The Mariinskaya water system is located here. Mariinsky system

Many people have probably heard about the pioneer of color photography in Russia, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky. His unique “Collection of Landmarks of the Russian Empire” appears on many resources. Dating from the beginning of the last century, color photographs immortalized many moments from the life of the country even before the revolution. And, given that Prokudin-Gorsky had great respect for travel by water, many waterways were preserved in his collection.

In 1948, 4 years after the photographer’s death, his entire collection was purchased from his heirs by the Library of the US Congress and appeared in the public domain only in the 2000s. I’ll try to post in several posts the main photographs from Sergei Mikhailovich’s collection relating to waterways and shipping in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. I hope the public will find this interesting.

Part one. Mariinsky system. The rivers Kovzha, Vytegra, Sheksna and White Lake.

In 1909, long before the appearance of the Volga-Baltic Canal, S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky traveled along the Mariinsky lock system - the then waterway from the Volga to St. Petersburg on the steamer "Sheksna".

#1. 1909 The crew of the steamship "Sheksna", on which S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky traveled along the Mariinsky system.

Below the cut is his “photo report about the cruise”.

#2. The chapel is on the site where the city of Belozersk was in ancient times.
1909 Belozersk. The village of Krokhino (now flooded).

#3. Belozersk. General view of the city from the city rampart.

#4. Belozersk. General view of the city from the city rampart.

#5. Belozersk. Church of St. Basil the Great (left) and the Transfiguration Cathedral (right) inside the rampart. Belozersk. Church of St. Basil the Great (left) and Transfiguration Cathedral (right) inside the ramparts.

#6. On the Vytegra River. 1909
Before the construction of canals and locks, Vytegra was exactly like this.

#7. Dam of Saint Xenia.
1909 The dam was located 6 kilometers above the city of Vytegra on the Vytegra River.

#8. Tank barge of the Nobel brothers on the Vytegra River.

#9. Temple in the name of the Dormition of the Mother of God in the village of Devyatiny (Vytegra river).

#10. Devyatiny. Repair workshop of the Ministry of Railways and lock (on the Vytegra River).

#eleven. Devyatiny. Garden of the Ministry of Railways and the gateway of St. Paul (on the Vytegra River).

#12. Devyatiny. St. Paul's Dam.

#13. Chapel for the blessing of water in Devyatiny.

#14. Vytegra. General view of the city and the Vytegra River.

#15. Drawbridge on the Vytegra River.

#16. Vytegra. Church of the Ascension.

#17. The Vytegra-Kovzha canal and a memorial sign to Emperor Alexander II in memory of the end of the Mariinsky system.

#18. Goritsy. The main cathedral of the Goritsky Monastery from the road.

#19. Goritsy. View of the monastery from Mount Maura.

#20. Goritsy. General view of the monastery (from the Sheksna River).

#21. Kirillov. Kazan Cathedral.

#22. Kirillov. General view of the city from the bell tower of the Kazan Cathedral.

#23. Kirillov. View from Mount Maura.

#24. Kirillov. Holy gate of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery.

#25. Kovzhskaya dam.
1909 It was located near the source and was built in the 19th century as part of the Mariinsky water system.

#26. Kovzhskaya dam.

#27. Kovzha River. The village of the Kovzhinsky sawmill.

#28. Sheksna River. Coastal fortifications.

#29. Kovzhinsky sawmill.

#thirty. Village of the Kovzhinsky plant.

#31. Village of Kovzhinsky plant - residential buildings.

#32. Vokhnovo town. Sheksna River, about 20 kilometers from Cherepovets.

#33. Sheksna River. Dam and lock of Emperor Nicholas II.

#34. The Sheksna River at its confluence with the Belozersky Canal. Old sluice gate.

#35. Sheksna River. Gorodetsky and Nikitsky churchyards (not far from Goritsy).

#36. On the deckhouse of the steamship "Sheksna".

Another conversation with Sheksna local historian E.V. Baranova (read the beginning of the series in the newspaper issues of August 9, 23 and 30) is dedicated to the Sheksna River and the most interesting places along its banks. Emma Valentinovna will conduct a virtual water excursion. Let's imagine that on the border of the Sheksninsky district (at the mouth of the Kovzhi River) we boarded a boat and began our journey down the river.

But the river was different...

E.V. Baranova:
- When traveling along the Sheksna River, first of all you need to talk about how in a short period of time a person changed the river beyond recognition. By definition, a river is a moving stream of water in a depleted channel. But our river doesn’t move until the floodgates are opened. We can say that now the Sheksna River has lost its understanding as a river. It is a wide, deep, calm body of water. Occasionally, a passenger ship or cargo tanker sails along the river. There are a few villages along the banks. The river looked completely different just a hundred years ago, when there were no powerful hydraulic structures that hid vast territories under water.
Let's remember that river. There are many references to the Sheksna as a rapids, stormy river, treacherous with its shoals and rapids. In the book “Sheksna - the Veles River”, Totem local historian A.V. Kuznetsov schematically outlined these thresholds and justified their names. A remarkable fact: the main rapids part of the river passed within the boundaries of the modern Sheksninsky district. It was not easy for merchants and travelers to overcome it. Each threshold had its own name. They are very interesting: Bear, Blacksmith, Dog Crawls, Pig, Deer Antlers, Mouse Trails... In the area of the village of Sheksna, at the bend of the river, there were three rapids at once: Hare, Ram and Owl. Two of these toponyms have been preserved as Filin Stream and the Zaitsevo tract.
Since the Sheksna River was in demand for the transportation of goods, and numerous rapids and shoals interfered with this, people began to build locks.
That former river was rich in fish. It was home to the “Sheksna golden sterlet”, glorified by the 18th century poet Gavrila Derzhavin, and beluga and whitefish. The fish came to spawn in our small rivers, in White Lake, and then descended back into the Caspian Sea. The peasants set up numerous stakes on the river to catch fish, and delivered them to the royal table all year round.
Nature is very sensitive to anthropogenic impact. When I worked as a teacher, I explained to the children that we live in the natural taiga zone. We look out the window - and where is the taiga? Cut down. So man changed the river beyond recognition by building dams and sluices. And those wonderful fish are no longer found there.
In 1945, the Darwin Nature Reserve was created in the territories of the Cherepovets district and the Breytovsky district of the Yaroslavl region. One of the goals of establishing the reserve is to study the impact of the man-made sea - the Rybinsk Reservoir - on the surrounding natural complex. Once I had the opportunity to listen to scientists who had been studying this issue for a long time. Some of them believe that there are more disadvantages from creating a man-made sea than advantages. By flooding the territories, we received a temporary economic effect, but we lost good running water, fish, flooded meadows, and people lost their small homeland.

Kovzhenskaya Church

We got to know the present and past of the Sheksna River a little. Now is the time to tell compelling stories.
Let's start with one interesting color photograph from the early twentieth century. On it there is a clean river, wooden houses and a beautiful stone church. The photograph was taken in 1908 by the pioneer of Russian color photography, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky. In 1908, he conceived a grandiose project: to capture contemporary Russia, its culture, history and modernization in color photographs. Emperor Nicholas II liked the photographer's idea, and he ordered that he be given a specially equipped railway carriage, and a small steamer for work on waterways. The Tsar's office issued documents giving S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky had access to all places in the empire, and officials were ordered to help him in his travels. In 1909, the photographer walked along the Mariinskaya water system, that is, along the Sheksna River, past our Sheksna (at that time the village of Nikolskoye). On this trip he took many color photographs. The photo with the temple in the background is captioned “Village of Kovzha. Coastal fortifications. Sheksna River”, and from the “Church-Historical Atlas of the Vologda Region” by N.M. Macedonian we learn that in the village of Kovzha there once stood the Transfiguration Kovzhenskaya Church. Is this the church photographed by S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky?
E.V. Baranova:
- In the Vologda region there are five rivers with the name Kovzha. And along the Prokudin-Gorsky route there were two villages with the same name Kovzha. One village was located in our area - at the confluence of the Kovzhi River and the Sheksna River. The parish Transfiguration Kovzhenskaya Church stood here. In 1964, the village of Kovzha was flooded by the Sheksna Reservoir. Another village of Kovzha was located in Belozersky district, where another river Kovzha flows into White Lake. In that village there stood the Sretenskaya Kovzhinskaya Church. Now it is half destroyed. When comparing the image of S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky with a photograph of the Sretenskaya Kovzhinskaya Church on an island in White Lake, at first glance it is clear that the churches are different.
And yet, if you look closely at the photograph taken by the royal photographer, then at the bend of the river on the right we will see a bushy island. The same island in this place of the river appears on maps of the Sheksna River before the flooding. From these observations we can say with confidence that the color photograph of 1909 depicts our Transfiguration Kovzhenskaya Church. Although now this church is completely destroyed and has sunk to the bottom of the Sheksna River. ( In the photo: a fragment of a 1958 map. The village of Kovzha was flooded in 1964 by the Sheksninsky reservoir)
- Judging by the photo, life was in full swing in this place?
- Yes, now the banks along the Kovzhi River are practically deserted. And just a hundred years ago it was a prosperous and densely populated region. According to data for 1921, more than two and a half thousand people lived in the village of Kovzha alone. For comparison: according to 2010 data, 228 people lived in seven villages along the Kovzhi River (Bereznik, Deryagino, Zadnaya, Kalikino, Kameshnik, Kirgody, Ustyanovo).
The names of the disappeared villages in that region are interesting. For example, one village was named Krivusha because it stood on the crooked bow of the Kovzhi River. The village of Pyatnaya is near the “fifth”, that is, the place where the dam or river joins the left bank. And Gorodishchi was the name given to an ancient place of settlement where there once was a fortified town.
It's not just the history of the area that is interesting. In 1995, the guys and I studied the mouth of the Kovzhi River. Then the locals warned us to be careful when sailing our small boats, because there was a large fish in the river that could capsize the boat with a blow from its tail.
Two years ago we went to Kovzha again and again heard amazing stories about big fish. One local resident said that a net was placed in the area of the ferry, and when they took it out, there was a hole in it the size of a UAZ. What kind of torpedo made a hole and tore the net? Maybe beavers. But for some reason the locals are sure that the river is inhabited by a huge beluga.

Black Ridge

E.V. Baranova:
- Now let’s go down the river a little more and stop opposite the villages of Malaya Stepanovskaya and Ankimarovo. Before these places were flooded by the waters of the Volga-Balta, there was the village of Chernaya Gryada and the stone Chernogryadsky lock of the Mariinsky water system. On his journey, photographer S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky captured this gateway. In his photo we see a grandiose hydraulic structure. This gateway is interesting because its design spared the nature of the river. It had two channels, in one there was a lock chamber, and the other was blocked off with metal trusses only for the duration of navigation. And so the water in the river remained flowing. In 1909, when S.M. traveled along the Mariinsky water system. Prokudin-Gorsky, on the Sheksna River there were four stone sluices with collapsible dams. The Chernogordy gateway was the first, coming from the Volga, and had the name “Emperor Nicholas II Lock”. At that time it was one of the longest in Europe - 362 meters. Now it is hidden by 16 meters of water.

The next interesting point is the village of Irma. This place is so interesting that a separate conversation will be devoted to it, so we will skip it for now, and in the next issue of the newspaper we will continue our journey along the Sheksna River from the village of Anisimovo.

31260

Sheksninsky lock Black Ridge in the Library of Congress

In the issue of "Stars" dated December 30, 2014, in the material "The Centenary Fate of Sudbitsy", talking in detail about the Sudbitsy lock of the Mariinsky water system, I mentioned another Sheksninsky lock, which is located in the area of the village of Irma - Chernaya Gryada, which we will not see now never, since it is hidden under a 16-meter layer of water, finding itself in the upper reaches of the Sheksninsky reservoir. But, as the old wisdom says, never say “never”! We can still see this gateway today! In the photo, which was taken in 1909. I think that we should at least briefly tell you about the author of this photograph*.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky was born on August 18, 1863 in the village of Funikova Gora, Pokrovsky district, Vladimir province. Russian photographer, chemist (student of Mendeleev), inventor, publisher, teacher and public figure, member of the Imperial Russian Geographical, Imperial Russian Technical and Russian Photographic Societies. He made a significant contribution to the development of photography and cinematography. Pioneer of color photography in Russia, creator of the "Collection of Landmarks of the Russian Empire".
On December 13, 1902, Prokudin-Gorsky first announced the creation of color transparencies using the three-color photography method of the German chemist A. Miethe, and in 1905 he patented his sensitizer, which was significantly superior in quality to similar developments by foreign chemists, including the Miethe sensitizer. The composition of the new sensitizer made the silver bromide plate equally sensitive to the entire color spectrum. To view such photographs, a projector with three lenses was used, located in front of three frames on a photographic plate. Each frame was projected through a filter of the same color as the one through which it was shot. When three images (red, green and blue) were added, a full-color image was obtained on the screen.
The exact date of the beginning of color filming by Prokudin-Gorsky in the Russian Empire has not yet been established. It is most likely that the first series of color photographs was taken during a trip to Finland in September-October 1903.
In 1908, Sergei Mikhailovich conceived a grandiose project: to capture contemporary Russia, its culture, history and modernization in color photographs. In May 1909, Prokudin-Gorsky received an audience with Emperor Nicholas II, who instructed him to photograph all possible aspects of life in all regions that then made up the Russian Empire. For this purpose, the photographer was allocated a specially equipped railway carriage. For work on waterways, the government allocated a small steamer capable of sailing in shallow waters, with a crew, and for the Chusovaya River - a motor boat. For filming the Urals and the Ural ridge, a Ford car was sent to Yekaterinburg. Prokudin-Gorsky was issued documents by the tsar's office that gave access to all places in the empire, and officials were ordered to help Prokudin-Gorsky in his travels. Sergei Mikhailovich carried out all the filming at his own expense, which gradually became depleted.
In 1909-1916, Prokudin-Gorsky traveled throughout a significant part of Russia, photographing ancient churches, monasteries, factories, views of cities and various everyday scenes.
In March 1910, the first presentation to the Tsar of photographs of the Mariinsky Canal waterway and the industrial Urals taken by Prokudin-Gorsky took place.
In 1920-1922, Prokudin-Gorsky wrote a series of articles for the British Journal of Photography and received a patent for a “camera for color cinematography.”
Having moved to Nice in 1922, Prokudin-Gorsky worked together with the Lumiere brothers. Until the mid-1930s, the photographer was engaged in educational activities in France and even intended to take a new series of photographs of artistic monuments of France and its colonies. This idea was partially implemented by his son Mikhail Prokudin-Gorsky.
Part of the Prokudin-Gorsky collection has been preserved, transferred by his relatives to the US Library of Congress, which includes 1902 triple negatives and 2448 black and white prints in control albums (in total about 2600 original images).
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky died in Paris a few weeks after the liberation of the city from the Germans by Allied troops. He was buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
*Material from Wikipedia.

Ekaterina MAROVA.

20482

The hundred-year fate of Sudbits

The Sudbitsa lock of the Mariinsky water system and the current severe low water are two different stories, but they turned out to be connected by one thread - the Sheksnaya River. If the current level of the main water artery of the area had not dropped by about three-plus meters, we would not have seen this unique engineering structure, which is almost a hundred years old...

Aki dry

It was one of the snowless and sunless November days, the dullness of which was brightened up by frost, richly decorating the trees, bushes, unmown dry grass, as well as stones and billions of bivalve shells, with which the bottom of the bay with the strange name Deaf Zahap was abundantly strewn. Back in the spring, there was more than a meter of water here, and fishermen calmly crossed the bay on motorboats. And now I’m walking along its cracked bottom, and the dried shells crunch loudly under my feet.
Here is the Sheksna River. Its shore has retreated from its usual edge by tens of meters. Moving forward to the Sudbitsky Lock, I had to jump over stones, which in normal years are hidden by almost three meters of water...

Another civilization...

And here is the gateway. The date 1915 is carved on one of its granite surfaces. It’s strange to see here, in a deserted place in the middle of the forest and water, the perfectly evenly laid granite blocks of the airlock chamber, and to climb the stone steps to the platform at the upper gate. I remembered St. Petersburg and the Neva embankment, clad in approximately the same granite. Or maybe it’s the same one, since it was mined only in Karelian quarries, which were still Finnish at that time.
A resident of the village of Dobrets in the Zheleznodorozhny rural settlement, Konstantin Ivanovich Subbotin, recalls:
- My grandmother, Evgenia Mikhailovna Smirnova, when she was still a girl, carried stones to this lock with her older brother. A fathom of stones cost a ruble. So they carried out two fathoms per day on horseback. Stones were collected from all over the area. Not a single one was to be found on the field! Polish stonemasons worked on the construction of the lock. Where did they come from? I don’t know... There were a lot of Poles here. They got married and stayed here.
Polish craftsmen cut blocks of Finnish granite for the construction of the lock chamber itself, and our Sheksninsky stone was used to strengthen the banks.
The past century has flown by unnoticed for this structure, without leaving any noticeable traces on the Finnish-Karelian granite, but the metal elements - gates and locking mechanisms - have taken a fair beating. Although, how can I say, the royal metal, which had lain under water for a hundred years, has not decayed from rust and is still attractive to looters, who long ago stole the lower gates, and this year, taking advantage of the low water, they began to destroy the upper ones, partly settled in the ground ...

One of the pearls of the Mariinsky Theater

Learning the technical features of the lock in Sudbitsy, I am more and more amazed at the clarity of mind of our Russian engineers, who, not knowing about any kind of ecology, “inscribed” this structure (as well as the other 34 locks of the Mariinsky system) into the life of the Sheksna River.
To construct the lock, an artificial canal was dug parallel to the main riverbed. This hydraulic structure ended up on the island, since it was separated from the “mainland” by the same bay with the strange name Deaf Zahap.
Why was the gateway built at this location? On the Sheksna River, it was in the area of the Losteyevsky beach that there was a threshold that interfered with navigation. The Sudbitsky lock, 320 meters long and 12.8 meters wide, with a depth at the king* of 2 meters, allowed ships to overcome this threshold.
And this is how this hydraulic structure worked.

From the freeze-up, that is, from November, navigation ended, the ships were laid up in the lower reaches. The river rested under an ice shell until spring, before the onset of ice drift. During the spring flood, both the upper and lower gates of the sluice were open, melt water washed through the sluice chamber and flowed freely along the water bed. At the end of May - beginning of June, when the high water was receding, the main channel of the river (in the area of the threshold) was blocked by vertically placed metal trusses (they were connected to each other like puzzles), which were installed on the bottom of the river in the so-called “trough” - a concrete base with a recess in the center. The depth of the river here was not very great, and the height of the farms was approximately 3-4 meters. It must be said that this metal palisade was installed manually - all mechanization - ropes and a winch. Workers on boats connected one farm to another. When the dam was installed, the tops of the farms sticking out of the water became a “path” across the river, along which they crossed it, holding on to light handrails - rails. The “picket fence” was removed in the fall, when the water in the river dropped seasonally and freeze-up was approaching. Farms were built on the Losteyevsky bank.

“The barge haulers are walking with a towline!”

I can’t help but remember those times when ships along the river were pulled by teams of barge haulers. Our Sheksna was no exception. Since then, the word “towpath” has remained in our dictionary. Land managers still use it today, since both now and a hundred years ago this was the name of the strip of land along the river bank along which barge haulers walked, tied with a towline. After the reconstruction of the Mariinsky system at the end of the 19th century, the towpath was expanded, which made it possible to say goodbye to haulage, barges began to be towed by horse teams.

We will never see the Black Ridge gateway...

In the area of the village of Irma, where the Sheksna River had rapids, a stone sluice called Black Ridge was built between 1890 and 1896. After flooding, it ended up in the upper pool of the Sheksninsky reservoir, and is now forever hidden under a 16-meter layer of water. The uniqueness of this lock is that in 1890-1896, when a major reconstruction of the Mariinsky system was carried out, it, as well as the locks in Derevenka and Nilovice, were the longest in Europe - 325 meters!
And one more very surprising fact, which Vasily Marov spoke about: the Mariinsky system gateways supported communication by telephone! Before the end of navigation, when the water in the river was receding, the last convoys of ships sometimes found it difficult to overcome the lower gate of the lock. Then from Sudbitsy they called the Black Ridge gateway and asked: “Add more water!” There, both gates were lowered down at once, the water flowed in waves for tens of kilometers and helped the ships jump out of the lock. But I’ll make a reservation that everything was not so simple in life - the wooden ribs-frames of barges that were wrecked are still visible on the banks of the Sheksna River. But that is another story…

Sheksna golden sterlet

The 34 locks of the Mariinsky system did not prevent fish from swimming freely from the Caspian Sea to White Lake. And then the white fish, the same Sheksna golden sterlet, about which legends have been preserved, and a huge beluga came up to spawn with us.
Vasily Vasilyevich Marov, who spent his entire childhood at the Sudbitsky lock, where his grandfather worked as a beacon keeper, recalls: “In early spring, sterlet came to us from the Caspian Sea to spawn, rising upstream along the rivers. And it passed precisely through the locks that were open during the flood period, where there was more rapid current. Here the tyrants were waiting for her - sharply sharpened hooks on the corks. In 1966, I myself saw how a fisherman I knew was removing a sterlet from the tyrant. It was not large in size - only 35-40 centimeters. This fish was special - they only ate the one that was taken off the hook while still alive. Dead sterlet, due to the high content of fat in it, which quickly oxidized, became almost poisonous - it was thrown away. Caught live fish were put in cages, from where they were later taken for food The sterlet fish soup was unusually tasty and aromatic, and amber-yellow fat floated on top of the broth. And when fried, it was also good - tender white meat and no bones, except perhaps the backbone, and even that was cartilaginous. Then, in 1966 , the only time I tried it...”

Caspian salmon spawned near Muzyka

They say that the last whitefish - Caspian salmon - was caught by Mikhail Smirnov about fifteen years ago. By the way, the bank of the Sheksna River, which is opposite the current “Music”, was its spawning place. There was another fish that was found in Sheksna waters - beluga. Again, according to the recollections of experienced fishermen, the last beluga was caught in a net in 1947. She weighed about three hundred kilograms, more than a horse...

Last beep...

In the spring of 1963, the Sheksna Reservoir was filled, flooding five Mariinsky locks - two in our area - Chernaya Gryada and Sudbitsy, as well as Nilovitsy, Krokhino, Topornya... Navigation on the Mariinsky system ended on November 2, 1963 after 153 years of operation. And the old tradition has become a thing of the past forever: the captains of the last navigating caravan of ships that went down the river, passing through the lock, sounded a farewell whistle.
“I heard this beep as a seven-year-old boy,” recalls Vasily Marov. - on an early September morning, when I was visiting my grandfather at the lock, I was awakened by a low sound that carried far in the cold air over the yellowing forest, over the water. Farewell beep until next spring...
One day such a beep sounded not before a winter separation, but a separation forever...

Ekaterina MAROVA.

* King - the threshold of the airlock chamber, into which the gate rests ("Volgo-Balt. From the Volga to the Baltic").

During the initial construction of the Mariinsky water system (1799 - 1808) “in the gorge” where the Vytegra River “... is surrounded by high rocky mountains and makes several meanders,” one- and two-chamber wooden locks of St. Andrew were installed (at the 32nd verst from Vytegra near the village of Velikiy Dvor), St. Samson and St. Michael, and below is the three-chamber gateway of St. Paul (at the 30th verst near the village of Parfeevskoye). Each lock chamber was 15 fathoms long and 30 feet wide. There were dams at the locks. With a rare exception on the Vytegra River (St. Andrew's lock), all locks were built in diversion (water supply) canals dug in the meanders of the river. In 1890 - 1896, a winding section of the riverbed, 1.5 versts long, was removed from the water system by digging.

There were two most significant excavations along the entire Mariinsky waterway: Perekop No. 1 near the village of Devyatiny (437.75 fathoms in rocky soil with the bottom laid at a depth of 11.01 fathoms from the surface) and Lukovetsky excavation on the Sheksna River. Devyatinsky Perekop was the most grandiose structure of the reconstruction of the Mariinsky water system in 1890 - 1896. The work was carried out by constructing a tunnel using the so-called English method, which was used in England, America, Italy, Switzerland and Austria. This method was used for the first time in Russia.

The essence of the tunnel method was that at the level of the bottom of the future canal, a tunnel-adit was built, which communicated with the surface by a number of shafts. The soil removed from the surface was thrown through the mine channels into the adit, where rolling stock cars stood under the mine openings. The soil was removed from the adit and dumped under the overpass along which the train was moving. The path for transporting soil from the dig went along the slope of the left bank and, bypassing the village of Kamennaya, went out along a wooden overpass (340 fathoms long and 6 fathoms high) to a low meadow, which subsequently disappeared under the poured soil.

Two locomotives with rolling stock moved along the rails, each consisting of 45 cars (3 cars for each of the 15 shafts). There were 16 people working at the top of each shaft, and two people at the bottom in the adit. Breaking was carried out manually with little support from blasting. During these difficult works, unexpected obstacles appeared, for example, in one part of the excavation under the slabs there was a layer consisting of alternating layers of stone and clay of all colors and compositions, this whole mass began to move with the onset of thaws.

On average, 1,200 people and 500 horses were employed on a permanent basis. There were not enough workers. Food and technical supplies came intermittently in autumn and spring, and in winter it was very expensive, since only horse-drawn transport could be used. One winter there was a frost of thirty degrees. One year of construction coincided with a bad harvest. The threat of a cholera epidemic arose twice.

Devyatinsky perekop. A steam locomotive drives a loaded train. 1893

The construction of Perekop No. 1 took five and a half years. The volume of excavation amounted to more than 80 thousand cubic fathoms, including 5 - clay soil and 76 - slab and rocky (dolomitized) limestone (786, 48.5 and 737.5 thousand cubic meters, respectively. The first Russian experience of the tunnel method of canal construction exceeded the volume of work all previously known is six times.

Perekop walked around the bend of the river where the St. Samson and St. Michael locks stood. In the perekop itself, three locks, each 50 fathoms long, were installed. In technical terms, three locks with one dam with distances between chambers of 125 fathoms were actually one three-chamber lock.

Today in the river valley you can see the remains of a whole complex of wooden hydraulic structures of the old Mariinsky Theater of different years of construction. A little below the mouth of the White Stream in the channel of the Vytegra-Mariinka there are the ruins of the dam and lock of St. Andrew. The log fortifications of the walls of the former lock chamber and the fallen gate remained. The current channel, when turning into Perekop, is blocked by the remains of the St. Samson dam and the wooden structures of the St. Samson sluice of the first construction. The artificial origin of the excavation is easily determined by its straight direction and smooth slopes.

The now unpreserved “floor” of the bottom of the chambers of the two upper locks was laid on beds attached to limestone slabs, and the chamber of the St. Vladimir lock had a pile foundation. Half-rotten beds in one place and the remains of a pile foundation in another place can still be distinguished. It is virtually impossible to reconstruct the appearance of the first locks of St. Michael, even in general terms, from fragments of wooden structures and pile fortifications in the riverbed.

In 1887, the Novo-Mariinsky connecting canal with a total length of about 9 versts was built to bypass Matkozero, including 2 versts 7 fathoms of the old canal (from the mouth of the first canal to the St. Peter's lock). There were only two gateways on the new channel. The lifting of vessels to the watershed reach of the canal was carried out through the St. Alexander lock, and entry into the Baltic branch was carried out through the St. Peter lock.

The area around the canal and locks was completely open. A mile from St. Peter's lock there was an obelisk erected in honor of Peter I by General Devolant. From the monument one could see the basin of Matkozero, which was lowered in 1886. At the fifth mile of the new canal, away from the Aleksandrovsky Lock, the remains of the former Konstantinovsky water pipeline remained for a long time. The design of this structure could have been understood back in the pre-war years of the 20th century.

Introduction

The Mariinskaya water system is a water system in Russia that connects the Volga basin with the Baltic Sea. Consists of both natural and artificial waterways.

The construction of the 1,145 km long water system lasted 11 years. In Soviet times it received the name Volga-Baltic Waterway named after. V. I. Lenina.

1. History

Research along this path - r. Vytegra - r. Kovzha - r. Sheksna was held several times: under Peter and in 1774, 1785 and 1798.

In 1785, they were carried out by engineer Jacob de Witte, drawing up a preliminary and then a completed project and estimate in the amount of 1,944,000 rubles. On December 31, 1787, Catherine II allocated 500,000 rubles for the construction of the Vytegorsky Canal. But they were soon stolen (a small amount), the work did not even begin. But the need for supplies of goods to St. Petersburg was so high that the head of the Department, Count Yakov Efimovich Sivers, had to take up the design issue. He personally carried out a reconnaissance of the route and presented the tsar with a report on construction in the Vytegorsky direction.
But the work plan and estimate were taken from John Perry, who developed the same route back under Peter (the de-Witte project was not considered and was not even mentioned in the reports).

2. Financing

Financing is a very important element in construction and is quite unique for this waterway. To carry out the work, they took money from the fund orphanages that is, those that were collected for the maintenance of illegitimate children, foundlings and orphans, taking away from them food, clothing, shelter and education. This fund was managed by Empress Maria Feodorovna.

On January 20, 1799, Paul signed a decree: “We commanded, accepting this amount as a loan from this place on the appropriate terms, to add it to other amounts allocated for water communications, and the channel, as an expression of our gratitude, for such assistance to Her Imperial Majesty and as a keepsake for posterity , We deign to call it Mariinsky."

2.1. Construction

Management of the construction of the system was entrusted to engineer-general Franz Pavlovich de Vollant (the spelling of his last name is also found in sources as Devolant), for which a special department was created under him.

Construction began in 1799. The system was built by the Department of Water Communications, which was headed by N.P. Rumyantsev. The original plan provided for the construction of 26 locks, and in 1801, 8 of them were built and a connecting canal was dug. Somewhat later, two locks not provided for by the project were built in the Shestovskaya and Belousovskaya rapids of the river. Vytegra. In 1808, the first ship with a draft of less than 1 m sailed from Kovzhi to Vytegra.

On July 21, 1810, the opening of navigation on the Mariinsky water system was officially announced. The cost of construction was 2,771,000 rubles.

2.2. Modernization

Throughout the 19th century, the Mariinskaya water system underwent a number of alterations.
In August 1882, work began on the creation of the Novomariinsky canal - connecting the Kovzha and Vytegra rivers, then the Novosyassky and Novosvirsky canals. The reconstruction of the canals under the leadership of engineer K. Ya. Mikhailovsky ended in 1886.

With the completion of the construction of the Volga-Baltic waterway, most of the Mariinskaya water system became part of it.

3. System description

The whole system looked like this:

Gateway on Kovzhe - St. Constantine, St. Anna and one half-lock. 9 km from St. Anna, a connecting canal was dug to the village of Verkhny Rubezh. There are 6 gateways on the channel. The watershed point was Matkoozero. There are 20 locks on Vytegra. All locks had a chamber length of 32 m, a width of 9 m and a depth at the threshold of 1.3 m. The system was fed from Lake Kovzhskoe, for which its level was raised by 2 meters by blocking dams on Kovzh and Puras.

The length was 1,145 km, along the route (from Rybinsk to St. Petersburg on average it took 110 days) there were 28 wooden locks.

4. Disadvantages

The small size not only limited the possibilities of increasing cargo turnover, but also could not allow ships traveling along the Vyshnevolotsk system to reach Rybinsk. The Beloe and Onega lakes did not have bypass channels and ships perished in them even with slight waves. The route itself passed through deserted and sparsely populated, swampy areas. It was impossible to find sufficient numbers of people and horses to pull ships and maintain shipping.

5. Construction of bypass canals

5.1. Onega Canal

In 1818 they began to build a canal in the area from the river. Vytegra to the Black Sands tract. The length of the canal is 20 km. They dug from Black Sands to Voznesenye right up to 1852.

5.2. Belozersky Canal

Opened in August 1846. Passed along the southern shore of the lake with dimensions: bottom width 17 m, depth 2.1 m, length 67 km. It had two gateways on the Sheksna side - “Convenience” and “Safety”, and one on the Kovzha side - “Benefit”.

Bibliography:

Margovenko, Alexey“Roads of the Tsars” (Russian). magazine "Ural" 2004, No. 10.

Source: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariinskaya_water_system

The Mariinskaya water system is a waterway in Russia connecting the Volga basin with the Baltic Sea. From Rybinsk to the St. Petersburg seaport through the Ladoga canals (1054 versts). Consists of both natural and artificial waterways: r. Sheksna - White Lake - r. Kovzha - Mariinsky Canal - r. Vytegra - Lake Onega - r. Svir - Ladoga canals - r. Neva. It was under the jurisdiction of the Vytegorsky and St. Petersburg communication districts. The construction of the waterway was necessary for the Russian Empire to supply St. Petersburg (as the capital and largest city by population) with bread, timber, firewood and other products, goods for foreign trade, delivered through Rybinsk from the lower reaches of the Volga. For grain trading, a grain exchange was established in Rybinsk. Subsequently, wheat was exported to Europe through the Mariinsky system. The construction of the system, over 1,125 km long, took place during the reign of Paul I and his son Alexander I, and took 11 years. In connection with the development of capitalism after the abolition of serfdom, the capacity of the Mariinsky Canal was considered insufficient. In August 1882, work began on its modernization (the so-called Novomariinsky Canal). Construction work was completed in 1886. Following this, the construction of the Novosvirsky and Novosyasky canals (bypass canals near Ladoga) began. The reconstruction of the canals was led by engineer K. Ya. Mikhailovsky. In 1890, the Ministry of Finance allocated 12.5 million rubles for the reconstruction of the system. The work began on October 28, 1890. They were supervised by engineers from the Vytegorsky and Novoladozhsky districts of communication: A. Zvyagintsev, K. Balinsky, A. Valuev, A. Moguchiy, V. Martynov. Total: 38 locks (on Vytegra - 28, on the Novo-Mariinsky Canal - 2, on Kovzhe - 2, on Belozersk - 2, on Sheksna - 4) and 26 dams (on Vytegra - 14, on Kovzha - 4, Belozersk Canal - 4, on Sheksna - 4). Four stone sluices were built (without No., No. 35, No. 36 and No. 37), each 150 fathoms long, 6 fathoms wide; with metal gates, collapsible dams of the Poare (Poare) system. Perekop (total length 20 versts): No. 1 Devyatinsky on Vytegra; Kopanovsky (at the 21st verst from the source), Krestovy, Alekseevsky, Maryinsky, Probudovsky (at the 45th verst), Lukovetsky (791 fathoms; shortened the path by 7 versts) on Sheksna. Cleared of influx and sediment, deepened and expanded lakeside bypass channels. In some places, towpaths have been renewed, in some places new ones have been built. On the Svir, rapids have been partially cleared, straightening and water-restraining structures have been built, and the navigation channel has been widened and deepened. On June 15/27, 1896, the opening ceremony of the rebuilt system took place in Chernaya Grid in the presence of the leader. book Vladimir Aleksandrovich, Minister of Railways M.I. Khilkov. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1913, the Mariinsky system was awarded the Big Gold Medal. With the completion of the construction of the Volga-Baltic waterway, most of the Mariinskaya water system became part of it. The system reconstructed in 1959-1964 was named the Volga-Baltic Waterway named after. V.I. Lenin. During the initial construction of the Mariinsky water system (1799 - 1808) “in the gorge”, where the Vytegra River “... is surrounded by high rocky mountains and makes several meanders,” one- and two-chamber wooden locks of St. Andrew were installed (at 32- th verst from Vytegra near the village of Velikiy Dvor), St. Samson and St. Michael, and below is the three-chamber gateway of St. Paul (at the 30th verst near the village of Parfeevskoye). Each lock chamber was 15 fathoms long and 30 feet wide. There were dams at the locks. With a rare exception on the Vytegra River (St. Andrew's lock), all locks were built in diversion (water supply) canals dug in the meanders of the river. In 1890 - 1896, a winding section of the riverbed, 1.5 versts long, was removed from the water system by digging. Gateway of Empress Maria Feodorovna on the Mariinskaya canal system

In the lower part of the sides of the excavation, the remains of fastenings of the coastal slopes are visible in places. The locks of St. Samsonius, St. Michael and St. Vladimir (downstream, respectively, No. 25, 24, 23), which once stood in the perekop, now represent the remains of log structures of the side walls and bottom of the chambers and iron rods that secured the wooden structures to the “ stone" slopes of the dig. You can even “guess” the technical features of the cameras. The now unpreserved “floor” of the bottom of the chambers of the two upper locks was laid on beds attached to limestone slabs, and the chamber of the St. Vladimir lock had a pile foundation. Half-rotten beds in one place and the remains of a pile foundation in another place can still be distinguished. It is virtually impossible to reconstruct the appearance of the first locks of St. Michael, even in general terms, from fragments of wooden structures and pile fortifications in the riverbed. In 1887, the Novo-Mariinsky connecting canal with a total length of about 9 versts was built to bypass Matkozero, including 2 versts 7 fathoms of the old canal (from the mouth of the first canal to the St. Peter's lock). There were only two gateways on the new channel. The lifting of vessels to the watershed reach of the canal was carried out through the St. Alexander lock, and entry into the Baltic branch was carried out through the St. Peter lock. On the Vytegra River. 1909

The area around the canal and locks was completely open. A mile from St. Peter's lock there was an obelisk erected in honor of Peter I by General Devolant. From the monument one could see the basin of Matkozero, which was lowered in 1886. At the fifth mile of the new canal, away from the Aleksandrovsky Lock, the remains of the former Konstantinovsky water pipeline remained for a long time. A monument in honor of the completion of the construction of a new connecting (Novo-Mariinsky) canal between the Vytegra and Kovzheya rivers. Lock of St. Alexander. 1909

St. Xenia Dam on the Vytegra River. 1909

Dam of St. Paul in Devyatiny. 1909

Repair shop M.P.S. in Devyatiny. Vytegra River. 1909