View source for SS Chelyuskin

{{Short description|Soviet icebreaker}}
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|Ship image=[[File:Пароход Челюскин.jpg|300px|Chelyuskin]]
|Ship caption=''Chelyuskin''
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|Ship name=''Chelyuskin''
|Ship owner={{flagicon|USSR}} [[Sovtorgflot]]
|Ship operator=[[Glavsevmorput]]<ref>{{in lang|ru}}[http://www.beer7.net/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=681 Chelyuskin and Pijma: All dots above i] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090608160110/http://www.beer7.net/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=681 |date=2009-06-08 }} by Lazar Freidgame</ref>
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|Ship builder=[[Burmeister and Wain]] (B&W) [[Copenhagen]], [[Denmark]]
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|Ship launched=11 March 1933
|Ship completed=1933
|Ship christened=[[Semion Chelyuskin]]
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|Ship maiden voyage=6 May 1933
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|Ship fate=Sank 13 February 1934
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|Ship type=Steam ship
|Ship tonnage=7,500t
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|Ship length={{cvt|310.2|ft}}
|Ship beam={{cvt|54.3|ft}}
|Ship height={{cvt|22.0|ft}}
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|Ship power=2400hp
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|Ship speed=12,5 knots
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|Ship crew=111
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'''SS ''Chelyuskin'''''<ref>Also ''Cheliuskin''.</ref> ({{lang-rus|«Челю́скин»|p=tɕɪˈlʲuskʲɪn}}) was a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[steamship]], reinforced to navigate through polar ice, that in 1934 became ice-bound in [[Arctic]] waters during a navigation along the [[Northern Maritime Route]] from [[Murmansk]] to [[Vladivostok]] and sank. 111 people were on board the Chelyuskin, and all but one were rescued by air. The expedition's task was to determine the possibility to travel by non-icebreaker through the [[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 [[Russia]]n [[geographical pole|polar]] explorer [[Semion Chelyuskin|Semion Ivanovich Chelyuskin]]. The head of the expedition was [[Otto Yuliyevich Shmidt]] and the ship's [[Captain (nautical)|captain]] was [[Vladimir Voronin (Captain)|V. I. Voronin]]. There were 111 people on board the steamship, including Soviet cinematographers [[:ru:Трояновский, Марк Антонович|Mark Troyanovsky]] and [[:ru:Шафран, Аркадий Менделевич|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==
{{more citations needed section|date=February 2013}}
After leaving [[Murmansk]] on 2 August 1933, the steamship managed to get through most of the Northern Route before it was caught in the [[ice field]]s in September. Eight members of the crew had been dropped off at Kolyuchin Island, so there were 104 people on board including 10 women and two small children. One of the children was only 6 months old: geodesicist Vasily Vasiliev's daughter Karina, born on August 31, 1933, during the voyage in the Kara Sea. After becoming icebound, the ship [[Sea ice|drifted]] in the ice pack before sinking on 13 February 1934, crushed by the [[sea ice|icepacks]] near [[Kolyuchin Island]] in the [[Chukchi Sea]]. During the wreck one crew member, B. G. Mogilevich, was killed by deck cargo. The survivors made a camp on the ice floe. The women and children were airlifted out by [[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 [[search and rescue]] operations were the first people to receive the newly established highest title of [[Hero of the Soviet Union]]. Those pilots were [[Anatoly Liapidevsky]], [[Sigizmund Levanevsky]] (who crashed en route to the camp, but survived), [[Vasily Molokov]], [[Mavriky Slepnyov]], [[Mikhail Vodopianov]], [[Nikolai Kamanin]] and [[Ivan Doronin]]. Liapidevsky flew an ANT-4, the civilian version of the [[Tupolev TB-1|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 [[United States|American]] air mechanics, Clyde Goodwin Armitstead, and William Latimer Lavery,<ref>The Junior Aircraft Year Book, 1935, p.8</ref> 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 [[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. The following year part of the Soviet [[Baltic Fleet]] made the passage to the Pacific where an armed conflict with [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] was looming.

<gallery mode=packed heights=180>
File:Chelyuskin slowly sinking.png|Sinking of the ''Chelyuskin''
File:Cheliuskin P Novitsky 1933.jpg|Chelyuskin, 1933, photo by Novitsky
File:Chelyuskin survivors drift - Building the airstrip.png|Chelyuskin survivors building the airstrip
File:Chelyuskin survivors drift - Greeting the first rescue airplane.png|Greeting the first rescue airplane
File:Chelyuskin survivors drift - Scientific observations never ceased.png|Photo titled as "Scientific observations never ceased"
Chukchi Sea5KOI.png|Location of [[Kolyuchin Island]]
Леваневский Ушаков Слепнев на Аляске.jpg|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''.
</gallery>

==Legacy==
In the wake of the catastrophe, a central square in [[Yaroslavl]] was renamed after the ''Chelyuskintsy'', as was [[Chelyuskinites Park]] in [[Minsk]]. [[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 Germany|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]].<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1877819/ Tscheljuskin] on the [[IMDb]].</ref>

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]].<ref name="approved">[http://www.rian.ru/science/20070213/60678107.html В Чукотском море найдены фрагменты «Челюскина»] — in Russian</ref> The polar explorer [[Artur Chilingarov]] argued that the ship should be raised and converted into a museum.

[[Michael Roberts (writer)|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==
*[[Cape Serdtse-Kamen]]
*[[SS Dzhurma|SS ''Dzhurma'']]

==Further reading==
*{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=R.E.G. |last2=Salnikov |first2=Yuri |date=2005 |title=The Chelyuskin Adventure - Эпопея "Челюскина" |location=McLean VA, USA |publisher=Paladwr Press |isbn=978-1888962239 }} (bilingual edition)

==References==
<references/>

==External links==
* {{in lang|ru}} [http://www.cheluskin.ru/ Chelyuskin-70] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200922065306/http://www.cheluskin.ru/ |date=2020-09-22 }} - Official site of the underwater archeological expedition
* {{in lang|ru}} [http://www.testpilot.ru/review/ppt/cheluskin.htm Rescue of ''Chelyuskin'']
* [http://www.gulags.co.uk/ The Chelyuskin and the Dzhurma in 1933]

{{First Heroes of the Soviet Union}}
{{Polar exploration|state=collapsed}}
{{1934 shipwrecks}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chelyuskin}}
[[Category:Icebreakers of the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Shipwrecks in the Arctic Ocean]]
[[Category:Chukchi Sea]]
[[Category:Arctic exploration vessels]]
[[Category:Polar exploration by Russia and the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:1933 ships]]
[[Category:Maritime incidents in 1934]]
[[Category:1934 in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Ships built by Burmeister & Wain]]