Transcript
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild.
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Our world is full of the unexplainable.
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And if history is an open book,
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all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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The Kuril Islands are a relatively remote place off the east coast of Russia, north of Japan. It's a volcanic chain that most people would struggle to point out on a map. The winters are cold, the summers are thick with fog. Not what one thinks of when you mention volcanic island in the Pacific. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained a garrison on the island of Yturup. The garrison was small, but had six self propelled barges to help maintain supply lines between them and the mainland. During the winter of 1959, most of these barges were beached in order to protect them from winter storms. However, in early January of 1960, Soviet command alerted them of an incoming supply ship. So two of these barges were fueled and pushed back out into the sea where they were attached with mooring lines. These barges, designated T97 and T36, were maintained by small skeleton crews. On January 17, while these men were aboard, a storm struck. Intense winds battered at the moorings of both barges. The tether on barge T36 snapped and the 100 ton ship began to drift in danger of being swept out to sea. The crew went to work right away, starting the barge's engines in an attempt to keep her away from the rocks, and all the while they radioed to shore requesting assistance. At the time, T36 had four men on board and that was it. They fought that storm on and off for around 10 straight hours until finally the winds let up. It was a slight relief, although only a temporary one. You see, they were in the eye of the storm and they realized that their safest course of action would be to approach the beach with their barge. Around the same time, though T97, the other barge, was attempting to do the same thing and it had managed to beach the barge successfully. As the crew of T36 steered their barge toward a safer part of shore, the unthinkable happened. They ran out of fuel. There was nothing the four men on board could do but wait for the storm to return. The currents carried them south farther and farther away from the island until they were floating in open ocean. Their radio had been damaged during the storm, so there was no way to call for help anymore. The last message that they Sent to the garrison was, we anticipate disaster. We cannot come ashore. Once the storm subsided, the garrison launched a search party in the surrounding waters. They found wreckage floating in the ocean and assumed the T36 had sunk. At the same time, the T36, still very much afloat by the way, was drifting through the North Pacific on a strong current to the east, taking them at a speed of 78 miles per day. The water around the T36 barge was open and very empty. And even worse, the strong current meant that fishing was impossible. Although the four men did try their best, T36 floated through a stretch of sea reserved for Soviet missile testing, not seeing a single vessel along the way. On their second day of floating, they took a complete inventory of their supplies. Their food was scant. A small supply of cereal, a loaf of bread and a bunch of potatoes. During the storm, diesel fuel had gotten into the potatoes, so those were useless. Their only source of fresh water was the system that cooled the engine. They rationed all of these carefully and collected rainwater when they could to stave off their thirst. Their three day supply of food lasted for 16 days. Once they ran out, though, they boiled leather objects such as one of their belts, their shoelaces, and the strap from a walkie talkie so they could eat them. As you'd imagine, the men lost weight fast, and in the winter cold, they all had to share one bunk for warmth. However, none of them turned on each other, all grimly determined to press on wherever their barge might take them. And then, after a grueling 49 days, their ordeal came to an abrupt end. On March 7, they were spotted by helicopters dispatched by the US aircraft carrier the USS Kearsarge. At first, the Russian sailors attempted to explain to the helicopters that they only needed food and supplies and then could get back on their own. They feared that accepting American help would be seen as betrayal by the Soviet Union. But eventually, they caved in and accepted American rescue. The four Russian soldiers, skinny and disheveled, stumbled aboard the carrier in a kind of daze. They were cautious with how much they ate, aware of the danger of overeating after starvation. Remarkably, they received a hero's welcome in