Cabin of the head of expedition

Lifeboat deck

The rescue means installed on the “Krassin” includes various rescue boats from old wooden lifeboats for 18 persons to modern motorized whaleboat for 54 persons. There are reserves of fresh water, food, and medicines in every boat. The modern lifeboats are completely waterproof and unsinkable. They are equipped by automatic mechanisms for fast lowering, heating and fire protection systems. Group and individual life saving equipment include also life rafts, jackets, and buoy with various finding means.

In spite of participation of the "Krassin" in large rescue and military operations, her life equipment was never used by direct destination but only for auxiliary purposes.

Now we can pass to the captain bridge.

Wheel house

The wheel hose is a post where control equipment of the ship is concentrated.

Steering wheel has electrohydraulic drive which transmits the effort to the steering engines, installed in the stern of ship. Steersman keeps the watch during one hour, no more, because this duty requires especial attention and responsibility and needs a hard load on the eyesight. Magnetic compass and repeater of gyrocompass are installed near steering wheel. The gyrocompass is placed in a special room on the accommodation deck. Principle of gyrocompass operation is based on vibration plane conservation (propriety of the Foucault pendulum) and this provides its higher precision than precision of magnetic compass the reading of which is depended of magnetic field and big metallic objects. Many other instruments and controls on the ship are also duplicated. So steering wheel and engine telegraph installed here are duplicated on the direction bridge. The engine telegraph is used to transmit necessary commands to the engine room which are confirmed by engine operator who regulates the operation mode of steam engine.

Forward-viewing wind screens are equipped by heaters and circular insertions rotated with fast speed. This provides visibility in the hard weather conditions. The radars Don and Nayada are used to display the divers obstacles appeared in front of the ship: vessels, boats or coast line.

Fire detection station is a board of fire detection system destined to find ignition and send fire alarm. Fire detectors installed in divers premises of the ship transmit the command of ignition from its fusing elements and put in respective indicator on the board of the station or fire alarm.

Communication tubes were used for link between wheel house and engine room. A whistle served to call engine operator.

Sliding door station is destined to operate sliding doors installed in the lowest part of watertight bulkheads. Theory of floodability was developed by admiral Makarov who proposed a calculation method of vessel hull division into the bays and methods of vessel flattening in the case of list at accident.

The list of the ship is indicated on the clinometer. This instrument is installed here and in some other premises e.g. chart house.

Chart house

The main navigation instruments are installed here.

Location of the ship is determined by radio direction finder. The radio signals are sent to fix the distance and direction to the nearest radio beacons. Echo sounder serves to determine the depth under the keel of the ship. Actual value of 1.2 meter is not sufficient and indicated as “danger”.

Instrument used to measure the speed (in knots) and the traveled distance (in miles) is called log. The term “knot” (knot = mile/hour) was known from the period of sailing fleet. The necessary parameters were calculated by the number of knots on the pope paid out from the deck of the ship (mile = 1852 m).

A facsimile installed here was used to receive the weather reports. You can see here the fields of high and low pressure, temperature values, atmosphere fronts, and other parameters. A telegraph key served to send messages by dot-and-dash.

History of navigation mean and instruments used at the time of sailing fleet is presented on this stand.

Modern satellite navigation systems GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, and other provide now a stable communication and determine location of the ship in every point on the globe without former radio communication means.

9. Captain’s cabin

The captain’s cabin is located in the forward part of superstructure from which the observation on the fore deck and the view in the direction of ship travel is open. Captain is responsible for all ship and he must be ready in any time to take necessary operation decision.

Before modernization, the captain’s cabin was located on the accommodation deck and the superstructure served only for wheel house and radio cabin.

Here you can see the captain's cabin divided in three sections: study where captain composed and decoded the radiograms, received the reports of crew member, salon where the important operation meeting were kept to resolve various problems and the representatives of cost services were received, and you can see also the section for the rest of captain with bunk and bath room.

Here a communication tube, telephone, and other necessary equipment are installed.

There are collected some articles of captains for personal use exposed on the table of study. The list of icebreaker captains includes: first captain Neupokoev, captain Eggi participated in the rescue of Umberto Nobile expedition, Pavel Ponomarev who became later captain of the first nuclear icebreaker “Lenin”, Michail Makarov commanded the "Krassin" during the Great Patriotic war.

In June 1941 the “Krassin” icebreaker conducted cargo ships in the east sector of the North Sea Route. After beginning of the war, the icebreaker was dispatched to Seattle (USA), then through Panama Canal to Baltimore and Halifax (Canada) to be prepared for participation in the operation of Alliance Troops landing Greenland. Despite of unfavorable weather condition this travel was successful. The "Krassin” was repaired and equipped by artillery weapons and anti-craft defence means including quick-firing canons “Oerlikon”. At this time, the operations in Greenland became not necessary and the “Krassin” was sent to Reykjavik (Iceland) to participate in the Arctic convoy PQ-15 bounded to Murmansk. Arctic convoys conducted cargo ships to deliver the arms, food, and other necessary cargos to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The “Krassin” and other ships participated in PQ-15 were attacked by German aviation. Return fire was open from "Krassin" and two torpedo bombers were bagged in result of these actions.

Now we can see the cabin of expedition head which is located here at port side.

Cabin of the head of expedition

This cabin has also a nice observation of fore deck and port side. Take attention to the photo of Rudolf Samoylovich. He was the head of rescue expedition in 1928 to save the aeronauts of dirigible “Italia”. Later Samoylovich headed Arctic research institute. The research works conducted on the “Krassin”, including statistic data collected during high-latitude expedition, were very important for practical application. Even actually these results are successfully used to form the bases of long-term observations in several regions of Arctic Ocean.

Last time the Arctic attracts many researchers due to the global warming of climate and discovery of new developments. Researches in field of ecology, direction and flow velocity, sampling of ground, conditions for deep-sea and shallow dwellers become now very actual for development of North regions.

This research works are conducted not only on the polar ice station but with the polar aviation.

Ice reconnaissance, icebergs monitoring, and rescue operation in artic regions are possible only with using of airplanes and helicopters.

The photos of the pilots Chuchnovsky, Straube, Babushkin participated in the search and rescue of the Nobile expedition, ice reconnaissance on the North Sea Route, supply delivery to the polar ice stations are presented on the stands. Here you can see the airplanes used at that time.

Take attention to this camel wool scarf which was used by polar explorers for wearing at the low temperatures.

The portraits of famous polar explorers and researchers are exposed also in the ward room where we will pass now.

Wardroom

The wardroom is a salon where the meeting of the crew members, operational councils were conducted. This place was used also for meal of command stuff. Before modernization the wardroom was located in the forward part of the accommodation deck. In expedition of 1928 the most part of the rescue group, service stuff, and journalists was displaced there.

At modernization, the new heat-insulating materials were used for decoration of wardroom in this section of new superstructure. The comfortable cabins of 1-2 persons for crew members are displaced now on accommodation deck.

After modernization and transfer to liquid fuel – mazut, the “Krassin” icebreaker continued her work on the North Sea Route and later in 1972 she was sent to “Sevmogeologya” company where icebreaker worked as floating power station. Two power generators were installed instead of two steam engines. Only one central steam machine of 3800 hp was used as the main engine.

Since 1999 after restoration on the Kanonersky Ship-repair Yard, the "Krassin" icebreaker was open as icebreaker-museum and in 2004 she became a branch of the World Ocean Museum which is disposed in Kaliningrad.

In 2002 icebreaker “Krassin” and cruiser “Aurora” were received in the Historic Naval Ships Association.

The portraits of the famous polar explorers, researchers, and other persons who made a major contribution in the icebreaker building and exploitation, development of North Sea Route and polar researches: admiral Makarov, expedition head and director of Arctic research institute Samoylovich, diplomat Krassin, professor Wise and others are exposed here.

So we arrived to the end of our excursion.

If you have any questions I would be glad to answer and give you all necessary additional information.

Thank you for your attention and see you again on board of our icebreaker.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 795