Krassin (1916 icebreaker)

Krassin, also spelled Krasin, was an icebreaker built by Armstrong Whitworth in Newcastle upon Tyne for the Imperial Russian Navy as Svyatogor, under the supervision of Yevgeny Zamyatin. She was launched on 3 August 1916 and completed in February 1917, and until the early 1950s she remained the most powerful icebreaker in the world. Bolshevik forces scuttled her at Arkhangelsk during the allied intervention of 1918 and 1919, the Royal Navy raised her, and she returned to the USSR in 1921 under the Krasin trade agreement and was renamed in 1927. Her most famous duty came in 1928, when she rescued General Umberto Nobile and the survivors of the airship Italia from the ice. She escorted Russian convoys in the Second World War, was rebuilt at Wismar between 1953 and 1960, and is now a restored museum ship in Saint Petersburg.