Icebreaker Ermak. Ermak is the world's first Arctic icebreaker
On March 4, 1899, thousands of astonished people walked along the Kronstadt pier. Despite a meter layer of ice, a huge ship called "Ermak" approached the town. For the inhabitants of the island of Kotlin, the ice plowman was not a miracle - after all, the world's first icebreaker "Pilot" was designed by their fellow countryman Mikhail Britnev. But that car began to walk along the Gulf of Finland only at the end of April, when the ice became thin. Therefore, the appearance of the icebreaker in Kronstadt in early March caused genuine surprise among the townspeople - it was Admiral Makarov's finest hour. He got his way.
Just two years ago, in a memorandum to the head of the Naval Ministry, Stepan Makarov proposed the creation of a powerful icebreaker for navigation in Arctic waters. But his application was rejected. The admiral did not accept this. What he did today would be called a competent PR campaign. To familiarize the public with his project, the admiral prepared a series of lectures. One of them - "To the North Pole - ahead" - greatly interested journalists, and soon all of St. Petersburg heard about his idea.
Among others, Dmitry Mendeleev became interested in the idea of \u200b\u200bbuilding an icebreaker: the outstanding chemist subsequently participated in the development of the machine together with the admiral. Finance Minister Witte became a key figure in the project. Makarov and Mendeleev convinced him that the project would pay for itself. In November 1897, Witte introduced the tsar to the project and received his approval. Just a year later, the construction of the icebreaker was completed at the Armstrong Whitworth shipyard in Newcastle.
An interesting detail: during the construction of the ship, Makarov was worried that when sailing in the ice, the icebreaker would get holes and sink. So he made a 1:48 scale zinc ship model with exactly the same waterproof compartments in the bottom. All compartments had openings closed with stoppers. In the course of experiments in the bath, filling 1-2 compartments with water, Makarov was convinced that his fears were in vain. Therefore, when during the first trial voyage to the Arctic, the icebreaker received a serious hole, the admiral was calm. He knew the car was safe.
The icebreaker, which cost the empire 1.5 million rubles, paid for itself almost instantly. In the winter of 1899, during a snowstorm, the newest battleship General-Admiral Apraksin ran aground near Gogland Island. If not for the Yermak, the ship worth 4.5 million rubles would have received significant damage. Later, the icebreaker will repeatedly save a wide variety of ships.
Almost 100 people on board Yermak "worked as stokers. Technical details. Yermak cut ice just like modern icebreakers - climbed onto the ice field and broke it with its weight. The trim system helped the ship overcome especially thick ice. There were two tanks on the ship - bow and When the icebreaker got stuck in the bow tank from the stern at high speed, water was pumped - this helped him cut the ice. The Yermak propellers were driven by three steam engines with a total power of 9000 hp The boilers that produced steam ran on coal Huge coal bunkers occupied half the length of the icebreaker: cruising autonomy was 4400 nautical miles, and cruising speed on the water was 12 knots.It is curious that the icebreaker was initially equipped with a front propeller - this solution was used on ordinary foreign icebreakers.But in the Arctic conditions, the propeller was quickly damaged and it was replaced by a cone, with which it was possible to crush underwater ice.
Many famous people of that time were associated with the Ermak icebreaker. Among them is Alexander Popov. His first radiogram was sent to the commander of the Yermak during the rescue of the battleship off the island of Gogland. Popov was sincerely glad: his invention helped to save human lives.
But luck did not always accompany the Makarov icebreaker. The admiral hoped to reach the North Pole on the Yermak. The same wished him Dmitry Mendeleev. When the icebreaker first came to St. Petersburg, the chemist wrote to the sailor: “The ice that blocks St. Petersburg, you won, congratulations. I look forward to the same success in the polar ice. It was not possible to repeat the success. No matter how hard Makarov tried, his ship was not powerful enough to overcome the ice of the high latitudes of the Arctic. The limit for the icebreaker was 81 degrees 28 minutes north latitude. Admiral's ill-wishers gloated.
But what is surprising: Yermak, low-powered compared to modern icebreakers, went through three wars - the Japanese, First and Second World Wars - and served in the Far North for more than 60 years! Only in 1963 it was decommissioned. On the basis of the world's first Arctic icebreaker, they were going to make a monument-museum, but the enthusiasts failed to defend the car. The famous icebreaker was allowed to be melted down.
Fortunately, artifacts from Yermak have been preserved in the country's museums. A monument to the icebreaker has been erected in Murmansk, built around its original three-ton anchor. In St. Petersburg, the ship's steering wheel is stored in the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, and many items from the Ermak's wardroom are kept in the Moscow Museum of the Navy. Things continue to keep the spirit of one of the most grandiose machines of its time.
We thank the Museum of the Navy (Moscow) and the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic (St. Petersburg) for their help in preparing the material
VIII. tragic ending
The government and the Ministry of the Navy received numerous letters from sailors and polar explorers with proposals to turn the Yermak into a memorial ship. ID Papanin took an active part in this.
Discussions about the fate of the veteran icebreaker unfolded on the pages of the Pravda and Komsomolskaya Pravda newspapers. The chairman of the polar section of the Geographical Society of the USSR E. I. Tolstikov, the director of the exhibition “The Marine Fleet of the USSR”, the famous sea captain A. P. Bochek, and the secretary of the Murmansk regional committee of the Komsomol A. Zhigalov spoke in defense of the vessel. The leadership of the Leningrad Higher Marine Engineering School named after S. O. Makarov also agreed to take the veteran icebreaker under their care. However, the voices opposed to the preservation of Yermak were also very significant. So, the Deputy Minister of the Navy of the USSR A. S. Kolesnichenko said: “It is very expensive to protect the Yermak as a relic. In addition, the icebreaker does not have any special merits.” He was echoed by the head of the Murmansk State Arctic Shipping Company Yu. G. Levin: “Of course, Yermak is a pity, but how much will it cost to repair it ... No, it will be too expensive to leave Yermak.”
Nevertheless, it seemed that the optimistic words “Ermak - live!”, Which completed the material published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, would come true. On December 12, 1963, the order of the Minister of the Navy No. 245 was issued, which stated: “To the head of the Murmansk Arctic Shipping Company, Comrade Yu.
However, "Ermak" was still not destined to become a monument ship. And, according to the memoirs of veterans, it was A. S. Kolesnichenko who played a tragic role in his fate. This is all the more strange since Kolesnichenko is considered a prominent shipbuilding engineer and one of the creators of the post-war generation of the Russian icebreaker fleet.
Anatoly Semenovich Kolesnichenko (1905–1984) graduated from the Sevastopol Technical School of Water Transport in 1925. In 1925–1927. he worked in hydrographic expeditions on the Black Sea. In 1933–1934 - as the fourth mechanic of the Chelyuskin steamer, he participated in the famous epic of this ship. According to O. Yu. Schmidt, he was part of a group of communist students (A. S. Kolesnichenko studied at that moment at the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute, which he graduated in 1936), sent to Chelyuskin to strengthen the party cell. In 1935, Kolesnichenko participated in an expedition on the icebreaking steamer Sadko, and from the next year he worked in the Main Northern Sea Route. In 1949–1957 Anatoly Semenovich headed the Bureau for Supervision of the Design and Construction of Icebreakers in Leningrad. Since 1956, he became Deputy Minister of the Navy. It would seem that from the lips of a person closely associated with the Arctic, icebreakers in general and Yermak in particular, the words about the lack of special merit of Yermak sound simply wild, but, nevertheless, they not only sounded, but even were published in the mainstream press...
The service of the Chief Mechanic of the Murmansk Shipping Company insisted on repairing the ship before handing it over to the school. The cost of repairs was estimated at about 1 million rubles. However, the deputy minister, having learned about the amount of the required amount, refused to allocate it and ordered the icebreaker to be scrapped. To all the proposals of I. D. Papanin, he replied: "We have enough of the Aurora." In the spring of 1964, after a meeting between Kolesnichenko and Khrushchev, the decision to install the Yermak as a memorial ship was canceled, after which it was decided to write it off. On May 23, the Minister of the Navy of the USSR V. G. Bakaev signed order No. 107 - the death sentence for the ship.
It said: “Due to the great wear and tear and inexpediency of the cost of refurbishment, I order:
1. Write off from the balance sheet of the Murmansk Shipping Company the liner icebreaker Ermak, with a capacity of 9420 and [indicator] l[oshadin] s[il] built in 1899, with a book value of 3,685,699 rubles. 47 kop.
2. To the head of the Technical Department, comrade Dubchak:
a) organize the production of two models of the icebreaker "Ermak" for the exhibition "Naval Fleet of the USSR" in Moscow and the Museum of the Marine Fleet in Odessa.
b) Establish a commission for the selection of items of historical value on the Yermak icebreaker for transfer to interested museums and public organizations;
c) Apply to the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for cinematography with a request to create a short film about the icebreaker "Ermak" on the basis of the available chronicle and documentary materials.
3. To the head of the Murmansk Shipping Company, comrade Levin, in accordance with the “Instruction on the procedure for determining the technical condition and further use of ships with heavy wear or major damage”, approved by order of the Minister of the Navy dated June 1, 1956 No. 202 and the act of the technical commission to ensure the dismantling of the Ermak icebreaker, the delivery of scrap metal, the storage and use of materials and equipment obtained from dismantling.
4. Assign the name "Ermak" to the next linear icebreaker received from the construction.
According to the memoirs of G. O. Kononovich we have already quoted, “... in the chilly summer of 1964, a farewell to the“ grandfather of the icebreaker fleet ”was held on the Murmansk roadstead. He was killed and a dead skeleton of former glory was placed in the ship's cemetery. And on December 17, at two in the afternoon, a crimson flame soared over it and roared like a fiery whirlwind - the Yermak was burned before being cut into scrap metal. For the cutting of the Yermak, Vtorchermet requested approximately twice the amount that was required for the repair of the icebreaker if a museum was created on it. The head of the Murmansk Higher Marine Engineering School of the USSR Ministry of Fisheries, Yevgeny Ivanovich Portnov, offered all possible assistance: to install the Yermak in a dry dock on the territory of the Murmansk Marine Station. The cost of this would be approximately 10 thousand rubles. But the Murmansk regional committee of the CPSU did not support his initiative, although Portnov was a member of the regional committee.
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Icebreaker "Ermak"
Vice-Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov, an outstanding figure and innovator of the Russian Navy, first thought about the implementation of the idea of creating a powerful icebreaker suitable for conducting research in the Arctic and prolonging navigation in the ports of Russia. Makarov expressed the idea of creating such a vessel in the winter of 1892 precisely in connection with the problem of reaching the North Pole. The admiral took up the actual implementation of the project five years later. In October-November 1897, a commission was created to develop a specification for the future icebreaker, in which D.I. Mendeleev, as well as a number of engineers and shipbuilders. Soon a competition took place between three firms - Burmeister and Wein (Denmark), Armstrong, Whitworth and Co. (Britain) and Pillau (Germany). The most favorable conditions were offered by Armstrong's firm, so the choice fell on it.
The main technical data of "Ermak": length - 97.5 m, width - 21.64 m, draft - 8.55 m; displacement - 8730 tons; steam engine power - 6950 hp; speed - 14 knots; icebreaking 0.8-1.6 m; crew (in different periods of service) 102-150 people.
The construction of the icebreaker proceeded at an accelerated pace, and on February 4, 1899, the ship was presented for surrender, and a month later, Yermak entered the harbor of Kronstadt. The icebreaker calmly overcame ice with a thickness of 0.6-0.9 m. In 1900, Yermak took part in the rescue of the coastal defense battleship General-Admiral Apraksin, which on November 13, 1899, as a result of a navigational error, jumped out onto the shallows south of -east coast of Gogland Island. In April 1900, "Ermak" managed to pull the battleship off the stone ridge and bring it safely to the port.
Soon the first scientific expeditions organized by S.O. Makarov. The first voyage lasted from May 29 to June 14, 1900. A leak was discovered in the hull near the southern tip of Spitsbergen, and the icebreaker had to return back to Newcastle for repairs. But the damage to the hull was minor and, in general, the expedition turned out to be quite effective. The second voyage began on July 14 and ended on August 16 of the same year. His route also passed in the Svalbard region. Another campaign took place from May 16 to September 1, 1901. The ice in the northern part of Novaya Zemlya turned out to be impassable for Yermak. Nevertheless, considerable success was achieved - to complete two voyages to Franz Josef Land, to map Novaya Zemlya from Dry Nose to the Admiralty Peninsula, to collect a large amount of materials on glaciology, deep-sea and magnetic research.
But this voyage put an end to the polar expeditions of Yermak for 33 years. In October, the icebreaker was transferred to the Committee for Port Affairs and was engaged in servicing the commercial ports of the Baltic. During the first ten years of work in the Baltic, Yermak spent over 618 ships in the ice.
In February 1918, in connection with the approach of German troops to Reval, the evacuation of the ships of the Baltic Fleet began. This operation was successful thanks to Yermak. During the "Ice Campaign" from Helsingfors to Kronstadt, which lasted from March 12 to April 22, 236 ships and vessels were withdrawn, including six battleships and five cruisers.
Until 1934, the icebreaker provided navigation in the ice of the Baltic, and in that year, for the first time after 1901, it launched an assault on the Arctic ice. For the next five years, the work of the icebreaker was built according to the following scheme: during the year he worked in the Arctic, and at the end of navigation he returned to Leningrad and was engaged in escorting ships in the Baltic.
"Ermak"
In 1938, the icebreaker took part in the evacuation of polar explorers from the North Pole-1 station. The winterers rescued by the Taimyr icebreaker (I.D. Papanin, P.P. Shirshov, E.T. Krenkel and E.K. Fedorov) crossed to the Ermak and the equipment of the station was overloaded. In December 1939, having made the transition through the war zone, the icebreaker moved from Murmansk to Liepaja, and then to Leningrad. In the Baltic he had to work and fight until 1947.
When the Soviet-Finnish war began on November 30, 1939, Yermak continued to free both merchant ships and warships from the ice. Anti-aircraft weapons were installed on the icebreaker, and not in vain: enemy air attacks had to be repelled repeatedly.
The Yermak met the beginning of the Great Patriotic War while being under repair in the Leningrad port. On June 27, 1941, the icebreaker was handed over to the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, along with the crew and all property. Artillery weapons were again installed on the icebreaker. In November, he was sent to provide ice escort for ships between Leningrad and Kronstadt. During November and December, "Ermak" made 16 trips, each of which was associated with considerable danger (for example, on December 8, in the Peterhof area, the icebreaker hit a mine, received significant damage, but remained in service). In total, during the first military navigation, Yermak escorted 89 ships. But starting in January 1942, due to the lack of coal, he stood motionless for almost two and a half years. The operation of the icebreaker became possible only in 1944, after the blockade of Leningrad was lifted. November 6, 1944 "Ermak" was demobilized from the fleet. The crew returned to the icebreaker (most of which went to fight on the land front) and in December its 46th ice navigation began.
In August 1946, thanks to the Yermak, it was possible to save the floating dock, which was thrown out while being towed onto stones eight miles from the Swedish port of Gothenburg. The dock was pulled off the rocks and towed to the port of destination Bergen. In 1947, Yermak, for the first time after the war, went to the Arctic, where, together with the icebreaker Severny Pole, he was engaged in escorting caravans in the Kara Sea. In 1948-1950. The icebreaker was being repaired in the port of Antwerp.
July 28, 1950 "Ermak" returned to Murmansk. Now it was assigned to the Murmansk Commercial Port and was administered by the Arkhangelsk (since 1953 - Murmansk) Arctic Sea Shipping Company. In 1953-1954. the icebreaker was equipped with the latest radio equipment, a radar, a radio direction finder. At the same time, one of the first samples of the Mi-1 helicopter was tested on it. In 1954-1955. "Ermak" was the flagship of the icebreaker fleet in the western sector of the Arctic, where it remained the only linear icebreaker at that time. During his work in the Arctic, he happened to perform a variety of tasks: escorting and freeing ships in distress, jammed with ice, helping geological parties cut off from the mainland.
By the beginning of the 1960s. it became clear that due to the significant age of the ship, as well as the commissioning of the nuclear icebreaker "Lenin" and new diesel-electric icebreakers, the further operation of the "Ermak" becomes unprofitable. At the end of 1962, he made his last voyage to the Arctic, from which he returned to Murmansk, accompanied by the Lenin nuclear-powered icebreaker. "Yermak" was prepared for a solemn meeting: he passed along the line of warships, which greeted him with crossed beams of searchlights.
The government and the Ministry of the Navy received numerous letters from sailors and polar explorers with proposals to turn the Yermak into a memorial ship. I.D. took an active part in this. Papanin. The discussion also unfolded on the pages of various newspapers, including Pravda. Finally, on December 12, 1963, an order was signed by the Minister of the Navy on the gratuitous transfer of the Ermak to the Murmansk Higher Naval School. But this decision was opposed by officials from the Ministry of Marine Fleet, headed by Deputy Minister A.S. Kolesnichenko (it was he who spoke in one of the newspaper discussions with the words that "... there are no special merits behind the ship"). Kolesnichenko reached the highest authorities, up to N.S. Khrushchev and, unfortunately, achieved his goal: on May 23, 1964, the order of the Minister of the Navy No. 107 followed to decommission the Yermak and cancel the previous order. For the cutting of the vessel, Vtorchermet requested approximately twice the amount that was required for the repair and installation of the icebreaker in the eternal parking lot ...
So the veteran of the Arctic ended his life absurdly. The memory of him remained in the exposition of museums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Murmansk and Odessa, where some relics from the Yermak were transferred. And in honor of "Yermak" ten different geographical points in the Arctic and Antarctic are named. In 1976, the Finnish-built diesel-electric icebreaker Ermak was commissioned.
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From the author's bookXXI. The Gulf of Finland. "Ermak". March 17, 1899 You must have been surprised to receive my telegram from Revel. However, I myself still wonder how I got here. It began with the fact that on the 8th we listened to a lecture in the Naval Assembly in the most peaceful way. Colonel Myshlaevsky read about
Sometimes on weekends we publish answers to various quizzes for you in the Q&A format. Our questions range from simple to complex. Quizzes are very interesting and quite popular, but we just help you test your knowledge. And we have another question in the quiz - In which country was the Ermak icebreaker built?
A: Russia
B: Germany
C: Netherlands
D: Great Britain
Correct answer: D: Great Britain
The construction of the icebreaker was carried out in England at the Newcastle shipyard. To be sure of the reliability of his “brainchild” in the conditions of the Arctic, Makarov made a zinc model of the ship on a scale of 1:48 with exactly the same waterproof compartments in the bottom. In experimental conditions, filling one or two compartments with water, Makarov was convinced that the calculations were correct. When, during the first test voyage to the Arctic, the Yermak icebreaker received a serious hole, the admiral was sure that the ship would not lose buoyancy and driving performance.
The firstborn of ships of its class, the Yermak cut ice in the same way as modern icebreakers: it climbed onto the ice field and broke it with its weight. The trim system helped the ship to overcome especially thick ice (designed to free the icebreaker from jamming and give the necessary landing). Two tanks: bow and stern, connected by a pipe. When the icebreaker got stuck, water was pumped into the bow tank from the stern at high speed - this helped to cut the ice.
"Ermak", low-power compared to modern icebreakers, went through three wars - Japanese, First and Second World Wars. After the war he served in the Far North. March 26, 1949 in connection with the 50th anniversary, the icebreaker "Ermak" was awarded the Order of Lenin, for military merits during the Great Patriotic War and the development of the Northern Sea Route. Only in 1963 it was decommissioned. On the basis of the world's first Arctic icebreaker, they were going to make a monument-museum, but they failed to defend the famous icebreaker. They let him go to the smelter.
“... On my initiative, the Ermak icebreaker was ordered, the immediate goal of building this huge icebreaker was my idea, on the one hand, to make navigation in St. Petersburg and other important ports of the Baltic Sea throughout the winter, but mainly to try, is it possible to go to the Far East through the northern seas, along the northern coast of Siberia,” wrote an outstanding Russian statesman, then Minister of Finance, S.Yu. Witte. At the very end of the 19th century, the best minds of Russia were preoccupied with solving a problem that had worried both travelers and statesmen for several centuries - how to shorten the path from Europe to Asia and the Far East, how to master such an impregnable and at the same time so attractive with its simplicity and shortness the way along the northern seas of the empire.
The very idea of building and testing the world's first Arctic icebreaker, later named "Ermak", belonged to the admiral of the Russian fleet, scientist, hero of the Russian-Japanese war S.O. Makarov. The famous Higher Marine Engineering School in St. Petersburg still bears his glorious name.
The famous scientist D.I. Mendeleev also supported the bold project. True, he proposed to go directly through the North Pole - first rising to the highest point of the Earth, and then descending to the Russian shores in the Far East. D.I. Mendeleev considered this way easier and safer and even agreed to participate in the expedition himself. Admiral Makarov was of a different opinion. He suggested moving in the traditional way - along the coastline. Be that as it may, Makarov's idea passed.
The icebreaker was built by the British company Armstrong, which offered the best project. And in October 1898 "Ermak" was launched, and five months later he went on his first voyage to the Revel area (modern Tallinn). In the ports of Reval and St. Petersburg, he rescued ships trapped in ice. Then there was the rescue of the General-Admiral Apraksin coastal defense battleship, which ran aground and found itself trapped in ice.
During the rescue of "General-Admiral Apraksin" an important event occurred - for the first time a wireless telegraph was tested and used - the invention of A.S. Popov. "Ermak" received the first telegram and came to the aid of the fishermen, who were swept out to sea on a detached ice floe.
Ermak's first Arctic flight, unfortunately, failed near Spitsbergen Island. But on the other hand, during this voyage, the icebreaker reached a record latitude for free navigation - 81o30 '.
The next trip to the Arctic was made by Yermak under the command of S.O. Makarov. In this voyage, studies were made to study ice and the ocean, however, the icebreaker received a hole. But despite the first failure, Yermak did not abandon attempts to penetrate deep into the Arctic - in 1901, being jammed with ice on the approaches to Novaya Zemlya, the ship, by the decision of S.O. Makarov, moved towards Franz Josef Land, reached the archipelago, examined its southern and southwestern shores and the team hoisted the Russian flag there.
And then "usual work" began - "Ermak" began to conduct caravans of ships along the Gulf of Finland. Ermak's everyday life was not only wiring, but also rescue work - in the first ten years of operation, the icebreaker saved 618 ships. During the First World War, he led the ships of the Baltic Fleet through the ice, thereby saving them from capture by the enemy.
Another ten years have passed in the work on providing navigation. And then again - to the Arctic, to the track for two years as an officially organized Northern Sea Route.
The year 1938 has come. The whole country followed the operation to rescue the participants of the drift of the scientific station "North Pole". And "Ermak" again came to the rescue.
A tireless worker, the first Russian icebreaker in the same year, sailing to a caravan of drifting ships, reached 8305 N, thereby setting a record for free navigation in ice, and freed several dozen ships from ice captivity, including icebreakers steamboats "Malygin" and "Sadko".
During the war with Finland and the Great Patriotic War, Yermak was engaged in escorting ships, and then, until the autumn of 1944, the anti-aircraft guns of the icebreaker, along with other ships, defended the city.
Since 1947, work began again on the Northern Sea Route. And in 1949, the icebreaker "Ermak" was awarded the Order of Lenin in connection with the 50th anniversary of its construction.
Navigation in 1963 was his last. Two years later, the Yermak icebreaker was cut into scrap metal. But the glorious name has not sunk into oblivion. In 1974, a new icebreaker "Ermak" was built and launched in Finland, with a capacity of 41.4 thousand horsepower, which still plows the ice space off the northern coast of Russia.
