KARA SEA TRACK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 781, 30 September 1929, Page 13

KARA SEA TRACK

FLEET FOLLOWS ICEBREAKER GUIDED BY AIRPLANES The well-known Russian icebreaker Krassin, which was used for the search of the wrecked parties of the dirigible Italia last year, has arrived in Bergen on its way to the Kara Sea, where it will serve as mother-ship for this year’s Kara Sea Expedition, says the Oslo (Norway) correspondent of the London “Observer.'' This expedition, which has been dispatched regularly in the last few years, has as its aim the development of direct trade between Siberia and Europe, and has so far been successful. It began with only a few ships, but the expedition this summer consists of 30 vessels, some of Russian, but the majority of Norwegian nationality. The fleet sails together to Siberia, and the ships are then allotted certain districts, including coastal and inland villages, which are all visited. The villages which are situated too far up the rivers for seagoing ships to reach them are visited by barges. The vessels are loaded in Europe with all sorts of goods, which can be sold more cheaply than if they were transported by rail through the whole of Russia, and further by road to the remote places of Siberia. In exchange, the expedition takes all sort of goods, and before winter sets in, with its ice and darkness, the ships return to Norway with full loads of Siberian products. As Siberia is not too well mapped, airplanes have been stationed in Novaya Zemlya to help the expedition in locating remote places. The leader of the aviation side of the expedition is Chuknovsky, well known from his flights in the Arctic last year, when he found the airmen Zappi and Mariano, the two Italians, who had been lost from the Italia after the catastrophe.