British cable layer Dominia rebuild as Russian freighter Nikola Yezhove at Amsterdam according to Dutch newspapers in 1937

The newspaper De Tribune dated Tuesday 12 January reported that the Dutch tug Humber owned by L. Smit&Co’s Internayionale Sleepdienst of Rotterdam the British cable layer Dominia (1) towed from London to Amsterdam and arrived on Sunday morning. She was to be rebuild on Russian behalf as a freighter by Verschure en Co’s Scheepswerf en Machinefabriek located at the other side of the IJ. Firstly were the so-called cable tanks to be removed and transformed into common cargo holds. Further more were on the deck derricks, winches and so on to be fitted for her future use as freighter. She was build in 1926 at Newcastle, England on behalf of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company of London and measured more as 9,000 gross tons with as dimensions 489 x 59 x 37 feet. She was an oil-fired double screw steamship and the largest of her kind. Forward and aft had she four decks and amidships three decks. Shortly after she was taken into service she laid a cable from Vancouver, Canada to the Fanning Island in the Pacific over a distance of 3,500 miles. Later was she active in the Atlantic Ocean with laying and repairing cables. Her oil bunker capacity made voyages of 10,000 miles possible without the necessity to visit harbours.

The newspaper Nieuwsblad van het Noorden dated 8 January did not supply extra details except reporting that she measured 9,293 tons.

The newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad morning edition dated 21 April published an item reporting that within some days the former British cable layer Dominia now rebuild as a freighter would depart towards Vladivostok. Her Russian crew was already underway towards Amsterdam. The rebuilding at Amsterdam had taken four months. With a gross tonnage of 10,000 tons was the Dominia once the largest cable layer of the world. Some time ago wrote an English correspondent of this newspaper an article dealing with this ship. Nearly nothing of the interior where the cable reels were fitted and from where the cables via hatches in the stern were lowered into the water remained. She was now to be used for freight and passengers transport in the East Asiatic waters.

The morning edition of the newspaper Het Vaderland 27 April published an item dated Amsterdam 26 April reporting that she was at the end of the week completed and leave the harbour. She was renamed Nikolai Ejov and her Russian crew arrived that day with the steamship Svir at IJmuiden.(2)

Notes

1. The newspaper Limburger Koerier dated 12 July 1926 wrote that she was the largest of her kind with a gross tonnage of about 9,000 tons and with a range twice of that of her predecessor the Colonia of the same company. The evening edition of the Het Vaderland dated 10 July and Nieuwsblad van het Noorden dated 14 July published similar details. http://www.shipstamps.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10842 supplies also details dealing with this ship and even published a stamp showing her as the cable layer Dominia. She was build at the yard of Swan, Hunter&Wigram with a gross tonnage of 9,273 tons and as dimensions 488.9 x 59.0 x 37'4 feet. Sold through the cooperation of Eduard Berzin, the man behind the Dal’s troi organisation which take care of the Kolyma Gulag system. John Sefton wrote that she was used as a flagship of the transports which transported slave labourers from Vladivostok towards Magadan. She was rechristened in Nikola Yezhove and after his execution she was named after Felix Dzerhinsky. During the Second World War was she used for Lend Lease purposes visiting regularly the United States. After the war she was used for the same purpose as before the war even transporting prisoners of war. No longer mentioned in the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping in 1978 although she can be broken up already in 1978. This website referred to another interesting website http://atlantic-cable.com/stamps/Cableships/indexdg.htmwhere a similar article was written in 2006 by Marty Bollinger. He is also the author of a book dealing with this subject titled Stalin’s Slave Ships. Kolyma, The Gulag Fleet, And the Role of the West, published in 2003.

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov (1 May 1895 St. Petersburg-4 February 1940 Moscow), between 26 September 1936 and 25 November 1938 first the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs (the so-called NKVD) and later the People’s Commissar for State Security and involved in the suppression of the opponents of the regime of Joseph Stalin..

Felix Dzerzhinsky (11 September 1877 Ivyanets, Russia-20 July 1926 Moscow) belonged to a Polish aristocrat family and was in the first head of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret (military) police which was founded by Vladimir Lenin on 20 December 1917 and which became notorious for her repression to political opponents of the new government.

2. I wonder if this Svir is identical with the former Dutch Patria which became in 1935 the Russian Svir, see the note The Dutch passenger ship Patria (1914-1935) became Russian Svir (1935) and later the Aleksandr Mozhaisky finally broken up in 1979, http://warshipsresearch.blogspot.com/2011/09/dutch-passenger-ship-patria-1914-1935.html