Vitiaz

a sail- and propeller-powered corvette, built in 1886 on Galernoe Island in St. Petersburg. It had a displacement of 3,200 tons and a cruising speed of 14 knots (26 km/hr); it was equipped with ten 152-mm, four 4-pound, and ten 47-mm guns and carried a crew of 372. From 1886 to 1889, under the command of Captain First Class S. O. Makarov, it sailed around the world, carrying on various oceanographic investigations of the waters of the Pacific Ocean (such as temperature conditions, density, and the nature of the floor). The collected material was summarized by Makarov in the monograph “Vitiaz’” and the Pacific Ocean (1894). The name Vitiaz’ was placed on the pediment of the Oceano-graphic Museum in Monaco with those often other ships. In 1892 it became a first-class cruiser. In April 1893 it broke up near the port of Lazarev (in the Nevel’skii straits).

a Soviet research vessel. Length, 109.4 m; width, 14.5 m; displacement of 5,546 tons; and cruising speed, 13.5 knots (25 km/hr). It has 12 laboratories, including aerometeorological, oceanographic, biological, and geological-geophysical sections. Since 1949 it has carried on thorough research in the seas of the Far East and in the Pacific and Indian oceans. New oceanographic, biological, and geo-logical data have been collected by expeditions of the Institute of Oceanography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR on the Vitiaz’; these expeditions have studied several deep depressions in the Pacific Ocean and measured (in 1958) the deepest spot of the world ocean (in the Marianas Trench, 11,022m).