This book tells the story of the world's first icebreaker capable of crossing heavy ice. The famous ship lived an incredibly long life - 65 years. "Ermak" was built at the end of the 19th century, visited high latitudes many times, participated in the ice campaign of the Baltic Fleet in 1918, in the evacuation of the North Pole-1 station (1938), in guiding ships through ice in the Baltic (1941–45). The first part of the book is the work of the famous Russian polar explorer and military leader Vice Admiral S. O. Makarov (1848–1904) about the voyage to Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya. The rest of the book is written modern specialists - researchers of the history of Russian navigation. The authors of the book pay attention not only to the most striking moments of the ship’s history, but also try to highlight little-known pages of the Ermak’s biography. For example, one of the chapters of the book is dedicated to the undeservedly forgotten last captain of the ship, Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Smirnov.