page_title: Steamboats on the Volga River
section_title: Various troubles
hierarchical_section_title: Steamboats on the Volga River / Engines for Commerce / Various troubles
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo probably shows the view from Polustovaia Hill to the Volga near Zubtsov. (Source for this identification: Yuri Krasilnikov in 2008, from the Web site Khramy Rossii (Churches of Russia)). 1 negative (3 frames): glass, b&amp;w, three-color separation&#160;; 24 × 9 cm.
context_page_description: The Volga River is Europe's longest river, and a major trade artery in that continent. The technological arrival of the steam engine allowed cargoes to be more easily moved upstream. The use of steamboats on the Volga River began in the year 1821.
context_section_description: In 1897 the New York Times reported "Forty Drowned in the Volga.; Steamer Tsarevitch Run Down by the Malpitka Near Astrakhan." In 1858, the Nizhny Novgorod Machine Factory produced the first Russian steam dredger. The amount of suspended matter brought down by erosion is correspondingly great. All along its course the Volga is eroding and destroying its banks with great rapidity; towns and loading ports have constantly to be shifted farther back.
  Alfred Nobel built fifty steamers at Baku to move Caspian oil. He also built the MS Vandal, which in 1903 was probably the first ship (and not barge) propelled by a diesel engine. In 1902 Karl Hagelin, "a veteran of the Volga and sometime visionary", suggested mating diesel engines to river barges. He envisioned direct shipment of oil through an 1,800-mile (2,900 km) route from the lower Volga to Saint Petersburg and Finland. The first Volga steamers Komar, Shmel, and Tungus were constructed between 1908 and 1917 in the Nobel Shipyard in Rybinsk. 
  The Russians move large amounts of timber for export to Europe. Large barges of 300 ft (91 m) length to 1,000 t (1,102 tons) are purpose-built for the single journey
  in the season. Large numbers of the boats and rafts are broken up after a single voyage. The wood barges are towed by tug.
caption: View from Polustovaia Hill to the Volga near Zubtsov. circa 1910
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