On 26 October 2015 the keel was laid for a remarkable new tanker at the Samsung Heavy Industries Shipyard, in Geoje, South Korea, the order having been placed by Sovcomflot, which operates the largest tanker fleet in Russia (Unicom Management Services (Cyprus) Ltd. 2015). The vessel was launched on 20 February 1916 and was named Shturman Albanov (Fig. 1). It is a shallow-draft icebreaking tanker of 42000 dwt (Unicom Management Services (Cyprus) Ltd. 2016) with a length of 249 m and the unusually large breadth for its tonnage, of 34 m, and a loaded draft of 9.5 m. Its ice-class is Arc7. Propelled by two 11 MW azipods (Fig. 2) (Sergey Frank, CEO of Sovcomflot, personal communication, July 2016) Shturman Albanov is capable of a speed of 14 knots. The azipods give it great manoeuverability and the capability of breaking ice up to 1.4 m thick when going ahead and 1.8 m thick when going astern. Registered in St. Petersburg and described as a shuttle tanker, it is designed specifically to haul oil from the Vorota Arktika (Gates of the Arctic) terminal near Mys Kamennyy, the terminal for Gazpromneft's Novoportovskoye field (Sergey Frank, CEO of Sovcmflot, personal communication, July 2016). The terminal is located on the east side of the Yamal Poluostrov, that is on the west shore of southern Obskaya Guba. This water-body is only about 10 m deep in places, which explains the need for a shallow-draft vessel, and for its unusually great breadth, in order to achieve maximum capacity. Another feature dictated by the shallow depths is that it is a bow-loading vessel. It will transport the oil year-round, west via Yuogorskiy Shar or Karskiye Vorota and across the Barents Sea to Murmansk where it will transfer its cargo to the storage tanker Umba. The delivery date for Shturman Albanov was 30 July (Staalesen Reference Staalesen2016). In fact delivery and the naming ceremony took place on 20 July at Pusan, South Korea. The ship's captain is Vyacheslav Gafurov (Sergey Frank, CEO of Sovcomflot, personal communication, July 2016).
Icebreaking tanker Shturman Albanov soon after its launch (Photo courtesy Sovcomflot).
The azipods of the icebreaking tanker Shturman Albanov (Photo courtesy Sovcomflot).
The tanker's name is very appropriate. Valerian Ivanovich Albanov was the shturman (navigating officer) on board Leytenant Georgiy L'vovich Brusilov's Svyataya Anna, which sailed from Aleksandrovsk (now Polyarnyy) on Kol'skiy Zaliv (Kola Inlet) in the summer of 1912 bound for Vladivostok via what is now the Northern Sea Route. The ship became beset in the ice of the Kara Sea and drifted north with the ice. In the spring of 1914 Albanov and about half the crew left the ship to travel south with sledges and kayaks to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa. (Franz Josef Land). Ultimately only Albanov and one other man survived, having been picked up by the vessel of another expedition at Mys Flora (Cape Flora) on Ostrov Kuchieva, formerly Ostrov Nortbruka (Northbrook Island) (Albanov Reference Albanov2000; Reference Albanov and Barr2016b).
The tanker Shturman Albanov is the first of six identical sister ships, all being built for Sovcomflot at the Samsung shipyards, and all destined for the same shuttle service. Between them, they will deliver 450,000 tons of oil per month to Murmansk. The next one, Shturman Malygin was launched in early May 2016 (The Independent Barents Observer 2016). It is named after Leytenant Stepan Gavrilovich Malygin who over the period 1736–1739 commanded the detachment of the Great Northern Expedition which surveyed the sea-route from Arkhangel'sk to Obskaya Guba (Belov Reference Belov1956); these, of course, are precisely the same waters which the shuttle tankers will be regularly travelling. Next in the series, due for delivery on 15 November 2016, is Shturman Ovtsyn (Sovcomflot 2016), named after Leytenant Dmitriy Leont'yevich Ovtsyn who commanded the Ob’-Yenisey detachment of the Great Northern Expedition in 1734–1737. Arrested and court-martialled in November 1737 for having become involved with the exiled Prince Ivan Alekseyevich Dolgoruky, he was demoted to seaman and, seconded to Vitus Bering as the latter's adjutant, he took part in the latter's voyage from Petropavlovsk to Alaska in 1741–1742 (Armstrong Reference Armstrong and Frost1992). Next in the series will be Shturman Skuratov, also due for delivery in November 2016, and named after Leytenant Aleksey Skuratov, responsible, under Malygin, for the Arkhangel'sk-Obskaya Guba detachment of the Great Northern Expedition in 1736–1739 (Belov Reference Belov1956). It will be followed by Shturman Koshelev, named after Shturman Ivan Koshelev who served under Ovtsyn on the Ob’–Yenisey detachment of the Great Northern Expedition in 1737–1738. The final tanker in the series will be Shturman Shcherbinin named after Leytenant Shcherbinin who, under Leytenant Dmitriy Yakovlevich Laptev, played a major role in the Lena-Kolyma detachment of the Great Northern Expedition in 1736–1739.
To mark the delivery of the tanker Shturman Albanov, in collaboration with Sovcomflot and the Russian Geographical Society, Paulsen Publications of Moscow have published a new edition of Albanov's account of his epic journey in both Russian (Albanov Reference Albanov2016a) and English (Albanov Reference Albanov and Barr2016b).
