SS Bratstvo (1963)
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name: | |
| Namesake: | Leninsky Komsomol class cargo ships, projuct 567 and 567К. |
| Owner: |
29 December 1963 – March 1985:  Black Sea Shipping Company,  USSR |
| Operator: |
29 December 1963 – March 1985: Black Sea Shipping Company, USSR |
| Port of registry: |
29 December 1963 – March 1985: Odessa, USSR |
| Builder: |
Kherson shipyard; shipbuilding number 1215.[1][3] |
| Fate: | Scrapped in Algesiras, Spain, in 1985.[1] |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | freighter, tweendecker |
| Tonnage: | |
| Length: | 557.7 ft (170.0 m) abt |
| Beam: | 72.2 ft (22.0 m) abt |
| Propulsion: | two steam turbine engines driving a single 6.3 m (21 ft) screw propeller |
Bratstvo (Russian: Братство) was a multi-purpose tweendecker freighter owned by the Black Sea Shipping Company of the Soviet Union. It was of the Leninsky Komsomol class cargo ships with steam turbine engines. It was built as per the specifications of Projects 567 and 567K[4]
Construction
The keel was laid on 20 September 1962 and the ship was completed in December 1963.[1] The ship Bratstvo was delivered to the Black Sea Shipping Company on 29 December 1963.[3]
Around Africa
Due to the Suez Canal being closed from June 1967 until summer 1975, the ship Bratstvo went around Africa in her voyages to the Indian Ocean or the Far East ports. Bratstvo also sailed to Cuba and Syria. The ship sailed from Antwerp on 19 January 1973, bound for North Korea via Las Palmas and around Africa. Later in the year 1974, she sailed from the Black Sea to Umm Qasr, Iraq, a voyage which took her around the Cape of Good Hope. The ship visited Cape Town for bunkering when it was rounding the African coast.[2]
Arab–Israeli War in October, 1973
The Yom Kippur War also known as the Ramadan War, October War, or the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, was a war fought by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel from October 6 to 25 in the year 1973. As many as 23 Soviet merchant ships carried military cargo to Syria and Egypt in October and early November of 1973. The ship Bratstvo was one of eight Leninsky Komsomol class cargo ships which took part in this transport. According to U.S. information the ship Bratstvo visited Syria one time: the ship sailed from the Black Sea, passed the Bosphorus on the 18th and arrived at Latakia on 20 October 1973.[5]
The sailors of the civil merchant ships were both witnesses and participants in the ongoing war, as the ports were exposed to air bombardments by the Israeli Air Force. When Bratstvo arrived in Syria on 20 October 1973, she unloaded cargo regardless of the ongoing the air raids.
The Last Voyage.
Bratstvo loaded a bulk shipment of wheat in Canada and sailed from Port-Cartier, Ontario, for Odessa in early September, 1984. When the ship passed the Strait of Gibraltar, she visited Ceuta for fresh water supply and for bunkering.[2][6]
After fresh water and bunker were supplied to the ship, Bratstvo sailed from Ceuta for Odessa on 18 September 1984. When the ship passed the port gates, she changed course to 98 degrees and her speed was 14.0 knots. Weather was favorable and visibility at night was good, with sightlines of about 4 miles.[6]
Incident on Bratstvo.
At 23:33 local time, on 18 September, a terrible concussion occurred suddenly aboard the Bratstvo. According to the memoirs of the Captain Vadim Fillipovich Demchenkov, the incident was comparable to an explosion, based on the very powerful shake that was felt across the ship. Within 50 seconds the engine room of the ship was flooded up to the main deck line.[7][6]
The captain Vadim Demchenkov reminisced: "Watch of three men ran from the engine room up the ladders due to they were already knee-deep or waist-deep into the water. Due to alarm the second engineer arrived at own place in the engine room and immediately he blocked clinkety door by the actuator from the main deck. The capacity of the tunnel of the ship was not less than 1500 tons. If it was filled with sea water, the loss of the vessel would have been inevitable. This ship had single-compartment unsinkability, but she was still afloat! Apparently, the grain coefficient of permeability was very small actually and the grain was not so actively washed away at sea due to was not big waves and the ship was not heavily pitching and rolling".[7][6]
The captain's memoirs indicate his belief that the ship should have sunk within a minute of the disaster. The ship did not, however, capsize in the expected timeframe. While the engine room was flooded, and the turbine generator had stopped, the emergency diesel generator was started in 20 seconds. This, along with the fact the ship's internal illumination was only disrupted for 30–40 seconds, allowed the ship's crew to evacuate. In 10 minutes the life-boats were lowered into water and all crew members were in the life boats.[6]
The crew was close to the abandoned ship. Thanks to the rapid delivery of an SOS signal, other vessels came to aid Bratstvo. Bulgarian transport Pyatiero iz PMS arrived first. The Bulgarian crew lowered into the water their ship motor-boat for an unknown reason, causing their boat engine to stall immediately. The captain of Bulgarian ship did not take the Soviet seamen on board until having solved their own self-made crisis. Soon after, the Soviet crew was found and towed to the Bulgarian ship. The Bulgarian crew gave a friendly welcome to each "bratooshka."[8] Soon the Soviet ship Kapitan Medvyedev reached the scene and took all Soviet sailors off of the Bulgarian's hands.[6]
Although the crew had abandoned the Bratstvo, one of the lifeboats was stationed constantly at the side of the ship to avoid the possibility of the ship being looted. The captain and the chief of ship's radio-station climbed on board periodically to communicate with the shipping company. Crew members of Bratstvo brought the tug line from a Spanish tug-boat in the afternoon and this tug-boat towed the waterlogged ship to the Bay of Gibraltar, eventually pulling Bratstvo onto a shallow sand bank.[6]
The captain, Vadim Demchenkov, noted that, "Until the moment when the Spanish diver emerged from the flooded engine room, showed us pieces of rubber and shouted "Russian submarine", everyone thought that it was an explosion."[7]
The hole size was 100 square meters, from the keel to a height of 5 meters and a length of 20 meters. As it turned out, the submarine accidentally struck the cargo ship with its nose.. The blow fell at the end of the 3rd hold and ended up causing damage all over the engine room.[7]
Incident According to the Soviet Navy.
The Commander of the Soviet Union Northern Fleet, and Hero of the Soviet Union, Admiral Arkady Mikhailovsky was called by the chief of staff of the Northern Fleet and Vice-Admiral Vadim Konstantinovich Korobov on 19 September, whereupon he was informed about the incident.[6]
The Soviet Navy reported the events as follows: the commander of the submarine K-53, the submarine whose nose smashed into the Bratstvo, failed to report the incident for nine hours. The failure to report the incident led to the first news of the collision arriving via the Ministry of foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, who in turn had received the intelligence from the Spanish government. Therefore the information about the collision was received by the Soviet government, and not via the normal route from the Ministry of defense. Accordingly, the Central command post of the General staff remained uninformed for a long time as no alarm from the submarine had been received. K-53's eventual reporting of the incident caused the indignation of the Soviet Minister and Marshal Ustinov D.F., and a "dressing down" (Russian: втык)[9] to the Chief Commander and Admiral of the Soviet Union Fleet Gorshkov S.G..[6]
Summary.
Bratstvo collided with the Soviet submarine K-53 Victor I class at the exit from the Strait of Gibraltar in the Alboran Sea, on the 18th (as per ship's time due to ship's time) or 19 (as per submarine time) of September 1984. The ship was towed to Algeciras to be used for scrap.[1][2] The incident itself was described differently by three distinct parties: the crew of Bratstvo, the crew of the Soviet submarine K-53, and the official reports of the Soviet Navy. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, Bratstvo was listed as decommissioned due to an explosion resulting from engine failure. In the early 2000s, declassified information, along with reports from seamen involved, detailed the actual events which had transpired in September 1984.
Fate
The ship was decommissioned in March 1985 and scrapped in Algesiras, Spain in 1985.[1]
Crew
Anatoliy Matveyevich Romanov was the staff master of the ship Bratstvo; he died in 2011.[10][11]
Viktor Snisarenko worked onboard Bratstvo from 1969 to 1983, and during this period passed from junior deck officer to master of this ship.[11]
Vladimir Filipovich Demchenkov was the captain of the ship Bratstvo in 1984 when the collision occurred.[11]
External links
Photograph: The ship Братство during a visit in Cape Town.
Photograph: The ship Братство at anchor off of Kuwait.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Братство". Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Bratstvo – IMO 6405044". Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- 1 2 "Project 567". Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- ↑ "Проект 567, 567К, тип Ленинский комсомол". Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- ↑ Розин Александр. "Советский флот в войнах и конфликтах "холодной войны". Это – персональная страница Александра Розина >> Война "Судного дня" 1973 г. Противостояние флотов СССР и США на море. Chapter 9: Корабли эскадры конвоируют транспорты.".
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Был ли доклад "Горизонт чист"? :: Флот – 21 век". Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- 1 2 3 4 Капитан дальнего плавания Демченков В.Ф. (2010). "Воспоминания капитана теплохода "Братство".". Сайт "Русский Подплав".
- ↑ "Bratooshka" - brother in Bulgarian, and all Bulgarians have a custom whereby they call each Soviet seaman or soldier a "bratooshka".
- ↑ "Втык" - it can be translated in English as "dressing down" or "to insert a stick". It is a obscene term in Soviet military jargon.
- ↑ "Одноклассники". OK.RU. 21 November 2013. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- 1 2 3 "Одноклассники". OK.RU. 21 November 2014. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- ↑ Розин Александр. "Советский флот в войнах и конфликтах "холодной войны". Это - персональная страница Александра Розина >> Война «Судного дня» 1973 г. Противостояние флотов СССР и США на море. Chapter 9: Корабли эскадры конвоируют транспорты. Table: Список судов по американским данным вышедших из черноморских портов в Сирию и Египет в октябре и начале ноября 1973 г.".