The Sarapul City Ferry Fleet Based on Records of 1926–1947

Existing works on Soviet water transport usually draw conclusions based solely on information about the work of shipping companies subordinate to the Ministry of River Fleet.The main reason for this should be sought in the lack of a good source base for the fleets of other enterprises.In this work, based on the available funds of the Sarapul City Ferry, a reconstruction of the biographies of the vessels it had is made.It is concluded that the available industrial and financial plans and reports on their implementation are quite adequate for this purpose.At the same time, their comparative analysis showed that the management of the city ferry had a certain amount of voluntarism, since not all plans were implemented.In this regard, a comparison of the planned and actually spent amounts on capital works is of great importance.The remaining sources did not represent a single array of data, but they made it possible to clarify a number of facts and data.The most valuable of them were the orders on personnel, which made it possible to clarify the names of the vessels, since reports and industrial and financial plans most often do not name them.Reconstruction of the ship biographies showed that the city ferry played an important role in the housing and communal services of Sarapul throughout its existence.However, its material part constantly lagged behind the urgent needs of the city.This is especially evident in the war period, when the fulfillment of the transportation plan barely reached 40 %.Obviously, the reasons for this should be sought in the misunderstanding of the city leadership of the real needs of river workers.So, instead of technical re-equipment of the fleet, it invested large funds in its repair.And the capacity of the fleet used was seriously limited by the capabilities of its semiartisanal technical maintenance.Therefore, it was possible to actually solve the transport problem of the crossing only after the transfer of the fleet to the Udmurt Department of Small Rivers.