 The famous icebreaker, Kapitan Khlebnikov |
When the first Arctic explorers starting venturing north, some five hundred years ago, in search of the supposed riches beyond the ice, they encountering numerous problems. Not the least of them being that their flimsy wooden ships kept sinking when they ran into the inevitable ice pack.
The pursuit of the fabled North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific brought numerous sailors undone as they pushed deeper into the frozen wilderness above what is now Canada. In fact, the most celebrated failure, that of Sir John Franklin in 1845, saw two ships and the entire complement of 128 men disappear.
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