Icebreakers: Finland’s Flagships
There is an old saying that Finland is an island. This statement is still very true due to the fact that about 80 percent of the Finnish foreign trade takes place by sea. Finnish coastal waters have been used as trade routes already for ages. This is witnessed, amongst other things, by the many historical shipwrecks that have been found in the waters around Finland. In addition to commercial shipping, there are numerous other activities and professions connected with the sea. These are for instance fishing, port operations, pilotage, and different activities connected with the passenger traffic. Worth mentioning is also the fact that about one third of the Finnish borders is out on the sea. Both the Finnish Frontier Guard and the Finnish Navy are important parts of the maritime activities in Finland.
Finnish shipping has always been well known in the world. The last windjammers in commercial shipping were owned by Finnish ship owners and they were flying the Finnish flag as well. The carriage of Finnish export products by the sea has made the Finnish flag known all over the world. Also the sail training ship of the Finnish Navy, the ”Suomen Joutsen” made several ocean voyages and made Finland known at all her ports of call in different parts of the world.
Finland is the only coastal country in the world where all the ports are completely frozen during normal winters. Therefore Finland is a leading country in winter shipping as well as a world leader in icebreaking technology and construction.
Finland’s brand is strongly associated with expertise in cold conditions. The Finnish government and businesses have long highlighted Finland’s “Arctic expertise”, meaning the set of products and skills developed in the country due to its geographical location (in the North and at the seasonally ice-covered Baltic Sea), resulting from the need for all actors to adjust their products, design, materials and services to cold temperature, challenging weather conditions, sparse population, and remoteness.
There are altogether 23 ports on the coast of Finland that are kept open in winter, the largest of them being Sköldvik, Helsinki and Kotka. It is important to bear in mind that about 80% of global freight by weight and over 70% by value travels by sea. Correspondingly, customs statistics show that over 90% of Finnish exports in 2015 and almost 80% of imports were carried by ship. This is a challenging situation for a country that is hemmed in by ice in winter.
Finland’s location north of latitude 60°N means that the sea freezes over virtually every winter, causing difficulties for merchant shipping and for postal deliveries in the archipelago areas. Up until the 19th century goods were transported to Sweden via the Åland Islands, while passenger services to places further south in Europe, such as they were, operated in winter by horse-drawn carriage around the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to Sweden or else via St. Petersburg.
Located as it is in the north-eastern corner of the Baltic basin, Finland is an Arctic country whose ports are iced over in winter, so that its industries and foreign trade would never have been able to develop as they did during the 20th century without the Finns’ skills in winter navigation and Arctic marine technology. Having to live with the Baltic ice cover has left Finland with a wealth of both scientific and technical knowhow with regard to ice.
The Baltic Sea usually freezes over first at the tips of the Gulf of Bothnia (in the area known as the Bothnian Bay) and the Gulf of Finland in November and the ice melts in the spring sunshine of May. As winter advances the ice cover increases in both thickness and extent, so that in an average winter the whole of the northern Baltic Sea is frozen over at some stage, although winters can vary greatly in their intensity so that there have so far been several successive mild winters in this area in the 2010s. In any case, the thickness of the ice in the Bothnian Bay usually reaches about half a meter even in mild winters.
The shallow coastal waters are the first to freeze over, forming a narrow zone of immobile fast ice. Further out into the open water it is drift ice that forms, i.e. occurrences of level ice, rafted ice, ridged ice and ice floes that move about under the influence of winds and sea currents, so that stretches of open water may occur between them in places. Where the ice field exerts pressure it may push the ice up into ridges that can be several metres high and extend downwards into the water for more than 20 metres. The movement of the ice can also give rise to thick layers of brash ice. These latter effects, pressure from the ice field, ice ridges and brash ice, can cause substantial difficulties for shipping.
The situation altered in the 19th century when the first metal-hulled steamships were introduced. The first iron-built paddle steamer was tested in England in 1802, and the first iron-hulled steamship driven by propeller and intended for crossing the Atlantic was built in 1843. Finland’s first steamship, the Ilmarinen, intended for traffic on Lake Saimaa, was launched in 1833, but steamers continued to account for less than 20% of the country’s merchant fleet up to the end of the century. Various technical improvements were achieved that extended the season for navigation, but they were unable to solve the problem of sea ice. Experiments with vessels capable of forcing their way through ice were carried out in the United States in the 1830s, and a Russian ship named Pilot attempted to sail through ice in the 1860s, but the German Eisbrecher I, built in 1871, has been regarded as the first real icebreaker in Europe.
Industry began to flourish in Finland in the second half of the 19th century and the cessation of shipping for part of the winter began to pose serious problems for the country’s export trade. The government attempted to improve the situation by financing the construction of a winter port at Hanko, on the southernmost promontory of the Finnish mainland. From there the transport network was extended inland by means of privately built railways.
A significant step forward was taken in 1878 when the ship-owner Carl Korsman opened a service to Stockholm with his propeller-powered ship Express. This was built for winter navigation, but even so it would get trapped in the ice from time to time and a channel would have to be cleared for it with dynamite, ice saws and pickaxes. Sometimes it was even thought best for the passengers to complete their journey by sleigh or by walking over the ice. Assistance for winter shipping was provided by the Bogskär lighthouse, completed in 1881. In the end, the Express ploughed its way through the icy seas for 16 winters and also attracted attention internationally. By the late 1880s there were ships equipped for winter conditions operating from Hanko to Sweden, Denmark and Great Britain.
Finland gained her first true icebreaker in 1890. The 48-meter-long ship, appropriately named Murtaja (Breaker) had been built in Sweden on German principles and had a single propeller powered by a 1600 hp steam engine. The fact that it was available to keep the port of Hanko open to shipping throughout the winter was a distinct advantage, as this significantly increased the volumes of timber and butter that Finland could export to Great Britain. Murtaja was not powerful enough to cope with thick ice, however, and its shape made it difficult to steer reliably on the open sea. Pressures for improvements in winter navigation led the Senate to appoint a committee in 1895 to prepare the way for the purchase of a new icebreaker, and following its recommendations an order was placed in 1898 for an American-style vessel built in England that was squarer at the bows than Murtaja and had propellers fore and aft. This icebreaker was given the name Sampo, taken from the Kalevala.
Finnish ice research has branched out in two major directions, studying sea ice either from an engineering or a geophysical perspective. It was in 1899 that the shipbuilding engineer Robert Runeberg, son of the Finnish national poet J. L. Runeberg, set out to study the resistance effects of ice on the movement of a ship and to calculate the power required to break the ice and propel the ship forward. Runeberg had studied in England and France, specializing in steam engines and icebreakers, and was destined to become one of the leading designers of icebreakers in the Nordic countries. Among other things, he designed Finland’s first steamship to be reinforced for use in ice, the Express, which was built in a Swedish shipyard in 1877. He also opened a technical consultant’s office in St. Petersburg in 1881 under the name Bureau Vega, after the ship used by his friend A. E. Nordenskiöld and acted as a Finnish commissar at the World Exhibitions in Paris in 1898 and 1900.
The main issue raised by Runeberg in his writings still remains relevant today, namely that the ideal icebreaker should be able to cut its way through thick ice with the minimum of effort, although another technical element to be borne in mind is the pressure exerted by the ice on the ship’s hull, i.e. an icebreaker should be designed in such a way that the ice will not penetrate its hull. Another thing that it is important to bear in mind is the load exerted by moving ice on fixed marine structures such as lighthouses, channel markers, the pillars of bridges or (nowadays) the towers of wind turbines. These things are amazingly poorly understood even today.
In 1899 a group of ship-owners in Turku commissioned an icebreaker of their own from Germany, the Avance, which they later sold to the City of Turku. Soon new ships were ordered for various other ports. The Tarmo, built in 1907, was supposed to be the most sophisticated of all in its time, but it suffered from propeller problems. With four icebreakers in operation it was possible to keep the ports of Hanko and Turku open throughout the winter and to extend the open season for a few others, and also to provide assistance for occasional fishermen or seal hunters who found themselves hemmed in by the ice.
The main purpose of the icebreakers, of course, was to assist merchant shipping, but they were also made use of at times of crisis or war. In 1914, when the First World War began, they were requisitioned from the Finnish piloting service and placed under the command of the Russian Baltic Fleet. The winters during that war were especially severe, and these ships proved essential for both keeping channels open and transporting Russian troops. Finland was unable to regain control over its icebreakers directly after its declaration of independence in 1917, but Sampo was successfully diverted to Sweden the following spring, during the Civil War, and was used to assist the ships bringing Finnish jaegers trained in Germany back to Finland and vessels belonging to the German Baltic Division. Tarmo and Murtaja eventually fell into German hands and were involved in German military operations in Finland, Tarmo being used in the landing at Loviisa and Murtaja in the occupation of Helsinki. The icebreaker Avance was recovered from the Russians only in the early 1920s.
Three technically more advanced icebreakers were added to Finland’s fleet in the period between the wars. Voima (Power) built in 1924 through German-Finnish cooperation had listing tanks to help it manoeuvre through the ice. Jääkarhu (Polar Bear), launched in the Netherlands in 1926, had three propellers to increase its power and an oil-fired steam engine to improve its range of operation. Sisu (Guts) was built in Finland and was more advanced than its predecessors, having a diesel-electric engine and being capable of operating under more Arctic conditions in the channels leading north towards the head of the Gulf of Bothnia.
During the Winter War (1939–40) and Continuation War (1941–44), the icebreakers were also used for opening up cracks in the ice to prevent the Russians from coming ashore, and also to some extent for firing on enemy personnel moving about on the ice or on their ships. Sisu was also used as a mother ship for submarines. In the end all the icebreakers survived the war, although not without mishaps. Sampo ran aground off Pori and Tarmo was fired on in Kotka harbour during the Winter War, and Sampo hit a mine in the Continuation War. Under the provisions of the interim peace treaty Finland was obliged to forfeit 25% of its merchant fleet to the Soviet Union, so that it came out of the war possessing five icebreakers, four of which were steam-powered.
Although Finland’s first ice breakers were commissioned from abroad, as is evident from the above, future developments have led to a situation in which most of its icebreakers have been built in Finland. The first to be built entirely in this country was Sisu, in 1939, whereupon the Hietalahti shipyard in Helsinki emerged as the most important in the country. After that it was not until 1954 that Finland obtained a new icebreaker, Voima, together with three smaller vessels for use in the archipelago areas. This meant that the old steam-powered icebreakers could finally be written off.
Voima was particularly important for its builder, the Wärtsilä Company, as its four sister ships served to open the door to the Soviet market. Among others, the world’s most powerful diesel-electric icebreaker, Yermak, and its two sister ships were built in Finland. The first icebreaker to be equipped with an alternating current generator was also sold to the Soviet Union. Another aspect of Finland’s Arctic knowhow at that time, alongside the building of highly sophisticated icebreakers, was reinforcement of the hulls of oil tankers to enable them to travel through ice. The client in this case was the American oil company Exxon. This also led Wärtsilä to set up its own ice laboratory in 1969 and found an Arctic Research Centre of its own in 1982. This latter investment enabled Wärtsilä to become the first company in the world to build an icebreaker on the strength of experimental models.
Finland updated its fleet of icebreakers in the 1980’s with vessels operating on the a/c diesel-electric principle. During the 1990s the Helsinki shipyard developed the world’s first electronic azimuth thruster system. The Rauma shipyard, on the other hand, was the first to build multipurpose icebreakers with a modern azimuth thrust propeller system that could travel in reverse. The 360° azimuth technique has subsequently been used in oil tankers and cruise ships, for instance.
Major changes in the ownership of shipyards have taken place from the 1990s onwards, and in Finland this means that even the Wärtsilä yards are under foreign ownership. The Helsinki yard was taken over by the Koreans at first and later by a Russian company. Viewed from the perspective of the long history of icebreakers, the latest generation of research icebreakers may be said to have opened up new, more productive prospects for studying previously inaccessible Arctic regions and testing the most recent cold knowhow. Finland is without doubt one of the leading countries in the field of Arctic shipping.
Finland’s Arctic Strategy (2013) identifies shipping and maritime technology as one of Finland’s most important commercialisable Arctic export sectors. Finnish strengths include: national Arctic shipbuilding, offshore and winter navigation operations, shipping safety solutions, as well as the overall low-temperature, winter, ice and weather research and expertise. Arctic maritime design is a highly specialised area of the shipping industry, with technological edge and purpose-built vessels dominating the landscape. Compared to general shipbuilding, where cost-cutting and serial production model dominate, polar shipbuilding constitutes a market niche, where Finnish and European actors have a competitive advantage.
The current Aker Arctic portfolio is very broad, including the design of port icebreakers operating in Siberia or the LNG Polaris icebreaker delivered to Arctia. The company has a clear competitive edge and future contracts depend on the demand of shipyards and companies for polar class vessels. Wärtsilä has a significant portfolio of engine design and construction for polar class vessels, especially for Russian clients. These include icebreakers (e.g. engines as well as integrated power and automation systems) and platform supply vessels. The company provided power generating sets for power plants operating in the Russian Arctic. Wärtsilä also builds engines for port icebreakers used at the Sabetta LNG terminal.
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