In 2006 the Grenadines of St Vincent (Union Island) issued a
miniature sheet of four stamps to commemorate J F Kennedy and the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The top right hand stamp shows soviet
trucks being loaded on a freighter at Mariel Port in Cuba.
A search through various internet sites has found the source
photograph which the designer has used on the stamp. The photograph
is a low level shot taken in early November 1962.
With this information I e-mailed Auke Palmhof to see if he had any
ideas on the ship berthed at the quay. He e-mailed me back saying he
thought it was one of the of the Polish built B514 Volgoles type of
which there were at least 82 built.
From the Naval Historical Centre:-
Wednesday, 7 November
The United States accepted the Soviet offer to inspect outbound
missile-bearing ships and the Secretary of Defense notified the JCS
of the procedures for conducting the at-sea inspection. The directive
was sent to the quarantine force commander 1157R for immediate
compliance.
The USSR provided the names of the nine vessels which were carrying
out the missiles. The agreement was that the alongside inspections
would begin at first light on the next day. Appropriate call signs
were assigned to quarantine ships which were to affect the
intercepts. The master of the Soviet ship and the commanding officer
of the intercepting U. S. ship assigned were to work out their own
arrangements for rendezvous at a convenient point along the track of
the outbound vessel.
Photographic equipment and Russian language interpreters were placed
aboard the intercepting ships. The Soviet Union had also agreed that
helicopters could be used to photograph deck cargoes if seas and
weather prohibited good shipboard photographic results.
Negotiations later brought further Russian agreement that outer
covers would be removed partially from missile transporters in order
to permit visual and photographic inspection.
Six of the nine ships designated for inspection by the USSR had
already departed. They were:
Fizik Kurchatov
Metallurg Anosov
Labinsk
Ivan Polzunov
Bratsk
Dvinogorsk
The other vessels were:
Volgoles
Alapayevsk
Leninskiy Komsomol
Of these 9 ships there is only one of the Volgoles class and that is
VOLGOLES herself.
VOLGOLES
Built in 1960 by Stocznia Gdanska – Gdansk
GRT: 4638
NRT: 2348
DWT: 5895
Dimensions (in feet)
Length: 406 ft 5 inches
Breadth: 54 ft 11 inches
Draught: 22ft 3 inches
1989 renamed MILOS I
1990 broken up at Alang
Sources: Auke Palmhof; Lloyds Registers 1969-70;
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_m ... photos.htm (photo 39)
Naval Historical Centre http://138.147.50.20/faqs/faq90-5c.htm ;
Miramar Ship Index : http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz/
Peter Crichton