Pilot (ship, 1864)
 Postage stamp with a figure of the pilot
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The pilot ( Russian Пайлот , German transcribed Pailot ) was a Russian tugboat , the 1864 ice-breaker rebuilt. The ship is considered the world's first iron icebreaker of modern design.
history
After the Kronstadt merchant Mikhail Britnew was dissatisfied with the annual financial losses caused by the freezing of the sea connection between Saint Petersburg and Kronstadt, he had the tugboat pilot he operated converted into an icebreaker. When it was built, the ship was already equipped with a stern screw drive instead of a paddle-wheel drive that was still common at the time, which greatly benefited later operation. The foredeck, with its sharply cut stern shape, was reinforced with additional iron plates that were inclined to allow it to hit the ice. Despite the extremely low engine output of 62.5 kilowatts, the icebreaker was a great success for its owner. As early as 1868, the positive experiences led to a subsequent new building based on the pilot principle , the considerably more powerful Boi with 183 kW output . Despite the successes and the attentive interest in some Baltic Sea countries, the two ships initially had no direct imitators. In the ice winter of 1869/70, however, the freezing of nine steamers on the Elbe led to an attempt to acquire the pilot for Hamburg, but this failed. It was only the subsequent ice winter, which was considerably more serious, that the Icebreaker Comité was built in Hamburg , which was put into service in December 1871.
The pilot was operated until 1890 to extend the winter navigation time.
literature
- Bernd Oesterle: Eisbrecher from all over the world , Transpress Verlag, Berlin, 1988, ISBN 3-344-00284-8
Web links
- Report at Arcticportal (English; PDF; 44 kB)