Perseus (Soviet ship)

Perseus

1979 Soviet illustrated postal envelope showing the Perseus and its banner
History
USSR
Completed:	1922
Maiden voyage:	1923
In service:	1922
Out of service:	1941
General characteristics
Type:	Research vessel
Displacement:	550 tons
Length:	41.5 metres (136 ft)
Beam:	8 metres (26 ft)
Draft:	3.2 metres (10 ft)
Installed power:	360 hp
Propulsion:	triple expansion steam engine
Speed:	7.5 knots
Crew:	24, of which 16 expedition members

Perseus (Russian: Персей) was the first Soviet research ship. (It was not the first Russian research ship, that being the Imperial Russian ship Saint Andrew, which undertook expeditions under the direction of fisheries research pioneer Nikolai Knipovich (and later L. L. Breytfus) from 1899 to 1907.)

Perseus was constructed as a sealer (seal hunting ship) by industrialist E. V. Mogučim at Onega, Russia on the White Sea in 1916. In 1919 (political conditions and thus ownership having changed) it was towed to Archangel where on January 10 of 1922 the Council of Labor and Defense transferred it to PINRO (Russian: ПИНРО), the Nikolai M. Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography, which equipped it as a research vessel under supervision of the ship's master V. F. Gostev and the first director of the Institute, Ivan Illarionovich Mesjacev. The work was done by shipbuilders and future famous scientists Lev Zenkevich, Vasily Shuleikin, Maria Klenova, and Nikolay Zubov (who later became a Rear Admiral), all of who later participated in voyages of the Perseus.

On November 7, 1922, the national flag of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was raised at the stern of Perseus, and on February 1, 1923 the vessel's unique flag – a blue pennant with the seven stars of the Perseus constellation – was first flown from the mast. (Since then, this pennant has become the emblem of PINRO.) On August 19, 1923, the Perseus began its first scientific voyage.