#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Captain Eduard Voinov with the crew took the ship at a shipyard in Finland. The Norilsk was the first of a series of vessels designed by Soviet and Finnish designers to navigate in ice.
After raising the national flag on November 12, 1982, the ship went for loading to Rotterdam, and then to Murmansk and to Dudinka with the cargo of the Norilsk combine. However, due to an accident on the way and repairing in Denmark, Norilsk arrived at the port of destination only in February 1983. By this time, the Dudinka port was given the status of a sea port, and could accept vessels of the ice class CA-15 of the Norilsk type, intended for carrying long, packaged and heavy (up to 80 tons) cargo, as well as refrigerated containers, liquid oil cargo, metal structures, technology, ore, matte and so on.
According to the memoirs of Eduard Voinov, the sailors were met with an orchestra in Dudinka. Even the unloading began ceremoniously: lifting and unloading the first container with music and applause were entrusted to the brigade that had taken the prize-winning place in the socialist competition. And all that was done at a temperature of minus 40 degrees. According to the captain’s estimates, more than 600 people visited the ship on the very first day.
Until 1996 Norilsk had belonged to the Murmansk Shipping Company and had been assigned to the port of Murmansk. Before the ship was scrapped in 2011, the home port had been Limassol in Cyprus.
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Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
