Shipbuilding yard of Votkinsk plant during the First World War

The First World War became a serious test for the Russian industry. Unfortunately, for a number of enterprises there is no reliable information about the volumes of military production, one of which is the shipyard of the Votkinsk plant. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the production volumes of the shipyard of the Votkinsk plant during the WWI. The source base. The archive fund of the Votkinsk plant does not represent a single and homogeneous content. So there is very detailed information for 1915, with a limited volume for 1916 and with a complete absence for 1918. The second sources are the Marine and River registers and the Naval rolls, that has numerous lacunas too. Pre-revolutionary registers did not provide information on non-self-propelled vessels, and post-revolutionary registers keep silent about ships that lost during the civil war. To solve the problem of determining actual production volumes, the list of order numbers of the plant was reconstructed. Based on the documentation of the Technical Bureau of the plant, a table of order's numbers was compiled, the empty numbers were supplemented on the basis of other sources. The table of the order's production has been compiled on base of a table of order's numbers. The analysis of the received information was made. In the course of the study, the following results were obtained and the following conclusions were drawn. 1. During wartime, the qualitative composition of orders had changed. If before the war in some years the orders of the plant consisted exclusively of self-propelled vehicles (steamships and steamboats), then non-self-propelled vessels are prevailed in the structure of military orders: barges comprised 51-68%, and scows - 14-27%. Under wartime conditions, their design was simplified to the utmost in order to speed up and reduce the cost of production. The share of steamers in orders dropped to 2-3%, of which only one was completed in wartime, and the majority, at the end of the war, was in the initial stages of construction, it were dismantled on the slips. Regarding the departmental ownership of the executed orders, on the pre-war orders were dominated the private individuals. Since 1912 the main, and in 1914-1915, the principal customer was the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In 1916 the Naval Ministry joined the number of customers, the maximum share of orders not exceeding 32%. And only at the end of 1917 the plant received a single private order from the merchant Mikhalev (first time since 1913). 2. During wartime, the work of the plant changed radically too. If for some prewar years 100% of all products were collected at branches in Siberia and the Far East. On 1915, with the assembly of the last floating crane for the Black Sea in Syrygol, the functioning of the branches ceased. All this information refutes the established opinion about the modernization of production associated with military orders, and allows us to assert that the degradation of shipbuilding production began during the World War, and not during the civil war, as previously stated. 3. The products of the Votkinsk plant's shipbuilding yard had the great importance for the Russian military economy. Dredgers and scoop scows of the Votkinsk made can to possible in a short time to fully re-equip the facilities serving the Volga-Caspian channel. According to the register of 1926, this year the canal was served only by vessels of Votkinsk's built. In the period from 1914 to 1915, the Votkinsk plant supplied six floating cranes to the port of Arkhangelsk, which were of great importance, because of the prevalence of temporary piers in the port. On a total seven from the eight of a port cranes were Votkinsk's built. According to the register of 1922, the Votkinsk's barges accounted for more than half of the available barges of the port. This information points to the great importance of the products of the shipbuilding yard of the Votkinsk plant in ensuring of the strategically important transportation of the Russian Empire by the Volga-Caspian Canal and through the Arkhangelsk Port.

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