River boats in the russian civil war

[area23]

Lots of sailors lately here on LAF made me think about this old idea I had building a river steam padler from a Wargames Illustrated plan I have. Combining it with RCW or BoB would be just great.
But I never read about the use of river boats used in the RCW.

Trains, armoured cars, massed cavalry yes, but no ships apart from seafaring warships. But some of these sailors must have gone up and down the Volga to supply troops and materials to their comrades? old steamboats, supply ships...
The Heart of Darkness meets Doctor Zhivago.

Does anyone know about online sources, or a keyword for google to use?

[Red Orc]

I'm sure I have heard of river-boats (and engagements involving them) on one of the massive Siberian rivers, the Lena or the Ob maybe.

Found it, haven't checked out which river it is, but it's from:

Larisa Reisner, 'The Front', collected (among other places) in V. Sevruk 'The Young in the Revolution' (Progress, Moscow, 1973) and Mark Jones (ed.) 'Storming the Heavens: Voices of October' (Zwan, London, 1987).

Reisner was a Volga flotilla commander, ambassador to the King Afghanistan, later Naval Commissar and secret wife of Karl Radek, it seems, re-reading the blurb I have. I'm sure there's more on wiki as she also seems to have been a prolific writer; she sounds quite an adventurer, perfectly at home in BoB I would think.

[AndyG]

Hi

The P.T. Dockyard does a range of 1/600 ships for the RCw and has a lot of supporting info/ links on their website.

As well as the Red on White Actions in Siberia the Brits had a flottila operating on the Divina and other rivers in the north.

[Remington]

Oh, as you can probably imagine, I will be following this closely.

Up until now, I've only thought about the little tug boat by HLBS... although I was forming my shopping-frenzied thoughts outside of any historical frame. No idea if it would be more Pulp than BoB to use it for my sailors, but it sure looks sweet. Now I just need the 30 quid.

[Westfalia Chris]

From what I know, both riverine and coastal small craft were used extensively. Larger bluewater vessels were used by the British (and some French, IIRC) to provide naval bombardments in the Baltic and the Black Sea.

I'm currently reading "Gunboat!" by Bryan Perrett, which I got for a mere 1,99 GBP at a local book discount shop; having read the first smashing chapters on the Crimea, Opium War and Warlord China, Sudan and others, I'm currently (coincidentally) on the 10th chapter, "Bolos, Emperors and Warlords 1818*-1939", which starts out with the RCW.

Apparently, six Royal Navy "Insect" class gunboats (HMS Glowworm, Cicada, Cricket, Cockchafer, Mantis and Moth) operated on the Northern front by Summer 1919, predominantly on the Dvina river and as far north as Archangelsk (which was their base, from what I gather).

On Lake Onega, north of Petrograd, a launch named "Jolly Roger" had a short and ill-fated career. Shortly after an exploding boiler had destroyed the vessel, a Bolshevik gunboat flotilla attempted to take control of the lake, engaging British MG-carrying motor boats before being driven off by groud-attack seaplanes. This was followed by an engagement at Petrozavodsk, which left the British in control of the Lake.

There is also a short but fascinating account by a torpedo raid on Kronstadt, in which several small vessels managed to sink two Red Fleet battleships.

The chapter does not go into detail pertaining to the other areas (Volga etc.) of operations, but it can be assumed that at least the Bolsheviks and Whites would operate small numbers of vessels in central and southern Russia.

*:1818 is obviously a typo in the chapter header, the author means 1918.

[area23]

Great! thanks guys, I'll have to find these books now.
Any idea if old river steamers in russia were similar to the ones used in africa or the americas by other nations? Were steamboats still used in the RCW at all?

[Westfalia Chris]

Since the progress of Russian industrialisation and technological permeation was a bit erratic (as in, you would have electricity and industry in several urbanised regions, but the rest would be quite the backwater; but on the other hand, in 1914, IIRC, they had the largest airforce in the world, and the second largest armoured car fleet), it would be safe to assume that steamboats would be the matter of choice in areas where liquid fuel depots were hard to maintain.

Most transport vessels would probably still be steam-driven, burning coal or wood, with a mixture of side-wheelers and screw-propelled vessels. Sternwheelers were rather rare in Tsarist Russia, from what I gather (I don't know if it was a matter of choice, of utility [as in better manoeuverability of the side wheelers], or of the nature of the rivers [in the US, sternwheelers were predominantly used on rivers that were prone to carry driftwood/"snags"]). Most pictures I've seen of Russian river steamers were either screw-propelled or had side paddle wheels.

Military units, especially modern launches and gunboats, would likely be oil-burners or, if older, using coal as fuel. Any kind of fuel depot would make for a nice scenario objective, I guess.

Furthermore, during much of the 19th century, vessels were still drawn by human work columns (as immortalised in Ilya Repin's painting "Barge Haulers on the Volga"). Obviously, this is not really applicable to this period but an interesting aside.