Polar Voyages
Page 18
Sunset on the hills of Milne Land.
Icebergs floating off Milne Land at the West end of Scoresbysund.
The enemy ship would be seen first by the frozen look-outs as a slightly darker grey patch in the patchy grey wall of mist and murk. ‘Was that a patch of thicker mist or is there something there?’ ‘No, just a heavy bank of fog.’ The lookout wipes his binocular lenses and looks again. The dark patch is still there but it is getting bigger and darker. It even has a bow wave! Suddenly a ship takes shape and detaches itself from the murk. It is not just a ghostly patch of fog in the far distance, but a solid enemy ship just a couple of miles away! The low, squat, grey hull and the tall superstructures of a modern battleship operating at full speed, its low sharp bows throwing the spray and waves aside as it sliced through the seas with its menacing, deadly main guns pointing straight towards you. It must have been an awesome sight. How the three men from the Hood survived is a mystery itself as, after the shock of the explosion, the shock of hitting those icy waters would numb and paralyse anyone, never mind any injuries caused by the explosions themselves. Hyperthermia would normally render a man totally helpless in seconds and kill him in minutes. The three survivors were picked up by HMS Electra a couple of hours after the explosion.
Bismarck was caught and finally sunk a few days later by swordfish torpedo aircraft from HMS Ark Royal and torpedoes from HMS Dorsetshire. When she sank, the Bismarck suffered an even greater loss of life than the Hood. 1,995 died in Bismarck, 1,416 died in the Hood.
North Cape of Iceland
Our passage through the Denmark Strait is less eventful and later that day the weather improves and we come up to a small school of four or five humpback whales feeding in the rich Icelandic waters off the North Cape. These grounds used to be some of the best cod fishing grounds in the Atlantic and always had a number of trawlers from the UK and Europe fishing them. Today, apart from a couple of Icelandic trawlers in the distance, they now seem to be deserted. It was near here, in the Isafjord, that the Hull trawlers Ross Cleveland and Kingston Peridot were lost in 1968. The whales are escorted by about forty white-beaked dolphins that leap from the waters and swim all around the ship. The big, slow whales just carry on, occasionally rolling slowly over in the water to cast an eye over this new white member of the school and waving a long fin as they glide by. They swim under the ship and they appear placid and relaxed. We stay with the whales for over an hour, transfixed by the serene beauty of these great whales before we reluctantly head for Keflavik, our final destination.
A tall berg floats near the entrance to Scoresbysund.
This had been a strange trip in some ways. A polar expedition when we had seen neither sea ice nor polar bears. Yet we had seen some rare and fascinating things and been to places that few have been to before. The Sirius Patrol, the spectacular fjords of north-eastern Greenland, which few people in the world have ever seen and which are just as dramatic as the famed Norwegian fjords: the vastness of the Scoresbysund fjord system and the fantastic icebergs that come from the ice cap into those fjords. Seeing narwhals, even in the distance is a rare event. To me, seeing with my own eyes, things that I have only ever seen pictures of in books and also things that few people have ever seen before is thrilling and satisfying and that makes the experience worthwhile. I recall standing on a small rise on one of the trips into hills and looking down over a crest onto a beautiful river valley, with musk ox grazing way below, the valley framed by hills and backed by great mountains with the ice cap behind it all and thinking ‘Has anyone ever looked at this before?’
CHAPTER 8
I/B Kapitan Dranitsyn – Franz Joseph Land
From St Petersburg in Russia, take the night train that travels due north and, twenty-eight hours later, you reach the end of the line, Murmansk. Murmansk is the port that was the destination for many of the Arctic convoys in the Second World War and was, until recently, a closed city. It is the naval base for the Soviet Northern Fleet. If you then take a ship and sail due north across the Barents Sea towards the North Pole for two and a half days you reach a group of islands on the edge of the Polar ice cap that are nearer to the North Pole than they are to Murmansk. You will have arrived at Franz Josef Land; a land that, even today, few people have heard of and even fewer have visited.
Franz Joseph Land (FJL) is an archipelago of 191 ice-cap-covered, uninhabitable islands on the northern edge of the Barents Sea. It is about 800 miles due north of Murmansk and 550 miles from the Geographic North Pole. The islands stretch over 100 miles from north to south and about 200 miles from east to west. Franz Josef Land was probably first sighted by Norwegian sealers in about 1765 when they reported sighting land when they were well to the east of Spitzbergen. Then, in 1873, an Austro-Hungarian expedition set sail from Germany in their ship, the Tegettoff, to find the north-east Passage. The expedition was led by two men, Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht. They never found the north-east Passage. As they sailed eastwards through the Barents Sea, they were suddenly caught by early ice and the ship was trapped. They had no choice but to drift with the ice and pray that one day they would be released. One year later and still frozen in, they looked out over the rail at the endless white fog and ice and then, through a clearing in the fog, they realised that they were looking at two jagged cliffs appearing to the north-west. They named the new land after their Emperor, Arch Duke Franz Josef. They named the cliffs Cape Tegettoff, after their ship. Franz Josef Land was then subsequently claimed by both Norway and Russia until, in 1926, Russia issued a decree stating that it was Russian and imposed a ban on anyone visiting it. It remained closed until 2002 when the Russians allowed one or two small expeditions to visit the islands. Even now it can only be visited during a few brief weeks in high summer due to the ice and, even then, only by a Russian icebreaker.
Map showing the islands of Frans Josef Land (inset).
But why would anyone want to go there? Firstly, because it is reportedly a beautiful area with all the islands having their own ice caps. Secondly, it is a haven for polar wild life – polar bears, walrus, whales as well as birds. Thirdly, it was where Fridtjof Nansen spent the winter of 1895/96 after his attempt to reach the North Pole from his Trans-Polar ship, the Fram. He, and his sole companion Johanssen, lived in a hole on a beach on Jackson Island for the whole winter. Having read of Nansen’s exploits I want to go there and see the place. And finally, I want to go because it has the most northerly point of land in Europe or Asia, Cape Fligely, on Rudolf Island. Only the most northerly point of Ellesmere Island in Canada is nearer to the North Pole.
I wrote to Per Magnus at Polar Quest in Sweden. We had met him on the Greenland trip and I asked him whether he knew of any plans for expeditions to Franz Josef Land. He wrote back saying that he was in touch with a Russian Expedition Company that was thinking of mounting an icebreaker expedition to FJL the following year. ‘If the icebreaker company, the Murmansk Shipping Corporation, committed to the trip, were we interested?’ he emailed us. ‘Yes, we are!’ All went well, forms were filled in, deposits paid, visas sought and travel plans made. All was looking good but then, two months before the departure, the Murmansk Shipping Corporation cancelled the voyage saying there were not enough people wanting to go to make it worthwhile. Maybe they would plan it again the following year, if they got enough people. If not then the chances of anyone organising a trip to FJL were pretty remote and our chance to get there could have gone for good. We really thought that our chance had gone, but we had no choice, we had to just wait and see. Happily for us, the following year, the Russians did set up the trip again and this time enough people were interested, so we were on again.
Murmansk
The Kapitan Dranitsyn is a Russian icebreaker, operated by the Murmansk Shipping Corporation and based in Murmansk. She and her sister ships, including a fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, keep the northern sea route open throughout the year. To join the ship we have to go to Murmansk and that in itself is very special. Mur
mansk is the headquarters of the Russian Northern Fleet and a major submarine base. Having been in the Royal Navy during the Cold War and having sailed along the northern coast of Russia in RN warships and UK Trawlers, Murmansk is a place of mystery. You read about it in spy thrillers, or you heard of allied submarines watching the coast ‘off Murmansk’ but no one I knew had ever actually been there. What sort of place is it really? It is reputedly a desolate and miserable place where sunshine, food and happiness are scarce. You felt that military security ruled the town and all that goes on there and that greatcoat-clad, rifle-touting guards watched every street corner and anyone without the correct papers is a spy. The only people who lived there only did so because the Russian Government had sent them there either as part of the Navy or to support the Navy. Was it really going to be like that?
In Helsinki Airport, we meet up with the others going on the trip and then fly on by a special charter flight to Murmansk to join the ship. Per Magnus, who has arranged the trip for a total of about eight people, has sent one of his senior staff to accompany us. Her name is Carina, she is a slim, no-nonsense, Swedish lady in her early thirties, who tries hard to answer our questions and keep us together as a group. Most of the others on the trip are German with their own German guide.
We fly north, up over Finland and Lapland, before then turning east and descending across the Finnish/Russian border and the fells, birch forests and rivers of the Kola Peninsula to land at Murmansk. The airfield is deserted and there are no other planes in sight anywhere. Ours is the only plane in town. We go through Immigration where our Visas and passports are studied in minute detail. The arrivals hall is empty and we are shepherded straight onto a bus by a uniformed and serious-looking lady and told to wait in the bus. We wait and watch while the rest of the party are cleared and the luggage is taken by porters from the arrivals area and put into two lorries.
The terminal is a big and impressive three-storey, glass-fronted building. The airport car park outside the front of the terminal has about half a dozen cars parked there. No other cars arrive or leave while we wait. There are no signs to the short stay, or long-term car parks and no drop-off-only zones. No taxis, minibuses, no car-hire-courtesy buses, just the two buses for us pulled up in front of the terminal. Grass grows wherever there isn’t concrete and the whole area has a sleepy, forgotten atmosphere that we have disturbed by our arrival. Eventually, everyone is on board and we set off towards the town. The scenery on the way is very attractive. The Kola Inlet is a long finger of water and runs deep into the countryside. We can see the wide estuary in the distance with green, wooded hills rolling down to the water’s edge. Behind it, the low fells roll away to the west and the Norwegian and Finnish Border. Silver birches grow everywhere. As we get nearer to the town the Russian official tells us that we are not allowed to take any pictures of the town from the bus or even of the ship from the quayside. The buses take us directly to the ship and as the airport is on the south side of the town and the ship has been berthed at the southern end of the docks, we see nothing of the town itself except one roundabout and a few blocks of flats. Some are five or six storeys, made of concrete, while some are wooden, two-storey buildings that have been painted pale blue a very long time ago. The bus drives round the end of a warehouse onto the dockside and the Kapitan Dranitsyn’s black hull is suddenly there towering above us. She looks huge. We go on board to be greeted by a friendly, smiling Russian lady offering us cake and salt, a traditional Russian welcome. More staff show us to our cabins and we begin to settle in while we wait for the luggage.
The Kapitan Dranitsyn was built in Finland by the Wartsila Shipyard, which is world famous for building icebreakers. She was launched in 1975 but not completed for another five years. She is 12,000 tons, 25,000 hp and has a crew of sixty. She is one of a class of icebreakers designed for the Russian Northern Sea Route round the north coast of Siberia. This sea route is an important route for Russia and the icebreakers keep the seas along route open all the year round. This huge stretch of sea, from the Barents Sea, through the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea give access to the main ports of Dikson, Tiksi and Pevek. The icebreakers need to be big and strong. In spite of all the claims about global warming and melting ice, the Northern Sea Route can still get blocked and ships can get stuck, even in summer. The ice is not as bad as in winter and it does retreat northwards in the summer, as it always has. But if the wind blows from the north, then the pack ice comes down to the coast along the north-east Passage.
The nuclear ships are even bigger at 25,000 tons and can generate 75,000 hp. They have a crew of almost 140. All the icebreakers have double hulls, with steel 48 mm thick at the bow. They also have a water-ballasting system between the hulls to enable the ship to be rolled by pumping water from side to side to free it if ice freezes to the hulls. An air bubbling systems forces high pressure air out through holes deep in the hull and prevents ice freezing to the ship. Special polymer coatings are used on the hull to reduce friction. Also, the ships can break ice going forwards or astern. Kapitan Dranitsyn is powered by a diesel-electric power system. She has three propellers, port, starboard and a centre line shaft. Her Captain, Sergei Papko, is an experienced icebreaker captain, having spent fifteen years on icebreakers in the northern seas. All her accommodation is within a main seven-deck-high superstructure unit that allows a high degree of noise insulation between it and the hull, so minimising the continual noise of ice breaking. She is well equipped for expedition work, having berths for over a hundred people and with a large dining room, lounges and a bar. She is very comfortable and a nicely decorated ship with comfy chairs and colour photos of Arctic wildlife on the walls. In addition, she has a well-equipped hospital, a gym, a heated indoor pool and a large, very hot sauna. The cabins are very comfortable, with two bunks, one of which folds up and becomes a settee during the day. There is a desk, plenty of storage space and a good bathroom as well as a large window that opens for fresh air.
We sail later in the afternoon. Murmansk is built totally down the east side of the Kola Inlet, between the hills to the east and the water, so it stretches a long way while, on the other bank, there is nothing but green woods and hills. The only bridge lies well south of the town and is the road to Kirkeness in Norway. I am amazed at how big the town is. Murmansk seems to stretch away for miles towards the sea. We pass the fishing vessel berths, where well over a dozen large, modern stern trawlers are tied up. Most look to be in good condition and some are obviously undergoing overhauls and refits, but some look derelict. We sail slowly down the Inlet past the industrial areas of the town, past warehouses, a power station and some large, forbidding, grey buildings that look from a distance like government offices. Along the hills behind the town is a series of tower blocks, which we assume are housing areas. We pass the commercial docks where the tops of freighters rise above the general collection of warehouses and cranes. We pass the ship repair yards where an icebreaker similar to the Kapitan Dranitsyn is in a floating dock. The Inlet widens and anchored off the port in the middle of the Inlet is a smart new freighter with a bright red hull and an icebreaker bow. The Arctic Express is one of a new class of cargo icebreakers operating along the northern coasts.
Gradually, we leave the last of the town and begin to see the start of the naval area. At the water’s edge and out on the other side of the Inlet we can see a number of wrecks of submarines and warships that have sunk. They lie rotting and neglected, sticking out of the water. At one point, the last 30 feet of the stern of a naval patrol boat or corvette sticks vertically out of the water. There are no buoys around it to warn of its presence, so presumably all the local shipping will know it is there. Further down we pass the ‘Atomflot’, the base for the seven nuclear icebreakers. The nuclear icebreakers look very impressive, squat and workmanlike with their black hulls and rich orange-red superstructures. The first nuclear icebreaker, the Lenin, commissioned in 1959, is also berthed here. She is now decommissioned and has been t
urned into a museum ship. Nearby is the home base for Kapitan Dranitsyn and the other conventionally-powered icebreakers. As we pass the base, two sister ships of the Dranitsyn lie alongside. We wonder if the Kapitan Dranitsyn had been taken to the far end of the port for us to board her so that we would not see anything of the town or the port area from the bus?
High above on the hill stands the ‘Alyosha’, a giant, 35-metre high memorial, which was erected in 1974. It is a figure of a Russian soldier looking out over the port and it dominates the area. It commemorates all the soldiers who died defending Murmansk from the Nazis in the Second World War. Murmansk was put under heavy siege by the Germans, second only to Stalingrad, but Murmansk never fell and the Germans never captured it or the vital port and railway links.
Further down the Inlet on the eastern side we pass the closed naval city of Severomorsk. This is the headquarters and main naval base for the Russian Northern Fleet. As we pass we can see the base stretching out to the East round into a large bay. In the far distance, across the bay, ships and dockyards line the shore. The scene is dominated by the largest floating dock in Russia, moored near the main channel. The aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, is in the dock undergoing maintenance, her ski jump ramp jutting out over the water. In addition to Severomorsk, there are six other small naval bases situated to the west of the Inlet hidden along the fjords and bays of the Kola Peninsula. It was from one of these bases, at Ara Bay, that the Kursk sailed on her fateful last voyage in 2000. During the Soviet era, there were over 200 submarines of all types based in this area. In addition, there is another large submarine naval base at Severodvinsk, near Arkhangelsk (Archangel) in the White Sea.