PORT OF PETROGRAD

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 126, 21 February 1921, Page 9

PORT OF PETROGRAD

PICTURE OF DESOLATION HAVOC AMONG SHIPPING The port of Petrograd has not Reaped the general ruin which seems to be th fate of everything in tho grasp of Bolshevism, says a correspondent ot tmo “Manchester Guardian. rhe ship canal between Kronstadt and Petrograd has been neglected, and the inv.iling sand 'has reduced its depth from 381 it. to barely 20ft. The quays lie felted. The sheds on them stand meetly ro d less and empty. All the elevators, cranes, etc. is jiffjrent chaos. The docks and the Me ™ channels are full of wrecks. Stemen, and barges lie singly and in ’ ' ho bedded in the mud, and obstructing plsX Near one of the quays a great vessel rests on its side in quite s i water II is a hospital ship. there were more than 1000 typhoid patients on in the holds for many weeks. The steamers lying in the P ort « ’L 1 in order, would have formed quite■ a fleet. There are twenty-three Russi. boats of a total tonnage of of them are passenger boats, the Je^ cnn _ cargo. Some of them ne • going steamers of W.OOO tons each on the average. Of such, ships there aio fiv ■ All heso ships are in ed condition; many of s to allowed to sink; Hiere are no crews t look after them, and many xatoaMc parts have been removed or simply 6t ?n"'he Ship canal are two British cargo boats One of these has been sunk, out could be refloated. These vessels are m better condition than the as captains, with skeleton crews, hung on for a long time until they were at Inst arrested by the Bolsheviks. Near them almost completely under water is a bg Belgian tramp of 4900 tons. She a hopeless condition. In a separate basin lies a group of German vessels. Intimation is lacking as to their exact JW ber, as some of them got away after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty had been . So far ns can be ascertained there is no neutral sh.ipping-i.e., belo n 8»« to ’ ( n tions which took no part in the wnr-in the port. A few destroyers and launches are the only vessels' one sometimes sees moving about. But the port A 1 ’ 1 . ic * r ' ties presiding over this desolation ar all at their posts, and the staffs have grown enormously under the Soviets. The big docks for inland traffic are also all empty. The hundreds of river barges and lighters which usually filled then, have disappeared. Scores of tugs are huddled together in odd corners, with boilers rusted through* And with damaged engines. Even the little ferry boats, which in days gone by earned citizens to and fro over the Neva and along the widely-branched estuary, form a large heap of scrap-iron on one of the lowlying islands. Petrograd, Peter the Great’s window into Europe, the port once teeming with commerce and prosperity, is no more.