Khrushchev's Ship

Jim Shaw recalls a voyage he made on the 44-year-old classic liner Baltika in 1984, which regularly called at Tilbury.

In the mid-1980s the Soviet-flagged Baltika was one of the oldest passenger liners to navigate the River Thames up to London on a regular basis. Completed by Nederlandsche  Scheepsbouw  Maatschappij, Amsterdam as Vyacheslav Molotov, the 7,494gt vessel was launched on 17 August 1939, just a few weeks before Germany invaded Poland.

She followed a sistership, Iosif Stalin, which had been launched two months earlier by the same yard. Both were well-proportioned passenger cargo liners designed for use in the icy waters and cold weather of the Baltic. While Iosif Stalin was lost during the war, Vyacheslav Molotov survived and was later reconditioned for commercial service as Baltika, operating mainly on the Leningrad- London route, but also making occasional voyages to the Far East and Cuba.

In 1984 this author, along with his wife and infant son, booked passage from Copenhagen to Tilbury on the 44-year-old Baltika through the local office of the Baltic Shipping Co. While on board, I was introduced to the ship’s master, Captain Vladimir  Kovalev, through the Baltika’s second purser, Felix  Potenko. Captain Kovalev had been at sea with the Soviet merchant marine for 28 years, 15 as master, having finished his cadet training at Tallinn in the early 1950s. Before assuming command of Baltika, he had been master of two other well-known Soviet passenger vessels, the 3,923gt An tonina  Nezhdanova and 5,243gt Mikhail Kalinin.