Description

In late 1933 the Soviet ship S.S. Cheliuskin was caught in pack ice near the Bering Strait, an emergency that sparked a famous effort to save the crew. Geroicheskaia epopeia (Heroic epic) records this incident. The Cheliuskin had been built in Denmark as a standard ocean-going vessel. It was not an icebreaker; in fact it set out to prove the navigability of the Northern Sea Route (the historical Northeast Passage, north of Arctic Russia) for routine steamships. Otto Shmidt (also seen as Schmidt, 1891‒1956), a noted Soviet scientist ...