The SS Indigirka was a steamship that served in the Soviet Gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

 system and transported prisoners. Launched in 1919 as SS Lake Galva, it served under the names Ripon, Malsah and Commercial Quaker between 1920 and 1938, when it was renamed Indigirka. On its final voyage in 1939 over 700 prisoners perished.

Pre-Soviet career

The ship was built at the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company

Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company

Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company, located in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, was a major shipbuilder for the Great Lakes. It was founded in 1902, and made mainly steel ferries and ore haulers. During World War II, it built submarines, tank landing craft , and self-propelled fuel barges called "YOs". Employment...

 in Manitowoc, Wisconsin

Manitowoc, Wisconsin

Manitowoc is a city in and the county seat of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States. The city is located on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Manitowoc River. According to the 2000 census, Manitowoc had a population of 34,053, with over 50,000 residents in the surrounding communities...

  as one of the Lake series cargo ship

Cargo ship

A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade...

s. It was launched on 29 December 1919 as Lake Galva and completed in May 1920 as Ripon. It served as an American merchant ship under various owners as SS Ripon (1920-26), SS Malsah (1926-28), and SS Commercial Quaker (1928-38). In 1938 it was sold to the government of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

Prison ship of the Dalstroi

With some modifications the ship was placed in service by the Dalstroi as the Indigirka (Индиги́рка) - named after the river in Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

 - for the transport of prisoners. With a tonnage of 2,689 and a length 77.3 m it was the smallest ship of the Dalstroi fleet and had a cargo hold of 4,700 m³; Bollinger estimated that it could hold 1,500 captives, while Tzouliades indicates that up to 5,000 prisoners might have been transported. That seems to conflict with evidence that the ship was fully loaded when it departed on its final journey with less than 1,500 crew, passengers and prisoners, forcing Soviet authorities to leave behind many others who were supposed to have made the trip.

The Indigirka belonged to a fleet of steamships operated by Dalstroi to transport prisoners from Vladivostok

Vladivostok

The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...

, endpoint of the Transsiberian railway, to Magadan

Magadan

Magadan is a port town on the Sea of Okhotsk and gateway to the Kolyma region. It is the administrative center of Magadan Oblast , in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1929 on the site of an earlier settlement from the 1920s, it was granted the status of town in 1939...

 and Kolyma

Kolyma

The Kolyma region is located in the far north-eastern area of Russia in what is commonly known as Siberia but is actually part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south...

 across the Sea of Okhotsk

Sea of Okhotsk

The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, the island of Hokkaidō to the far south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a long stretch of eastern Siberian coast along the west and...

. Travel time was about six days to two weeks to Magadan. A steamer would make about ten trips a year. Conditions were horrendous and many people did not survive. Prisoners were held in the cargo holds where criminals ruled; the guards stayed outside and above and would spray the holds with ice-cold ocean water if things became too unruly. Women prisoners were abused.

Final voyage

On December 8, 1939 the Indigirka left Magadan to return to Vladivostok under Captain Nikolai Lavrentevich Lapshin. It contained 39 crew, 249 fishermen and their families, 50 prisoners under guard, and 835 prisoners with technical skills who had been released to work for the war effort. On December 13, 1939 at 2:20 AM (other reports place the event on December 12, 1939) the ship ran aground in a blizzard

Blizzard

A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds. By definition, the difference between blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have winds in excess of with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 meters or ¼ mile or...

 off the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese coast near Sarufutsu while trying to enter the La Perouse Strait

La Perouse Strait

La Pérouse Strait is a strait dividing the southern part of the Russian island of Sakhalin from the northern part of the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, and connecting the Sea of Japan on the west with the Sea of Okhotsk on the east....

. As the ship turned over, the guards prevented the escape of the prisoners from the holds, and the ship came to rest in shallow water on its side. The Japanese rescued the captain and most of the crew, guards, and fishermen, but it took three days for any rescue of the trapped prisoners to begin. December 16, when the Japanese rescue team then opened the hull with acetylene torches, only 28 survivors (one of whom later died) were found among more than 700 dead prisoners. Overall 741 people perished. According to Sergey Korolyov

Sergey Korolyov

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev ; died 14 January 1966 in Moscow, Russia) was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s...

's oral statements, he "missed" the Indigirka convoy and was sent from Kolyma to Vladivostok on the next ship on December 23.

Captain Lapshin was tried and executed for abandoning the ship; chief of NKVD convoy who locked the prisoners in a sinking ship was sentenced to eight years. A cenotaph

Cenotaph

A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...

at Sarufutsu commemorates the tragic end of the Indigirka.