Translated material
50 meters to "Chelyuskin"
An examination in Denmark confirmed the exact location of the sunken legend
Yesterday, on the anniversary of the death of the legendary steamship Chelyuskin in the Arctic in 1934, an exhibition opened in Moscow, which presented not only the personal belongings of the expedition members and archival documents, but also the results of the latest research at the bottom of the Chukchi Sea, where in the summer of 2006- In fact, the search for the sunken legend was completed. Now the final resting place of the ship is absolutely known.Apparently, it is not for nothing that in the minds of most Russians the word “Chelyuskin” is inevitably followed by the word “epic”. The Chelyuskin-70 expedition to the Chukchi Sea was organized back in 2004, but the search was unsuccessful. Only last summer, divers managed to discover a sunken steamship 80 miles from the coast at a depth of 50 meters under a layer of silt and bottom sediments. Some time later, an examination carried out in Denmark at the plant from whose shipyards the Chelyuskin came out (though it was originally called Lena) identified the ship. As the scientific secretary of the Chelyuskin-70 expedition, Joseph Rabinovich, said yesterday at the opening of the exhibition, “Danish examination has confirmed that the steamship found at the bottom of the Chukchi Sea is indeed the Chelyuskin; now we can firmly say that the Chelyuskin has been found.”
Mr. Rabinovich said that the idea of searching for the vessel had arisen several times over the years since the disaster. However, these searches were previously almost impossible. Mr. Rabinovich cited the text of the resolution of the head of the legendary expedition, Otto Schmidt, imposed several decades ago on the proposal to find the ship: “I consider it pointless for the national economy, and too expensive for a memorial.” Now local authorities can afford to finance a search expedition. The expedition members spoke about the enormous assistance provided by the administrations of the Chukotka and Koryak districts, because underwater searches are, as one of the participants put it, “money-intensive”: a vessel and special equipment are needed.
Alexey Mikhailov, head of the Chelyuskin-70 expedition and the man who was one of the first to touch the Soviet Titanic, admitted: “During these five years we learned a lot about the history of the expedition, met all the relatives of its participants, for us it became part of life! Three sons of Otto Schmidt came to the exhibition. “I am not only the son of Schmidt, but also a historian,” said the middle son of the famous polar explorer Sigurd Ottovich, the oldest professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, who, according to his admission, has long exceeded 80. “As a historian, I was extremely pleased with the news that the epic of the Chelyuskinites remembers many people from the generation born after the war, in later years. It was not just popular enthusiasm; 1934 was perhaps the happiest year of Soviet power. Already on September 1, this was interrupted by a shot in Smolny.”
The last two surviving members of that same expedition also came to celebrate the anniversary of the day when the strong pressure of the ice floes tore the hull of the ship. Alla Buiko was two years old at the time, and Karina Vasilyeva was born on board the Chelyuskin. And in her passport, in the “place of birth” column, “Kara Sea” is listed. “Because I was born traveling, I have loved traveling all my life,” she says. “And I chose the appropriate profession - I graduated from Leningrad State University and worked as a geologist all my life.”
The exhibition features old photographs and things (for example, a knife with the note “It was with it that O.Yu. Schmidt cut the sausage on the ice floe”), as well as a railing beam - the same iron part that was raised from the water last summer for the chemical identification of the ship .
One of the dive participants, Alexander Fedoseev, told a Vremya Novostei correspondent how exactly the legendary steamship was found. “On the vessel that was provided to us for the search, special equipment was installed - a side-scan sonar, and at some point it showed the presence of something similar to a ship. Later we examined the object on the monitor screen and came closer. During the first dive, we missed, and then we lowered a special “cat”, which caught on a piece of deck equipment. The expedition members descended along a cable to the deck in the stern area, Alexey Koshelev walked along the side and removed this railing beam in the area of the boat deck.”
The Chelyuskin-70 expedition, according to Mr. Mikhailov, plans to continue research in the Chukchi Sea this coming summer. To the question that inevitably arises: are there any plans to lift not individual artifacts, but the entire ship, the expedition members have so far given a negative answer. Firstly, this operation is too expensive: the lifting will cost approximately 35-40 million dollars. And secondly, it is not yet clear why.