships, before reaching the Far East, had to go across the globe - to go around Europe, Africa, sail past the shores of India, China, Korea and Japan itself. Back in 1904, when the unfortunate squadron was just preparing to march to the Far Eastern shores in the Baltic, which would be destined to die near the Japanese Tsushima, opinions were voiced about the need for an alternative route - to go to the Far East along the northern shores of Russia …

However, even at the beginning of the 20th century, the Arctic Ocean between Arkhangelsk and Chukotka for the most part still remained Mare incognitum - the Unknown Sea, so centuries ago, in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, sailors called the yet unexplored spaces of the World Ocean. A century ago, the path from the west to the mouth of the Ob and from the east to the mouth of the Kolyma was known. The same three thousand miles of icy waters that lay between them still remained practically unknown to geographers and sailors.

Alexander Kolchak during a polar expedition © Wikimedia Commons

It is not surprising that soon after the end of the unsuccessful war with the Japanese for us, the command of the Russian fleet began to think about a detailed study of the Northern Sea Route along the polar coast of the Eurasian continent. This is how the "Hydrographic Expedition of the Arctic Ocean", or, with the love of that era for abbreviations, GESLO, arose.

Especially for the expedition in 1909, two twin icebreakers were built in St. Petersburg. They were named "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" after the most prominent geographical features on the sea route from Europe to Asia along the polar coast of Russia. The first captain of the "Vaigach" was Alexander Kolchak, by that time an experienced polar explorer, and in the future a successful admiral and unsuccessful "Supreme Ruler of Russia" during the Civil War.

At that time there was no experience in building icebreakers for polar latitudes. As one of the members of the expedition later recalled: “The shipbuilders claimed that ships would be able to move freely in ice 60 centimeters thick and break ice a meter thick. Subsequently, it turned out that these calculations were overly optimistic … "The shape of the icebreaker hull, specially designed for crushing ice, had its drawbacks - these ships turned out to be more prone to sea rolling, more and more sharply swayed by waves, and therefore the" sea disease".

The new icebreakers immediately caused a real scandal in the State Duma, because their construction was not foreseen by the naval budget. The Naval Ministry had to make excuses to the deputies, and when the icebreakers set off for the Far East not across the Arctic Ocean, but on the same long journey across the southern seas, a real critical campaign began in the Russian press."It will take a long time for icebreakers to sail from the equator to Kola" - this is how the St. Petersburg newspapers ridiculed the icebreaking expedition that had gone to the tropics.

Taiwai Archipelago

It is noteworthy that the Taimyr and Vaigach were the first ships of the Russian Navy to set off for the Far East across the Indian Ocean after the Russo-Japanese War. Despite the skepticism and ridicule of the press, the icebreakers arrived in Vladivostok by mid-summer 1910, where they began to prepare for future polar exploration.

The icebreakers spent the next four years on almost continuous voyages and expeditions. The first trip to the shores of Kamchatka and Chukotka "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" began in August 1910, just a month after arriving in Vladivostok. In 1911, the ships sailed to the mouth of the Kolyma, and for the first time in history, the Vaigach sailed around Wrangel Island, which lies on the border of the Western and Eastern hemispheres.

Today this island is part of the Iultinsky region of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. A century ago, it still remained an unexplored "blank spot" on the map of the Russian North. Researchers from "Vaygach" not only carefully mapped its shores, but also raised the Russian flag on the island - after all, this "white spot" between Chukotka and Alaska was then quite seriously claimed by both the United States and the British Empire represented by their Canadian "dominion" …

In the next year, 1912, both icebreakers of GESLO, of the Hydrographic Expedition of the Arctic Ocean, sailed from Vladivostok to the mouth of the Lena. However, the expedition did not dare to go further to the west, fearing to get stuck in the ice for the whole winter. In the summer of 1913, "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" again hurried from Vladivostok to the waters of the Arctic Ocean - this time they managed to pass the west coast of Yakutia and reach the northernmost point of the Eurasian continent near Cape Chelyuskin.

1913 Icebreaker Trek Map © Wikimedia Commons

Trying to bypass the ice in order to swim to the west, the icebreakers turned north of Cape Chelyuskin and, on September 2, 1913, at three o'clock in the afternoon, discovered a completely unknown land - several huge islands stretching almost 400 miles to the pole. This discovery will smooth over the grief of the members of the expedition, who this time did not manage to break through the ice to the west in order to finally make a "through voyage" and pave the sea route from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk.

The discoverers named the discovered islands "Taiwai archipelago" - combining the names of the icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach". However, soon the big naval commanders will decide to curry favor with the supreme power and will officially call the new islands by a different name - the Land of Emperor Nicholas II. However, this name will also not last long, soon after the revolution the archipelago will be renamed again and will simply be called Severnaya Zemlya.

Despite all the perturbations with the name, the huge islands in the Arctic Ocean, discovered by the Taimyr and Vaigach icebreakers in 1913, are rightfully considered the largest geographical discovery of the 20th century.

The beginning of the world war and the "through voyage"

On July 7, 1914, at 6 pm "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" left Vladivostok again. “It was a splendid, quiet and clear summer day,” one of the sailors recalled those minutes. For the third time, the expedition rushed into the waters of the Arctic Ocean to try again to make a "through flight" - to break through to the west along the entire northern coast of Russia through ice fields and polar storms.

By that time, the expedition was headed for the second year by the 29-year-old captain Boris Vilkitsky. Contemporaries described him as "a brilliant naval officer, but inclined to rely too much on luck and a lucky star." Among the 97 crew members of the two icebreakers, there were some truly amazing personalities. For example, the senior physician of the expedition was the one-armed surgeon Leonid Starokadomsky.

Leonid Starokadomsky © Wikimedia Commons

At the very beginning of the 20th century, his left hand and forearm were amputated when the surgeon contracted cadaveric poison during the autopsy of a deceased sailor. However, Starokadomsky did not leave the service and with just one hand managed to carry out simple operations even while sailing on board the ship. Leonid Starokadomsky himself later recalled that he went on a polar expedition for a simple reason - as a child he read about the mysterious Chukchi and since then really wanted to see them …

At the end of July 1914, "Taimyr" and "Vaygach", passing along the Kuril Islands, reached the shores of Kamchatka. Already in the waters of the Bering Strait, between Chukotka and Alaska, the expedition on August 4 by radio learned about the beginning of the "big war in Europe." Polar sailors could not guess that this war would soon be called the First World War, however, the icebreakers specifically turned to the mouth of the Chukchi River Anadyr - there was a powerful radio station that made it possible to contact the command of the navy in St. Petersburg.

Only on August 12, 1914, the expedition received an order by radio communication from the capital to continue sailing, despite the war. The Taimyr and Vaigach hurried north, into the icy waters of the Chukchi Sea. A few days later, in the area of Wrangel Island, the ships met the first ice fields.

“On all sides we were surrounded by old hummocky ice floes, mixed with the debris of ice fields … The hummocks reached a meter height…” - the one-armed surgeon Starokadomsky later recalled. The members of the expedition did not yet know that they would observe the environment of sea ice in all forms and types for the next 11 months.

Leonid Starokadomsky also described an unusual meeting in the sea north of the coast of Chukotka: “Around midnight, from Taimyr, we noticed something completely unusual - a bright fire in the sea among ice floes. Coming closer, we saw about three dozen Chukchi on a huge ice floe. They pulled leather canoes onto the ice and made a large fire from the driftwood. This camp among the ice in the Arctic Ocean presented a truly enchanting sight at night …"

The unknown island of the northernmost man

On August 27, 1914, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, an unknown land was noticed from the board of the Vaygach icebreaker - “two islands that soon merged into one”, as an eyewitness described those minutes. The icebreakers were in the area of the New Siberian Islands, but the spotted piece of land, ten nautical miles long, had not been previously marked on the maps.

Two icebreakers from two sides explored and described the shores of the newly discovered island. On the northern coast, sailors noticed a lagoon - at high tide it was filled with sea water, and at low tide water from the lagoon flowed into the ocean in a large waterfall. At the end of summer, snow still lay in the valleys among the island hills.

The expedition members suggested that the discovered island could be part of the legendary Sannikov Land. Today this island, like the entire Novosibirsk archipelago, is administratively part of the Bulunsky district of Yakutia, one of the northernmost in the northern republic.

The island will remain unnamed for more than a year, then it will be named Novopashenny Island in honor of the captain of the Vaigach icebreaker Peter Novopashenny. However, later, after the end of the revolution and the Civil War, the island will be renamed in honor of Lieutenant Alexei Zhokhov, who was the chief of watch on the Vaigach icebreaker at the time of the discovery of this piece of land lost in the Arctic Ocean.

Snow-covered landscape of Zhokhov Island © TASS Photo chronicle

The members of the expedition could not have known that decades later, already at the end of the 20th century, on the island that today bears the name of Lieutenant Zhokhov, scientists will discover the northernmost traces of an ancient man on our planet. Already 9 thousand years ago, ancient people lived on Zhokhov Island, located half a thousand kilometers north of the coast of Yakutia. And they did not just live, but bred a special breed of sled dogs. As established by archaeologists, in these polar latitudes, the main food of the ancient inhabitants was the meat of polar bears.

The crews of the Taimyr and Vaigach that left the shores of the island they discovered had no idea that they would also have to eat polar bear meat during their long winter in the polar ice. Already on September 2, 1914, the icebreakers approached Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost part of mainland Russia. Here the previously explored sea route ended - further on the way of the "through voyage" still lay Mare incognitum, icy waters that had never been crossed by any ship sailing from east to west.

The sailors were amazed by the abundance of ice on the waves and the huge ice wall erected on the shore by the sea surf. As the expedition doctor Leonid Starokadomsky later recalled: “The entire strait was filled with floating ice … On the low coastal strip, colossal ice floes were piled up in a continuous wave, thrown ashore with terrible force …” It was especially surprising that the ice floes were of different colors - either blue or completely white.

On September 8, 1914, when the expedition was trying to find passages in the ice fields and break through further to the west, the sides of the Taimyr were pushed through by ice, and the ship was seriously damaged. For several weeks, the two icebreakers were looking for a way out of the ice trap, but by the end of September, the Taimyr and Vaigach were finally stuck 17 miles apart in the frozen water. The sailors faced a long winter in the hope that next summer would be able to at least partially melt the polar ice.

We suffered the most from the cold in the living quarters …

The icebreakers were initially preparing for a possible polar captivity. Each ship had ten additional stoves to heat the cabins even when the engines were turned off and there was no way to maintain central heating. For thermal insulation, the shipbuilders used very thick plating of the sides and cabins made of crushed cork and "vegetable wool" of the baobab tree.

However, during many months of wintering in the middle of the polar ice, when, in order to save coal, the fireboxes of the engines were extinguished, despite the additional furnaces and all the thermal insulation according to the latest technology of that era, the temperature in the living cabins of the icebreakers did not rise above +8 degrees. Even a meter layer of additional insulation, which the crews arranged around the sides of the cabins from snow and bricks cut from ice, did not help. “We suffered the most from the cold in the living quarters…” - Leonid Starokadomsky later recalled.

A long polar night was approaching, and for many months those who were captured by ice had to live in semi-darkness - there was no electricity due to disconnected cars, and kerosene lamps gave a dim light. In the holds of the "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" we had prudently stored food for a year and a half of sailing, so there was enough food, but it was monotonous, and most importantly, we had to strictly save fresh water.

Taimyr and Vaygach in ice captivity © Wikimedia Commons

“Canned meat quickly becomes boring, and their very smell and appearance become unpleasant and disgusting,” Starokadomsky later said. “But we had no choice. The overwhelming majority regularly ate canned food without complaints or complaints, only secretly dreaming of a fried piece of fresh meat …"

Polar bears unexpectedly helped with this misfortune - occasionally they wandered to the frozen ships and became the prey of sailors. During ten months of ice captivity, the crews of the Taimyr and Vaigach shot down a dozen northern giants, putting their meat on cutlets.

During the long wintering, a simple toilet was also a problem - the cars were stopped, so the internal water supply and the old closets did not work. As Leonid Starokadomsky recalled: "A lot of grief was brought by an extension, built on beams made of a plank frame and canvas, which were removed from the side, replacing the frozen and inactive closets …"

The polar night began at the end of October, when the thermometers did not rise above -30 degrees. Absolute darkness, without a ray of sunlight, lasted more than three months for the crews of the Taimyr and Vaigach - 103 days! In order to preserve the health and morale of the crews in such conditions, obligatory daily walks on the ice and general exercises were regularly carried out. The officers taught the sailors mathematics and foreign languages.

The captives of the North celebrated Christmas and New Year 1915 festively - they built a "Christmas tree" from twigs, opened the last bottles of the remaining beer and canned food with pineapples. Not only rare holidays, but also the northern lights, which are frequent in these latitudes, have become entertainment. Doctor Leonid Starokadomsky tried to describe in words this miracle of polar nature: “Wide stripes, as if consisting of narrow rays, similar to vertical curtains hanging in the air, covered half and even three quarters of the horizon, wriggling like wide folds of the most delicate fabric. Suddenly, from different sides, beams of rays quickly reached the zenith and there converged into a knot. This form of radiance is called the crown. It is characterized by an unusually lively play of light: stripes of rays brightly colored in green, pink, crimson colors, with extreme rapidity, as if under the influence of some impetuous breath, worried, ran across, rushed about, flaring up, turning pale and flashing again. Then, just as suddenly, the crown turned pale, the bright color disappeared, the beams were extinguished. There was only some indefinite gentle glow in the upper layers of the atmosphere …"

Under a block of ice of cold Taimyr …

Lieutenant Alexey Zhokhov © Wikimedia Commons

The sailors had to spend the winter in complete isolation from the world, the radio stations of the icebreakers could not cope with the vast distances of the Arctic Ocean. “The most painful thing was the complete lack of communication with the mainland … Our loved ones did not receive any news from us,” recalled Leonid Starokadomsky.

On March 1, 1915, the expedition suffered its first loss - Lieutenant Alexei Zhokhov died. He could hardly endure the polar night, moreover, he was depressed by the protracted conflict with the commander of the expedition, Captain Vilkitsky. In distant Petersburg, the lieutenant was awaited by a bride, and the long wintering, which interrupted the "through flight" for almost a year, became a serious psychological blow to the sailor.

The dying Zhokhov asked to be buried not in the icy sea, but on the ground. Fulfilling the last wishes of a comrade, several dozen sailors from the "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" delivered the coffin with Zhokhov's body across the ice to the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula. “It got warmer to -27 °,” Doctor Starokadomsky wrote in his diary that day.

The wooden cross on the grave was decorated with a copper plaque, on which the craftsmen from the Vaygach engraved the naive, but touching verses of Lieutenant Zhokhov, written by him shortly before his death:

Under a block of ice of cold Taimyr, Where the gloomy arctic fox bark

One only speaks of the dull life of the world, The exhausted singer will find peace.

Will not throw a golden ray of morning Aurora

To the sensitive lyre of a forgotten singer -

The grave is as deep as the abyss of Tuscarora, Like a lovely woman's beloved eyes.

If only he could pray for them again, Look at them even from afar, Death itself would not be so harsh, And the grave would not seem deep …

For Zhokhov and his companions on the expedition, "The Abyss of Tuscarora" was not just an abstract literary allegory. Tuscarora at that time was called the Kuril-Kamchatka trench - the deepest sea depression stretching from Japan to Kamchatka along the Kuriles, one of the most impressive on the planet. Its maximum depths exceed 9 kilometers, and at the beginning of the expedition, in July 1914, "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" passed over the "abyss of Tuscarora", unsuccessfully trying to measure its depth with a cable of many kilometers.

A month later, another member of the expedition, the fireman Ivan Ladonichev, died. He was buried next to Lieutenant Zhokhov, calling the previously unnamed section of the Taimyr coast with two lonely crosses succinctly and briefly - Cape Mogilny.

“At a different time, this expedition would have roused the entire civilized world!"

The polar night for the crews of the "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" ended at the end of February, when a dim ball began to appear for a short while over the line of the ice horizon. Over the next two months, the polar night was replaced by a polar day - from April 24, the sun stopped setting. The sailors' first joy from the long-awaited light was soon replaced by irritation - the nerves were exhausted by the long winter, it was difficult for people to fall asleep, even with tightly battened windows. Soon, due to the 24-hour brightest sunshine reflected in the surrounding ice, cases of snow blindness were added.

"Spring" in the polar latitudes began only in the middle of the calendar summer. The ice captivity dragged on - the sailors had fears that the heating furnaces burned too much coal and the icebreakers simply would not have enough fuel to complete the voyage. In this case, they provided for a fallback - to make their way on foot to the mouth of the Yenisei.

Fortunately for the expedition, the first movements of the melting ice began on July 21, 1915. However, for another three weeks, the ships could not get out of the grip of the ice shell. It often snowed, the temperature fluctuated around 0 degrees. It took the ships, freed from ice captivity, three days to maneuver among the blocks of frozen water to get close to each other again. It happened on August 11 - on that day, the ships again moved west together to complete the "through voyage".

Taking this opportunity, sailors hungry for fresh meat hunted seals right in the ocean. “We ate seal meat for the first time. When fried, it is very soft and tender. Only a very dark, almost black color makes the seal meat roast not quite attractive,”Dr. Starokadomsky wrote in his diary.

Vaygach during a long winter © Wikimedia Commons

On the last day of the summer of 1915, from the icebreakers we saw Dikson Island, located in the waters of the Kara Sea near the mouth of the Yenisei. From here the well-known path to Arkhangelsk already began.

The ships that left Vladivostok 14 months ago arrived at the main port of the White Sea at noon on September 16, 1915. Under a fine drizzling rain "Taimyr" and after it "Vaygach" approached the city pier of Arkhangelsk. The first "through voyage" in the history of mankind along the Northern Sea Route from the Far East to Europe has been successfully completed.

Alas, at that time the First World War was raging on the planet. Its horrors overshadowed the feat of polar sailors both for our country and for everyone else. As the famous polar explorer Roald Amundsen would later regretfully say: “At a different time, this expedition would have roused the entire civilized world!"