MOSCOW, January 23. /TASS Correspondent Andrey Marmyshev/. The Russian Hydrographic Expedition, led by Boris Vilkitsky, was the first Russian expedition to sail along the Northern Sea Route. On the New Year eve, the expedition team performed Chekhov's plays around trees made of long rods and wire. The expedition's Taymyr and Vaygach steamships froze into the ocean ice near Eurasia's northernmost point. That wintering experience became an important milestone in the Arctic's further exploration.
The northernmost New Year tree
Those must have been the most unusual New Year trees in high latitudes. Someone's idea was to fix together rods of broomcorn, a tropical plant used as brooms on the Taymyr ship, and then to color that structure with green oil paint. On the Vaygach, the New Year tree was twisted from green-colored wires. The "trees" were decorated with homemade cardboard stars, with nuts, candles and electric bulbs. This was how members of the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition, stuck in the ice between the Taymyr Peninsula and Severnaya Zemlya, celebrated Christmas and the New Year 1915. They were hundreds of miles away from the nearest settlement.
The piglets, raised and saved for such an occasion since Vladivostok, as well as canned pineapples, came in handy for the New Year's table. Everyone got a glass of champagne and gifts: tobacco, soap.
"They had a concert of balalaika musicians, they performed Chekhov's plays, there were a clown and comic singers. Those latitudes had not seen such New Year holidays," said Alexey Eliseenko, a researcher from Krasnoyarsk. "Those were Russian sailors who, unlike it had been planned, remained trapped for months in the middle of an ice desert."
Stuck at the edge of the world
"Stock is sufficient for a year," the expedition's leader Boris Vilkitsky telegraphed in October, 1914, to Russia's marine minister. A year earlier, Vilkitsky discovered the unknown Land of Emperor Nicholas II. The expedition leader realized they were unable to break through the wall of ice. In the next voyage, the task was to sail along the Northern Sea Route from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Having passed the eastern part of the route, the icebreaking steamships were stopped by harsh ice near Cape Chelyuskin and had to remain there for the winter.
"The expedition had not planned wintering, and, of course, it was a rather difficult challenge for the Russian sailors," the expert said. "However, the expedition was prepared and equipped quite well, the command was experienced in sailing in the Arctic seas, thus the unplanned months-long wintering was successful and never became a tragedy. The preparation level was such that on board the Taymyr was a bicycle, on which one of the officers had made the first ice cycling tour in the world's polar history. To put in a nutshell, that story cannot be a plot for a disaster movie. Polar bears did not attack them, nor had Russian sailors to eat each other, like British sailors did a few decades earlier (that was during John Franklin's expedition of 1845, where all 129 participants died, including Captain Franklin - TASS)".
Onboard the steamships 94 people were wintering. Back then, newspapers noted it was for the second time only that the Arctic Ocean saw such a big expedition, the first one being Franklin's expedition.
Vilkitsky made the wintering menu: borscht, cabbage soup, porridge, pasta with stewed meat, fish, jelly and dry fruit beverages, coffee and cocoa. Once a week, everyone received half a can of condensed milk, 400 grams of jam or canned fruits, chocolate or marshmallows. They made water from ice and snow.
Some said that menu was too monotonous. "I've found I am not adapted to polar food. I feel an organic aversion to porridges. <...> A month later, I got sick of pasta," said Dr. Arngold, the doctor on the Vaygach ship.
Polar school
For many years, Krasnoyarsk scientists have been searching for traces of Russian polar sailors. According to Danil Lysenko, a researcher at Archaeological Design and Exploration LLC, they have collected a big amount of information, including about wintering conditions in different times.
"Wintering in the Arctic is always extreme. This experience may be applicable in terms of studying the everyday, biological, and psychological adaptations to such harsh realities, to being in conditions of limited resources, including food, in conditions of limited communication. How people behave, how they survive in such realities - this all is very interesting," he said.
Leonid Starokadomsky, the ship's doctor on the Taymyr, stressed idleness was a terrible threat in the wintering. It causes melancholy and despondency, affects resistance and activities thus causing diseases. The risk of scurvy was very high, he said. "People should have been kept busy by all means. We managed to find some kind of occupation for everyone. Ice walks were obligatory for everyone, and they were strictly observed," the doctor added.
The timetable for the crew in addition to regular occupations and ice and snow storage included riding on an ice carousel, dogs and skis, wrestling and boxing, and target shooting. Football was top popular. The officers delivered to the crew classes in Russian, mathematics, chemistry, physics and geography, history. German and French lessons were optional. The crew had professional classes. On holidays, the expedition members were invited to lectures and fiction readings, to performances of balalaika, mandolin and guitar musicians.
Stanislav Stryuchkov of the Taymyr Fans Club stressed the expedition members not only survived, like Fridtjof Nansen did, but also conducted effective scientific work. Their activities have enriched "the science in a way no other expedition has done before or since." For example, Navigator Yevgenov marked the contours of the Land of Emperor Nicholas II.
That all happened far from the mainland, in the polar night known for severe frosts, when, due to fuel economy, the temperature in cabins dropped to +7 degrees Celsius. The ships' medics struggled with growing cases of frostbites and diseases. The expedition lost Lieutenant Zhokhov of kidney inflammation, stoker Ladonichev of appendicitis. To bury them on the shore, the sailors brought their bodies 130 kilometers through ice, and then were digging through the permafrost to make graves.
Expedition's role
On August 8, 1915, the Taymyr and the Vaygach managed to get free from the ice trap and were able to continue sailing. In mid-September, the steamships entered the port of Arkhangelsk, having passed the Northern Sea Route from east to west for the first time in history.
"Vilkitsky expedition's role cannot be overestimated. He proved the Northern Sea Route is possible. Having realized this, Otto Schmidt was developing it in the Soviet years, making the Taymyr [Peninsula], and in particular Norilsk and Dudinka, a support base for ships," Stryuchkov stressed.
Eliseenko said the expedition was the Russian people's heroism and a forerunner of the 20th-century industrial boom in the Arctic.
"The expedition's success has boosted engineering ideas, it has made everyone confident the development of the Arctic is not a task for tomorrow, it is a task for today. And in fact, just within one generation, the Arctic routes have turned from a "short sight" fiction into a powerful tool to develop the country," Alexey Eliseenko said.