The Pomor Shipbuilding Partnership shipyard plans to recreate the koch, a boat used by the Pomors until the 17th century during their exploration of the Arctic and Siberia, reports the press service of the Lomonosov Northern (Arctic) Federal University.

A copy of the historic boat will be built full scale: 15 m long, 6 m wide and 2.8 m high. Its body will be assembled from pieces of a tree trunk with roots, naturally curved into an L-shape.

According to the shipyard head Yevgeny Shkaruba, pomors used such ships for sailing to the ancient Arctic city of Mangazeya to purchase furs.

“To travel from Arkhangesk to Mangazeya they built disposable koches, which could be disassembled to build houses out of their parts. Now, the archeologists found enough wooden ship parts at the Mangazeya excavations to see how, for instance, the frame timber looked like, so we can say with fairly high certainty that we are doing genuine things,” he emphasized.

The plans are to complete the ship by summer 2026. Then the Koch will embark on a three year long expedition from Arkhangelsk along the Northern Sea Route and Siberian rivers Ob, Yenisei and Lena around Cape Dezhnyov to the Pacific Ocean.