Volga steamships: on the carriage and in the battles on the Civil
Steamboat "Mefodiy", which was used by the Czechoslovak Legion during the campaign against Kazan. It was armed with two guns mounted on the built-on fore deck. What weapons were carried on the rear deck is unknown.
Ah, what is moving there along the river,
White smoke plays and shines
metal in the sun.
Oh, don't lie to me forebodings,
Yes, my eyes didn't lie.
White swan gliding on the wave
The steamer is moving along smoothly.
Lyricist: Victor Dragunsky
White smoke plays and shines
metal in the sun.
Oh, don't lie to me forebodings,
Yes, my eyes didn't lie.
White swan gliding on the wave
The steamer is moving along smoothly.
Lyricist: Victor Dragunsky
Military-technical creativity. The special operation in Ukraine, as well as the military operations of recent years, revealed the spread of such an interesting phenomenon as "military-technical creativity."
Of course, people have encountered it before, but, let's say, during the years of the same Great Patriotic War, it was more, to put it mildly, theoretical. But now what only we do not see. Pipe bombers mounted on a bulldozer blade, water pipe rockets fueled by sugar and potassium nitrate, quadcopters converted into bombers, anti-missile grilles on tanks...
Creativity of the masses on the battlefield
But this creativity has not yet touched the river vessels, well, except that the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired on Snake Island with guns from barges. Well, yes, they just rolled them onto barges. There didn't seem to be any significant changes.
Meanwhile, the war on the rivers of Russia, and above all on the Volga during the Civil War of 1918-1922, gave us many interesting examples of such creativity. That is, both whites and reds began to turn ordinary commercial steamships into warships, which began to be used in the most active way in battles.
And the funny thing is that the situation with the Volga steamers was in many ways very similar to the situation with the American steamers on the Mississippi, and also in the Civil War between North and South. That is, along the Volga, as well as along the Mississippi, they sailed ... the real "Tom Sawyer steamers", but for a number of reasons they did not have to fight. This was done by steamships of purely Russian construction.
But why this happened and how the Volga steamers were generally converted into combat steamers on the Volga, we will tell you today ...
Ah, what is moving there along the river ...
American steamboats appeared in Russia during the period of rapid development of market relations in our country, brought to life by the abolition of serfdom. Accordingly, this was the impetus for the development of the Volga shipping. Steamships were built one after another, several shipping companies arose. It is clear that competition immediately arose between them, and with it the “fight for the passenger”.
The easiest way was to reduce the cost of travel by steamer with a high quality of service. All this led to the decision to build ships with two or three decks in order to increase passenger capacity. But where was it possible to find a sample convenient for construction and - most importantly - so that it was not very expensive ?!
Alfons Alexandrovich Zeveke - a famous Volga shipbuilder
And then, namely in 1881, the shipbuilder Alfons Aleksandrovich Zeveke specially sent his son to South America to inspect the local rear-wheel steamers sailing along the Amazon. Of course, the same steamers sailed along the rivers of the United States, but still not quite the same.
The fact is that two types of steamboats were mainly built in this way: cotton carriers (they also carried blacks), cheap, wooden, but without any comfort, and large, double-deck and comfortable, but with a metal hull, and therefore expensive for our pocket. But he liked the Amazonian ships, and the Zeweke company decided to bet on them. Already in the winter of 1881-1882, the first "American" was built in Nizhny Novgorod - the Amazonka steamer with a rear-wheel drive!
Steamships of the Zeveke company, lined up on the Nizhny Novgorod roadstead. As you can see, there were quite a few of them.
Comfortable, load-bearing and cheap
The steamer turned out to be famous: it was double-deck (the captain's cabin was on the third, uppermost one), 58 m long and 11 m wide. And since it had a flat bottom, it turned out to be record light. But he could take on board 400 passengers and 393 tons of cargo.
Closer to the bow across the hull were two tall narrow pipes, which is why the Volgars began to call the new ships "goats". He had two boilers in the bow, and a two-cylinder steam engine in the stern. Thanks to this arrangement, the middle part of the vessel became possible to use for cargo placement, and the ends of the vessel were protected from sagging.
Another Zeveke steamer: "Pearl". Wheel at the back. Someone obviously ran into a board or someone ran into him ...
The paddle wheel, located behind the stern, was rotated by two connecting rods. The ship had four rudders at once, which were controlled with the help of two tillers. This made a certain sense, since it made it possible to increase maneuverability when moving through shallow water.
The steamer showed itself well during the period of low water in 1883, sailing between Nizhny Novgorod and Saratov. Seeweke was also pleased with this in 1883-1888. his company built several more steamships similar to him, but with a greater carrying capacity.
Quality service means a lot!
Passengers on the Seveke steamers were cared for in a way that was not cared for anywhere else. Passengers of the 1st and 2nd classes were offered luxuriously decorated cabins. Buffets and libraries are right on board, and there you can read books and browse the latest newspapers and magazines.
Even the piano could be seen in the salon of the Zevek steamer.
And the passengers of these two classes had a funny privilege - to land on any pier of their choice outside the schedule along the way, it was enough to ask the captain about it! Moreover, if there was suddenly no berth on the shore, then this should not have been an obstacle. They were obliged to lower the boat from the steamer (and they did lower it!), If only to take the passenger ashore. That is, from the steamer, a passenger of the first 2 classes could afford to land on the shore even just “in the bushes”, which was what the then ... revolutionaries used to escape from the police.
But at first, the steamers left for a voyage half empty, because a rumor spread that they were too high, so a strong wind would definitely overturn them! But then the admiring stories of those who were not afraid to take risks, and skillful advertising, did their job, and the public “tumbled down the shaft” on the Zeveke steamers.
Hall of the steamer "Alexander II" of the shipping company "Caucasus and Mercury"
A contagious example
Soon other rear-wheel steamers of the companies appeared on the Volga: Rossiya (the merchant Petelin), Brilliant, Yakhont, Turquoise, Emerald, Rubin, Zhemchuzhina (Druzhina companies). Despite the separation of the propulsion system, it was still not possible to avoid sagging of the extremities. And they were pulled together with metal cables, like on American steamships. The cables were laid along the racks, fixed in the center plane of the vessel, and tightly stretched with the help of lanyards.
Amusing technical solutions were also used on them. For example, on the Yakhont steamer, the transmission from the steam engine to the paddle wheel was carried out by a wooden connecting rod ... several meters long, which, in addition to everything else, still splashed loudly on the water!
At the same time, the crank at its lower point touched the water, especially when the steamer was sailing at full draft. And the bearing was entirely in the water, which the oilers responsible for lubricating it were very happy about, since they no longer had to check its temperature every now and then, which they did by touch, since the water cooled it all the time.
Steveboat Zeveke "Magdalena"
"Rivermen" enter the battle
When the Civil War began in Russia, "American-type" steamships were still sailing along the Volga. But none of the naval officers who fought under the banner of KOMUCH (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly) thought to turn them into warships, like American river battleships.
Typical U.S. river ironclad 1861–1865
After all, both the Niva magazine and Vokrug Sveta reported about them, there were articles and drawings, and they also wrote about this in the Marine Collection. But the memoirs of the “river officers” of KOMUCH are full of reports that “no one knew what to do”, “had no idea”, etc.
When it was decided to arm the Volga steamships, they began to use river tugs, on which 76,2-mm guns were placed openly on the deck: one gun in front and the other in the back, and two more machine guns on the wings of the bridge. There is no way to take the Seeveke steamships, remove their superstructures, cover the boilers and the steam engine with armor and use them as warships. After all, their carrying capacity from such relief would greatly increase. But no. They began to arm tugs with war wheels, which were more vulnerable.
Battle of the battleships on the Mississippi
True, they thought of making turning circles under the guns, and their wheels were attached to them with clamps. It was necessary to move this “installation” with the help of the “rule”, but she had no armor. On the other hand, the crews of the machine guns that stood above the very casings of the side wheels after some time were protected by towers riveted from large-diameter iron pipes inserted one into the other.
It is interesting that after the entire space between them was filled with tar, the bullets stopped penetrating this “armor”, but got stuck ... in the molten tar! The turrets were turning on the pivot, with the feet of the machine gunner sitting inside. Well, the sides and cabin, modeled on the American "cotton armadillos", were "booked" with bales of Iranian cotton.
Rail armor. The sample is lifted from the bottom of the Mississippi, and the gray mass between them is nothing more than silt that has accumulated there
But American battleships already in 1861 had armor made of railroad rails! In this case, the decks were removed from the hull, the pipes were cut off, guns were placed in the casemate: 2-3 forward, 4-5 on the sides and 2 more back. The casings of the paddle wheels were also armored, or one such wheel was covered on all sides with a deck casemate.
And the guns were no match for our "three-inch": 6, 8 and even 10 inches. The rifled guns of Parrot and Dahlgren, and the smooth-bore bombers, what was, then they set. Meanwhile, the shrapnel projectile of our 76,2-mm cannon, even set "on impact", could do little with such protection, and there were few high-explosive projectiles, and where would they shoot at it?
That is, what was good on the Mississippi, on the Volga on a new round stories could have worked even better, but... for some reason it didn't work! Barges (non-self-propelled), yes, were armed with 102-mm naval guns and even 152-mm howitzers. Tanks (oil barges were used) along the sides were poured with concrete, which made them invulnerable, although deprived of their own course.
A typical "cotton armadillo" of the southerners, armored with bales of cotton. The latter were laid between the double walls of the casemate, which protected the boilers, the steam engine and partly the paddle wheels. Armament - two weapons that were at hand.
The authors of the memoirs write that they lacked everything: armor, guns, shells, but there were rails! There were also sleepers, and this is almost finished armor. That is, KOMUCH could hypothetically have strong ships and capture not only Kazan, Samara and Tsaritsyn, but also hold the entire Volga in its hands and even, moreover, conduct successful battles with the Baltic destroyers, carried out on the orders of Lenin through the Mariinsky system.
So the “hint” to the Komuchevsky officers in the form of the Zeveke steamers was right in front of their eyes, and, as educated people, they should have known about the US war. And there were enough engineers on the Volga. But they could not do anything really serious!
As a result, the troops of KOMUCH who fought under the red banners (only the Kappelites fought under the black and orange St. George banner) on the Volga were defeated before the arrival of Kolchak’s units, and our whole history developed as it developed.
Battleship northerners "Essex" with rail armor
It is interesting that the ships of the Druzhina company sailed along the Volga even in the pre-war years, and the Yakhont even until 1956, when it was sent for scrapping. By the way, in the film comedy "Volga-Volga" one surviving such steamer, for some reason called "Sevryuga", was just shown. But no Americans (as it is sung about in a movie song), of course, gave it to us!
People who are lucky
The usual fate of the Russian merchants at the beginning of the 1864th century was not very rosy: someone went bankrupt and then shot himself, another drank himself, the third did not survive the revolution. And only the sons of A. A. Zeveke were truly lucky. So, the eldest son Zeveke (from his first marriage) Alexander Alfonsovich (1917-XNUMX) managed to die on the eve of the Bolshevik coup.
The legendary "Sevryuga" from the film comedy "Volga-Volga". It was about her in the film that they sang: “America gave Russia a steamboat, it has wheels at the back and is terribly quiet!” Film frame
The youngest son (from his second marriage) Vasily Alfonsovich Zeveke (1878–1941) became a riverman. In 1917, he spent almost a year in the United States, on assignment from the Russian Ministry of Waterways. He returned to his homeland and became a shipbuilding engineer at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant. Inspired by photography, he kept not only his photographs, but also old family negatives, even on glass plates.
His son, the grandson of the famous grandfather, Alexander, also became interested in photography, and the entire family heritage fell into his hands. In 2007, he gave it to the archive of audiovisual documentation of the Nizhny Novgorod region, for which the governor of the region awarded him with a diploma.
That is, the descendants of the Volga shipowner Zeveke lived the God-given time, and did not get to Kolyma, and lived their lives in their homeland, and their family steamer even got into a popular movie!
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