Crash of the Fourth longboat

The crash of the “Fourth” longboat occurred on July 9, 1933 on the Volga River in Yaroslavl .

In Yaroslavl at that time there was only one passenger longboat - “Fourth” (“Barkas-4”). On Sunday, July 9, he drove up the Volga to school students at the Northern Railway , service workers at the Yaroslavl station, and students at the factory school of the Yaroslavl steam engine repair plant heading for weeding collective farm fields; as well as vacationers, including about 30 children. It was important for the ship and its captain to overfulfill the passenger transportation plan and save fuel, in connection with which more than three hundred passengers were loaded on the “Fourth” passenger seat according to the documents 120 (the exact number was not set, since the tickets were sold on deck), and a lot wishing did not fit. Captain Andreev entrusted the management to assistant Kurapov, and he went home ^{[1] [2]} .

Immediately after leaving the pier, a dangerous roll appeared. Water began to sweep through the windows. Panic started among the passengers, but the assistant captain did not heed the requests to return to the marina. People began to rush into the water. The ship tipped sharply, instantly rolled over and sank. At this point, the coast was about a hundred meters, and the depth reached 3-4 meters. Almost all were in the hold; there were many dead and of those who were on deck - people randomly clung to each other, pulling to the bottom ^{[1] [2]} .

The Vanzetti steamer passing by did not render any help, either from the confusion of the team, or from the fact that just no one understood what had happened. The city had no means of salvation, divers. People gathered at the Volga dived for drowning, dragged them ashore. On the first day, 46 drowned men were found in the river; in the following days, another 52 people were found. Duty posts caught corpses ten kilometers downstream ^{[1] [2]} .

The press was silent about the tragedy until July 18, and since July 14, the only newspaper of the region, “ Northern Worker ”, “prepared readers” by giving “revealing” publications about the mess in the Yaroslavl river port . The criminal case was examined by an away session of the Supreme Court , which took place in the Volkovsky Theater . Only selected leading production workers ^{[1] [2]} were admitted to the open trial.

The court ruling was broadcast through reproducers brought to Volkova Square . In the investigation report, the prerequisites for the catastrophe were: “The completely unsatisfactory state of work of the Yaroslavl port, reaching the collapse ... Criminal failure to comply with the basic rules for boarding passengers on the vessel and order along the route, unacceptably weak state of labor discipline among the crews of the courts, sloppiness of the economic management.” Official reason flooding - overload of the vessel. Captain Andreev was sentenced to death, assistant captain Kurapov - to ten years of imprisonment "with the strictest isolation", responsible for loading students - to six months of correctional labor with a deduction of 15% of the salary, 8 more people received various sentences, including the chief Marina Trushin and the captain of Vanzetti Balandin. It is noted that the process was formal, and all the fault with an imperfect river transport system was shifted to specific people ^{[1] [2]} .

A few years after the tragedy at the mass grave of 46 people, a pyramid monument with the names of those buried was erected in a cemetery on Tugovaya Gora . From the beginning of the 1990s funeral services have been dealt with. Yaroslavl Electric Locomotive Repair Plant in 2007, to the 750th anniversary of the battle on Tugovaya Gora, restored the monument, which was previously in poor condition; however, plates with the names of the dead could not be restored ^{[1] [2]} .