Nuclear-powered icebreaker
On 17 August 1977, NS "Arktika" ("Arctic") became the first surface ship ever to reach the North Pole. "Arktika" was withdrawn from service in 2008 after clocking up 175,000 hours of reactor operation time and covering more than 1 million nautical miles. Rather than be scrapped, there are calls for her to be converted to a museum ship, like her predecessor "Lenin".
Icebreaker
With its rounded shape and strong metal hull, the Russian of 1864 was an important predecessor of modern icebreakers with propellers. The ship was built on the orders of merchant and shipbuilder Mikhail Britnev. It had the bow altered to achieve an ice-clearing capability (20° raise from keel line). This allowed "Pilot" to push herself on the top of the ice and consequently break it. Britnev fashioned the bow of his ship after the shape of old Pomor boats, which had been navigating icy waters of the White Sea and Barents Sea for centuries. "Pilot" was used between 1864–1890 for navigation in the Gulf of Finland between Kronstadt and Oranienbaum thus extending the summer navigation season by several weeks. Inspired by the success of "Pilot", Mikhail Britnev built a second similar vessel "Boy" ("Breakage" in Russian) in 1875 and a third "Booy" ("Buoy" in Russian) in 1889.
The cold winter of 1870–1871 caused the Elbe River and the port of Hamburg to freeze over, causing a prolonged halt to navigation and huge commercial losses. Carl Ferdinand Steinhaus resused the altered bow "Pilot"s design from Britnev to make his own icebreaker, "Eisbrecher I".
The first true modern sea-going icebreaker was built at the turn of the 20th century. Icebreaker , was built in 1897 at the Armstrong Whitworth naval yard in England under contract from the Imperial Russian Navy. The ship borrowed the main principles from "Pilot" and applied them to the creation of the first polar icebreaker, which was able to run over and crush pack ice. The ship displaced 5,000 tons, and its steam-reciprocating engines delivered . The ship decommissioned and scrapped in 1963, making it one of the longest serving icebreakers in the world.