Wooden Shipbuilding of the Votkinsk Plant at the beginning of the 20th century

Over the almost century-long history of shipbuilding at the Votkinsk plant, more than four hundred metal ships were built there, from warships and sea schooners to small barges and rowboats. But, despite the numerous data that the plant was engaged exclusively in iron shipbuilding, there is a number of evidence of the presence of wooden shipbuilding, which can be divided into four types. Onboard wooden boats, for completing sea and river steamships built at the plant; the only wooden ship built as an independent order by the Shipbuilding Shop is the yacht "Vyatksky Voyevoda" - a gift to the governor of Vyatka S.D. Gorchakov; motor wooden boats that were built by private individuals in the village of Votkinsky Zavod; wooden barges. To identify the possible volumes of the latter, the office documentation of the plant was used from the funds of the Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic. Despite the eclectic nature of the facts, their arrangement in chronological order made it possible to identify duplication of information and determine the volume of production. Unlike the Shipbuilding Department, which concentrated all the final work on the delivery of steamships and watercraft, shipbuilding was also carried out by the Fuming and Construction Departments. They built exclusively wooden barges for their own needs: by the Fuming Department barges for the Kama, and by the Construction Department barges for the factory pond. In total, in the period 19001904 at least six barges were built for the Kama and four for the pond. During the period from 1905 to 1912, the plant decommissioned or sold for firewood a total of 12 wooden barges. Two more barges burned down during a fire in Levshino in 1919, taken away from the factory by the retreating Kolchak troops. The discrepancy in numbers is explained by the transfer of wooden barges to the ownership of the plant from other owners, apparently, mainly to pay off the debt to the plant. Up to one and a half dozen wooden ships could be in the factory caravan at a time. In 1908, wooden ships were deemed unprofitable for the plant due to their fragility, after which, apparently, alternative wooden shipbuilding ceased.