The Soviet career of the schooner Polar Bear, 1925-28

Abstract

AbstractThe schooner Polar Bear is best known for whaling and trading voyages in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas 1911–15, and as one of the vessels of Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition 1915–18. This article summarizes her later career. In 1920 she ran aground in the Kolyma Delta and was abandoned. Refloated by a Soviet captain and crew in 1925 she was used to haul much-needed supplies from a cache near Chaunskaya Guba to Nizhnekolymsk. Renamed Polyarnaya Zvezda, in 1926 she made the first coastwise voyage of modern times from the Kolyma to the Lena, inaugurating a regular sea link with the Lena basin. In 1927 she carried building materials for a scientific station from Tiksi at the mouth of the Lena to Mys Shalaurova on Ostrov Bol'shoy Lyakhovskiy. After wintering at Yakutsk, in summer 1928 she towed a barge laden with supplies for the station down river to Tiksi and carried supplies and personnel to the station to Mys Shalaurova. The station is still in operation, an integral component of the network of support facilities which enables the Northern Sea Route to function. In 1929 the schooner was reported unfit for further duties; her subsequent fate is unknown.