Belyana

Belyanas were built in the Upper Volga region of Russia without any special tools or plans.

Each year in the 18th and 19th centuries hundreds of belyanas were built and floated to Astrakhan, where they were entirely dismantled and the wood sold.

In 2015 tourists found the remains of a wooden ship in the Vetluga river; archaeologists determined that it was an 80-meter-long belyana that caught fire some 350 years ago and was abandoned by its crew.

Belyanas were built since the 16th–17th centuries at the places of timber extraction in the Upper Volga region and on the Kama,[1] and were designed for a single trip downstream.

Two or three holes for anchors and probes were made directly above the laid cargo, and cabins[a] were also erected, where the crew lived during the floating.

For three to four months they lived in the forest without returning home, contenting themselves with a meager and monotonous diet and sleeping in small winter huts that did not heat well.

On the banks of the Usta and Vetluga, the bark was peeled from the logs, and then the belyana was built and loaded.

The vessel was then disassembled, the material was transported, reassembled, reloaded and released to the lower reaches of the Don, where it was unloaded and dismantled a second time.

[2] The load of logs, beams and planks was distributed in even rows with wide openings between them so as to provide quick access to its bottom in the event of a breach or other accident.

The resulting widenings sometimes protruded beyond the board by four or more meters—the total width of the vessel at the top could be much larger than the bottom.

A high transverse bridge was built between their roofs with a cabin cut in the middle, where the pilot was located.

[8] Wood for the building and loading of belyanas was sourced from the banks of the Volga and Vetluga tributaries: Medyana, Chernaya, Lapshanga, Sentyaga, Janushka, Usta, Bakovka, Belenkaya, and Yaktanga.

[15] When the river had returned to normal after the spring flood and all the logs were ready, construction of belyanas started.

A belyana was loaded in a specific order, with the purpose to place as many goods as possible but also to maintain the buoyancy and stability of the vessel.

[b][15][16] In the spring, the floods floated the belyana, and its 2000–to–3500 km trip to the Lower Volga started.

[2] Frequent destinations for belyanas were Saratov, Tsaritsyn (today's Volgograd), and Astrakhan, where the timber and hull were dismantled for firewood or went to sawmills for final processing.

Only the smallest belyanas, loaded with fish in Astrakhan, went back, pulled upstream by burlaks.

[17] Belyanas flourished in the middle of the 19th century, at the beginning of the massive arrival of steamboats on the rivers.

At first, steamboats exclusively burned wood, which had to be brought to the towns of the lower Volga, where the steppe expanses dominated.

Their usage ended because their construction was time-consuming and special skills were needed to float such unique vessels;[2] with the development of the railway system, the cost of transportation by rail became cheaper than by water, so the use of belyanas ended for purely economic reasons.

На купеческой беляне Браги груз несется пьяный; И красивые невольницы Наливают ковш повольницы.