A postcard dedicated to the 175th birthday anniversary of Stepan Makarov, a naval commander, scientist, and traveler, was manufactured in the series "Geographical Projects of Russia".
Stepan Osipovich Makarov (1849-1904) was a Russian naval figure, hero of the Russo-Japanese War, oceanographer, polar explorer, shipbuilder, inventor of torpedo boat tender, developer of the insubmersibility theory and the Russian semaphore alphabet.
In 1865, he graduated from the first-class naval school in the city of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. In 1866-1867, he sailed on the corvette “Askold” to Japan and Africa. From 1867 he served in the Baltic Fleet on the corvette “Dmitry Donskoy”, and in May 1869 he received the first officer rank of midshipman.
Appointed in 1869 to the battleship “Rusalka”, he began researching the matter of a ship’s insubmersibility, proposed for this purpose to divide the ship into waterproof compartments, install main pipelines with powerful pumps and branches, use a special patch to seal holes. In 1873, at the World's Fair in Vienna, he demonstrated his invention: a patch for sealing ship holes.
In 1886, he took command of the corvette “Vityaz”, on which he circumnavigated the world in 1886-1889 and conducted a number of scientific studies. From 1894 to 1896, he made a second trip around the world.
In 1896, he was promoted to vice admiral and became commander of a squadron of the Baltic Fleet. He put forward the idea of creating a powerful icebreaker for Arctic exploration. From 1897 to 1898, Makarov personally supervised the construction of the first powerful icebreaker “Yermak”, created according to his design, at the Newcastle shipyards.
The front side of the new postcard is decorated with a portrait of Stepan Osipovich, an image of his famous vessel “Vityaz”, and the logo of the Russian Geographical Society. Let us remind you that the series of postal products "Geographical Projects of Russia" is issued by "Marka" JCS based on materials from the Scientific Archive and the Scientific Library of the Russian Geographical Society.