SS Chelyuskin

Chelyuskin
History
Name:	Chelyuskin
Owner:	Soviet Union
Operator:	Glavsevmorput
Builder:	Burmeister and Wain (B&W) Copenhagen, Denmark
Launched:	March 11, 1933
Christened:	Semion Chelyuskin
Completed:	1933
Maiden voyage:	May 6, 1933
Fate:	Sank February 13, 1934
General characteristics
Class and type:	commercial steam ship
Tonnage:	7,500t
Length:	310.2’
Beam:	54.3’
Height:	22.0’
Installed power:	2400hp
Speed:	12,5 knots
Crew:	111

SS Chelyuskin (Russian: «Челю́скин»; IPA: [tɕɪˈlʲuskʲɪn]) was a Soviet steamship reinforced to navigate through polar ice that became ice-bound in Arctic waters during navigation along the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok. 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 Russian polar explorer Semion Ivanovich Chelyuskin. The head of the expedition was Otto Yuliyevich Shmidt and the ship's captain was V. I. Voronin. There were 111 people on board the steamship. The crew members were known as Chelyuskintsy, "Chelyuskinites".

After leaving Murmansk on August 2, 1933, the steamship managed to get through most of the Northern Route before it was caught in the ice fields in September. After that it drifted in the ice pack before sinking on February 13, 1934, crushed by the icepacks near Kolyuchin Island in the Chukchi Sea. 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.

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