MV Captain Kurbatskiy (Капитан Курбацкий) was a Russian SA-15 type cargo ship originally known as Nizhneyansk (Нижнеянск) after a port of the same name. The ship was delivered from Valmet Vuosaari shipyard in 1983 as the second ship of a series of 19 icebreaking multipurpose arctic freighters built by Valmet and Wärtsilä, another Finnish shipbuilder, for the Soviet Union for year-round service in the Northern Sea Route. These ships, designed to be capable of independent operation in arctic ice conditions, were of extremely robust design and had strengthened hulls resembling those of polar icebreakers. In 1996, after 13 years of service under Soviet and later Russian Far East Shipping Company (FESCO), the ship was sold to Bandwidth Shipping Corporation, who renamed it Magdalena Oldendorff and later chartered it as a support ship for the 20th Indian Antarctic Expedition. In 2003 the ship changed hands again and the new owner, Crystal Waters Shipping, renamed it Ocean Luck. Since 2010 the ship sailed as Captain Kurbatskiy under the ownership of Fern Shipping. Decommissioned and sold for scrapping in Alang, India, in 2011, Captain Kurbatskiy arrived at the breakers on 12 November 2011. History Development and construction The history of the SA-15 class cargo ships dates back to the late 1970s when the leading Finnish shipbuilders Wärtsilä and Valmet both developed designs that met the requirements set by the Ministry of the Merchant Marine of the Soviet Union (MORFLOT) for the new class of arctic cargo ships capable of year-round operation in the Northern Sea Route. An initial order for nine ships, six for Wärtsilä for FIM 1.2 billion and three for Valmet for FIM 600 million, was placed in July 1980. In the following year three more ships were ordered from Wärtsilä and two from Valmet, resulting in a total order of 14 ships worth of FIM 3.5 billion. While initially the idea of ordering two similar but technically different series of ships for the same purpose was to gain operational experience for the future arctic freighters, shortly after the deal was made public the shipyards approached Sudoimport to agree on a uniform design, resulting in a class of sub-arctic cargo ships, the SA-15 class. After the initial series Valmet received another follow-up order for five ships of slightly different design, sometimes referred to as the SA-15 Super class due to the minor improvements based on the operators' experiences in the arctic.