Archangel, ship Seattle

looking at the dress of the men and women this could be in the USSR.
Thats a sobering gangway.

Hi Mike. Archangel lies in a bay in Russia, in Norwegian called the White Sea, in the Barents Sea. You move your finger up along the Norwegian coast, then at the top, around that thumb that points to the right; you're in the bay, Archangel is marked in capital letters. It's a well-known town in Norway: we live close by, so I didn't recognize the need to add Russia. There was a famine there in 21,22-23. Regards, Stein.

could be the aftermath of WW1/dom

Well done Stein on all accounts. (Thumb)

Thanks Tonga. Regards, Stein.

The date on the photo looks like 14.8.44 (14th August 1944) - could it be one of the survivors of the Russian convoys in World War 2? I know some of the gear looks pretty ancient, but I was there in the '70s and it wasn't much different (except they'd eaten the horses).

That "gangway" looks like a "brow", I can't recall, but maybe they had big rise and fall of tide in the White Sea - one thing's for sure, being the Workers' Paradise, they wouldn't have been unloading in any hurry! Having said that, I was probably spoiled with swish gangways, maybe that's what they all used in those days. Anybody know? The person running up the gangway is a blur - must be a Spam addict.

John T.


John T.

It's a KGB agent - identity censored!

Hi John T. The source says the photographs in this collection were taken no later than 1931. I believe the number is for catalogization. (The "spam addict" was good though. I've seen a New Yorker cartoon from WW 2, with a couple of perplexed Russians on the wharf in Murmansk, or here, trying to find the word "spam", and a couple of similar ones, in a small English/Russian dictionary). Regards, Stein.

It is probably a relief ship from US supplying the White Russians in their fight against the Bolsheveks just after WWI, about 1918 to 1921.

Bruce C

The fault with that theory Bruce, is that the US and England in their undeclared war against the Soviets had been thrown out of Archangel by 1919. It was by then firmly in the grip of the Soviets, and any military supplies to counter-revolutionaries were not likely to happen in the above way. And if the year should be 1918, there ought to be a few American/British soldiers to be seen. Although they held the garrison, there was a real war going on and the Soviets were not far away. I'll stick to my earlier theory: I think that this is the US at her most benign. The ARA under Herbert Hoover, or the Mennonites, supplying food to starving Soviet-Russia between Aug. 21, 1921 and Jan. 15, 1923.

Since writing the above I have searched the source for pictures of Archangel, and found a number on the American expeditionary force, and nothing on famine relief. I still miss some Anglo-American uniforms in the picture above, but I'm no longer that doubtful of a war-connection. Here's a picture of US soldiers in a war against Soviet-Russia, picture taken in Archangel: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?ils:8:./temp/~pp_neHm::displayType=1:m856sd=ggbain:m856sf=28308@@ Regards, Stein