Mikhail Britnev (1822-1889) was a Russian ship owner, shipbuilder, and designer of the world's first icebreaker.
To Britnev’s order, screw-driven tugboat Pailot with a reinforced hull and a powerful engine was built.
Britnev suggested his own approach to coping with ice: he used the weight of the ship itself rather than special appliances to break the ice cover. In 1864, after preliminary trials, the Pailot steamship was rebuilt according to his design. The Pailot's bow was modified and reinforces, sharpened and cut at an angle of 20 degrees below the waterline to the keel line, on the pattern of Pomor boats, so that it could "crawl" onto the ice, destroying it by its own weight. The vessel provided a passage in a channel it had broken through. The sloping bow helped not only to break the ice, but also significantly weakened the impact force on encountering ice floes. Owing to this approach, the Pailot with its conventional hull plating was never seriously damaged for all the time of operation. This method, that was for the first time in the world used in practice, is still applicable by icebreakers worldwide all the way up to the nuclear vessels. In later time, this shape of the bow was named "an icebreaker bow" and the steamer was recognized as the prototype of a new type of ships referred to as icebreakers.
The postage stamp provides a portrait of Mikhail Britnev and an image of the Pailot icebreaking ship.
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