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“Finnish Sailors, 1750-1870”
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- By Yrjö Kaukiainen, University of Helsinki.
- Paul C. van Royen
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- Those Emblems of Hell?
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 10 September 2019
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- 18 October 2017, pp 211-232
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Summary
Introduction
In this contribution I will focus mainly on the period 1750-1870. This is due to two factors. First, Finnish vessels engaged in little besides coastal and Baltic navigation before the mid-eighteenth century. Second, there is little data on the manning of other than naval vessels before the 1780s. These features are also clearly reflected in the existing literature. While there are a fair number of articles - including ethnological studies - on sailors and maritime labour in the nineteenth century, little has been written about earlier periods. Some scattered data can be found in histories of coastal towns, but the bulk is far from impressive.
Finnish Shipping and the Demand for Maritime Labour before 1700
In the Middle Ages, Finnish shipping was confined to the Baltic. Although the Hanseatic League dominated trade, there were some active Finnish shipowners. When the League declined, Finnish coastal towns began to increase their maritime trade during the reign of Gustav Vasa. Still, by 1560 there were only about thirty vessels large enough to sail across the Baltic to North German and Danish ports, while the number of small coasters, used on voyages to Sweden and Estonia, may have amounted to seventy or eighty. Even in the former category, the vessels were small, carrying only about fifty tons on average, and the latter group obviously included many craft only marginally larger than fishing boats. It is thus quite clear that manning such a fleet did not require large numbers of sailors - a fair guess might be close to five hundred.
In addition, peasants and other coastal dwellers carried on shipping across the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. According to customs records, the number of Finnish “peasant vessels” visiting Tallinn and other Estonian ports, Stockholm and ports on Lake Mälaren, may have amounted to 350-400. Their trade, however, consisted mainly of the simple barter of dried or salted fish for grain for local consumption. This was a trade using small boats that did not involve large numbers of real sailors. Still, as a “nursery” for sailors for foreign-going vessels, “peasant shipping” had an interesting, if little known, role.
“Growth, Diversification and Globalization: Main Trends in International Shipping since 1850”
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- By Yrjo Kaukiainen, University of Helsinki
- Edited by Lewis R. Fischer, Even Lange
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- Book:
- International Merchant Shipping in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
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- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2008, pp 1-56
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Introduction: Shipping and International Trade
For almost five decades the history of long-term trends in global ocean transport has attracted the interest mainly of economists and economic historians rather than maritime historians. Maritime historians, on the other hand, have concentrated on topics which have been more limited in chronological or geographical scope or with special aspects of shipping history. This paradox likely reflects the different traditions of the various specialties. Maritime historians typically have been empirically oriented scholars who know all too well the gaps in our understanding of many of the most important trends of international shipping, even for a period as recent as the last century and a half. Rather than attempting far-reaching speculations, they prefer to collect reliable data from smaller parts of the universe which can be adequately mapped with available resources and to produce analyses solidly founded on such material. Economists, on the other hand - at least compared with historians - depend more on theoretical approaches and logical deductions than empirical analyses and are primarily interested in general rules of economic behaviour and development. Their interest in shipping history is explained by a concern with the growth of international trade, especially after 1850, since it is generally believed that this - in addition to factors like tariff policies and exchange systems - was triggered by a decline in transport costs. As a result, ocean shipping became one of the major exogenous variables to explain the rapid economic growth.
Since the demand for shipping services is closely connected to the volume of goods exchanged, the growth of international trade is undoubtedly a meaningful context within which to study the fundamental trends and crucial developments of maritime transport. Yet the doubts of the empiricists are far from irrelevant: the availability of quantitative (or quantifiable) data, in particular on the aggregate level, is tightly bound to anno domini : while there is a fairly satisfactory supply of statistics on global shipping, merchant tonnage and freight development for the 1980s and 1990s, the dearth of material places serious constraints on the study of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Considering this asymmetrical distribution of data, it is surprising that much more research has been conducted on the late nineteenth than on the late twentieth century.
“Shrinking the World: Improvements in the Speed of Information Transmission, c. 1820-1870”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 231-260
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It is commonly believed that not much happened in the transmission of information before the introduction of the electric telegraph. This article, however, argues that this was not the case, that quite a substantial improvement in the speed of information transmission had already taken place a few decades before this technical breakthrough. Between 1820 and 1860, global dispatch times diminished remarkably, on average to about at third of what they had been around 1820. This implies that on most routes the improvement during these three decades amounted to more saved days than was achieved after the introduction of the electric telegraph. The development can be described as an evolution which started in Europe in the 1830s and was diffused gradually all over the world. The first transcontinental communications to benefit were those across the North Atlantic and to the Far East, with South America, Africa and Australia clearly trailing behind. The “take-off was initially connected with the introduction of steamships on coastal or short sea routes and subsequently on increasingly long ocean voyages. However, even traditional overland mail-coach connections improved as also did sailing-ship (“packet”) connections over the North Atlantic until the late 1830s. It was only in the late 1840s and 1850s that railways started to shrink distances within Continental Europe.
Introduction
I can only say that if we do not pay strict attention in writing & answering our Letters per every post, we had better leave writing at all and trust all to Chance.
This is how a late eighteenth-century foreign-trading merchant emphasised the importance of regular and active communications. In this respect he also voiced the views of many other colleagues: similar expressions arising from a dire thirst for news abound in the correspondence of foreign-trading merchant houses of the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. Because fresh information was scarce, the state of markets had to be monitored with the help of indicators such as local prices for export cargoes, customhouse export and import records and even the weather, which may have affected the speed of seaborne transport. It was not for nothing that many shipowners furnished their masters with long and detailed instructions trying to cover all unexpected situations - and always requiring them to write to the owners at the first opportunity after entering a port.
“Finnish Sailors, 1750-1870”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 1-20
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Summary
Introduction
In this contribution I will focus mainly on the period 1750-1870. This is due to two factors. First, Finnish vessels engaged in little besides coastal and Baltic navigation before the mid-eighteenth century. Second, there is little data on the manning of other than naval vessels before the 1780s. These features are also clearly reflected in the existing literature. While there are a fair number of articles - including ethnological studies - on sailors and maritime labour in the nineteenth century, little has been written about earlier periods. Some scattered data can be found in histories of coastal towns, but the bulk is far from impressive.
Finnish Shipping and the Demand for Maritime Labour before 1700
In the Middle Ages, Finnish shipping was confined to the Baltic. Although the Hanseatic League dominated trade, there were some active Finnish shipowners. When the League declined, Finnish coastal towns began to increase their maritime trade during the reign of Gustav Vasa. Still, by 1560 there were only about thirty vessels large enough to sail across the Baltic to North German and Danish ports, while the number of small coasters, used on voyages to Sweden and Estonia, may have amounted to seventy or eighty. Even in the former category, the vessels were small, carrying only about fifty tons on average, and the latter group obviously included many craft only marginally larger than fishing boats. It is thus quite clear that manning such a fleet did not require large numbers of sailors - a fair guess might be close to five hundred.
In addition, peasants and other coastal dwellers carried on shipping across the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. According to customs records, the number of Finnish “peasant vessels” visiting Tallinn and other Estonian ports, Stockholm and ports on Lake Mälaren, may have amounted to 350-400. Their trade, however, consisted mainly of the simple barter of dried or salted fish for grain for local consumption. This was a trade using small boats that did not involve large numbers of real sailors. Still, as a “nursery” for sailors for foreigngoing vessels, “peasant shipping” had an interesting, if little known, role.
During the first decades of the seventeenth century, Finland developed into an important producer of tar: by 1640, it had become the leading producer in the Baltic.
“Finnish and International Maritime Labour in the Age of Sail: Was There a Market?”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 21-30
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The existence of a competitive, efficient and virtually global freight market in the late nineteenth century is indisputable. At the same time, because fleets like the British and American employed many foreign seamen, it seems possible that there even was a parallel market for maritime labour. Recently, however, Charles P. Kindleberger expressed strong doubts about the existence of efficient maritime labour markets. His arguments were primarily provoked by some sweeping statements in a collection edited by David W. Galenson; perhaps for this reason his book is more a commentary than a monograph. Yet his main points merit consideration. He argues that labour markets were not efficient because the violence and force exerted to enlist and supervise sailors meant that they were not voluntary participants. Moreover, he stresses that because wages differed among various fleets there was little market integration, a feature repeatedly argued by Lewis R. Fischer.
Still, I cannot escape the feeling that the historical development of labour markets, whether national or international, is difficult to comprehend in purely neo-classical terms. Microeconomic theory views labour markets as similar to commodity markets: labour is supposedly an uniform “commodity” which can be bought and sold, with its price depending on supply and demand. But this often does not conform with the real world.5 In the modern world, for example, trade unions and other organizations affect the market decisively. Indeed, even during the nineteenth century - when unions were rare and political economy was often based on the principle of laissez-faire - labour was subjected to important spatial and social constraints. The most fundamental difference from commodity markets is the fact that labour markets involve human beings who could not be transported like logs and had social ties and preferences of their own. While the nineteenthcentury European grain market could be affected by knowledge of the last rice harvest in Burma - since rice could be transported from the other side of the globe in a matter of months - the existence of a large unemployed pool of labour in eastern Europe had no direct bearing on North American wages because the Polish or Russian rural proletariat could not be employed on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Coal and Canvas: Aspects of the Competition between Steam and Sail, c. 1870-1914”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 113-128
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The transition from sail to steam has been recounted dozens of times and it seems unlikely that any great secrets remain to be revealed. Authors of standard textbooks present the process as a simple application of technology and devote most of their attention to discussions of the pioneering achievements in engineering that made it possible. On the other hand, several studies have confirmed that the diffusion of steam was gradual and that the pace was determined largely by mundane economic variables. Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of this transformation was its great spatial diversity. Not only did the timing of technical adaptation differ widely on different routes and commodity trades but also the economic gains of steam were disparate in various countries, depending above all on national wage levels and capital costs. It seems that in this respect the diffusion was more complicated than has been acknowledged generally and that a few relevant details can still be added to the larger picture.
Technical development was, of course, the prime reason for change, at least in the sense that steam gradually forced sailing vessels into more peripheral trades. Economics, however, effectively limited its advance because steamers, needing to pay for their fuel while windjammers exploited a free good (the wind), incurred higher unit costs. These had to be compensated by higher revenues. At first this was only possible on relatively short routes characterized by high and sustained demand for transport. Moreover, since steamers also incurred indirect costs by having to utilize valuable cargo space to carry this fuel, unit costs tended to be higher on long than short voyages. According to C. Knick Harley, steam costs per million cargo ton-miles varied in the early 1870s from £100 for 1000- mile journeys, to £111 for 5000-mile passages and £114 for 10,000-mile trips.
The development of compound and triple-expansion engines as well as innovations in boiler technology gradually improved fuel economy and lowered costs. Accordingly, steamers were increasingly able to compete successfully on long-distance voyages. As far as bulk cargo was concerned, this process took about a quarter-century. In 1865, the longest route on which steam was competitive was the Mediterranean fruit trade, a distance of roughly 3000 miles from Europe.
“Tons and Tonnages: Ship Measurement and Shipping Statistics, c. 1870-1980”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 179-206
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Introduction
Students of early modern maritime history are well aware of the perplexing variety of national units and rules for ship measurement. The adoption of the British “Moorsom” system by most maritime nations between 1864 and 1885 was therefore a major advance, not least for the cross-national comparability of shipping statistics. In fact, scholars have become so convinced of its superiority that its validity as a universal gauge of carrying capacity is seldom discussed. But people engaged in practical ship measurement soon learned it was less than perfect. The best proof was that a new international agreement on ship measurement was concluded in 1969 under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). This accord introduced some major changes in the principles of ship measurement and led to significant increases in the tonnages of certain types of vessels. While the agreement took effect in 1982, re-measurement of older vessels became obligatory only in 1994.
In this article I will examine some of the main problems with the Moorsom system after 1867, when the modern principle of net tonnage was introduced. The most important questions are whether any substantial discrepancies developed between measured tonnage and actual carrying capacity and, if so, whether this was so common that the validity of shipping statistics - which were usually based on register tonnages - were endangered. Since the practical problems affected only steamers and other machine-propelled ships, I will focus on them.
The most important source problem for this kind of study is that since most statistics and official lists long recorded only register tonnages, the availability of alternative gauges of size, such as deadweight tonnage or the actual capacity of the holds, is poor. The Finnish official list of ships (Suomen kauppalaivasto - Finlands handelsflotta), for example, only started to record deadweight tonnages in 1935 and cargo capacity (in cubic feet, grain and/or bales) in the early 1950s. Fortunately, Finland's merchant fleet still included some very old vessels, which makes it possible to collect relevant data for fairly typical steamers over a lengthy time span. I have thus relied solely on this source, supplemented by a few other published Finnish ship lists, for my empirical data.
“Five Years before the Mast: Observations on the Conditions of Maritime Labour in Finland and Elsewhere”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 31-44
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The grim living conditions of ordinary sailors, and the despotic discipline to which they were subjected, were integral parts of the Western maritime past. These unpleasant realities came to wide public notice for the first time in 1840 when Richard Henry Dana published his famous Two Years before the Mast. This book, which was followed by other more or less authentic descriptions, inaugurated a literary tradition that later included writers such as Herman Melville and Jack London. Although such books only seldom embodied true “voices from the forecastle,” they still comprise an extremely valuable stock of knowledge on which many scholars have relied. Recently, however, authentic documentary sources increasingly have been exploited to gain an even more accurate comprehension of living conditions before the mast.
Although the cruelty of maritime discipline sometimes closely resembled some of the features of slavery, it was not not always this way. Medieval maritime codes, such as the well-known Rôles d'Oleron, did not vest all power in the master; on the contrary, collégial rather than hierarchical relations were most typical. Common sailors had the right to express their opinions on important decisions and often their consent was required before the master could act. In coasting, deep-sea fishing and other traditional maritime trades egalitarianism and patriarchal rather than despotic discipline prevailed. It thus seems that masters with absolute power prepared to exercise “naval” discipline were a product of the early modern period, and that they only became the norm after a fairly protracted process of diffusion.
Marcus Rediker contended that the new system was quite fully developed at the end of the seventeenth century. Eric W. Sager, on the other hand, seems to believe that in Canada the transition occurred during the early nineteenth century (although he connected it with industrialization). It is certainly reasonable to presume that it may have started at the centre of the early modern maritime world and spread only gradually to more peripheral countries. Thus far, however, there seems little real evidence, apart from some general statements in older textbooks, on the origins of the new system, nor is it clear how uniform it was - in fact, it is difficult even to define its elements.
“The Modernization of Finnish Coastal Shipping and Railway Competition c. 1830-1913”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 79-90
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In the Finnish context, a fairly natural domain for coastal shipping consisted of the waters of the Gulf of Finland and Bothnia as well as of the northern Baltic, roughly north of fifty-nine degrees, or the latitude of Stockholm. In navigational sense, of course, one could claim that an even wider definition might be relevant. Long trips could be made across the Baltic without losing visual contact with the coastline. In practice, however, such small Finnish tonnage as can be termed »coastal* only very seldom sailed beyond Stockholm or the northwestern tip of the Estonian coast. Thus, in this article, coastal shipping is understood to be almost synonymous with the term cabotage (that is, coastal traffic between ports of one country, domestic traffic), which the addition of the most proximate coasts of Sweden, Russia and Estonia.
Finland was a country with fairly small regional variances in economic structure, at least as far as coastal districts were concerned. Although commerce was the sole privilege of towns until the 1850s, there were no really large urban centres which attracted primary products or labour from large rural areas. Just as the classic law of comparative advantage predicts, the main part of the commerce of coastal towns (whether in terms of bulk or value) consisted of trade with foreign places, involving more or less extended direct shipping. Accordingly, the demand for domestic coastwise maritime transport between Finnish urban sites was fairly small until the middle of the nineteenth century. There was some transport of iron manufacturers from south Finnish ironworks, of limestone from the few localities where it was to be found, and of firewood and fish plus certain other food products from archipelagoes to larger towns. Only when we look at shipping crossing over to Sweden, Estonia and northwest Russia do we find maritime transport on a larger scale. Above all, there was a massive trade in firewood to Stockholm and St. Petersburg and return loads of iron ore from the Stockholm archipelago (Utö) to Finnish south-coast ironworks, mainly carried on by coastal peasant vessels. Traditionally, there was also the all-important shipping of tar from Ostrobothnia to Stockholm, which mainly took place on urban-owned tonnage. When Finland was ceded to Russia in 1809, tar shipments to Stockholm diminished rapidly and, more gradually, even ore imports declined after the 1840s.
“The Maritime Labour Market: Skill and Experience as Factors of Demand and Supply”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 45-52
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One standard character in the gallery of maritime literature is the “Old Tar,” “Ancient Mariner,” “Old Salt,” or whatever he is called. As the names denote, he was an elderly sailor with long experience sailing the seven seas. He was the epitome of a long accumulation of maritime skills, a symbol of the special expertise required by deep-sea sailors which made his profession much more demanding than typical landward occupations.
This is not just a romantic perception but one that also has been shared by many serious historians. Thus, for example, Basil Greenhill wrote in a recent article that seamanship “was perhaps the most complex and demanding pattern of skills ever acquired by ordinary men.” And he also emphasizes the importance of training by reminding us of Rudyard Kipling's description in Captains courageous of how Long Jack, at the first possible moment, taught young Harvey Cheyne “things at the sea that every man must know, blind, drunk, or asleep.”
The idea that sailors were very special people is by no means surprising. Intuitively, all of us admit that life aboard old sailing vessels must have been hard and demanding and that everyone who did well in such a profession developed a special “pattern of skills.” This was, in fact, what even the sailors themselves wanted to demonstrate. Both in outward looks and behaviour they reflected their specialty, and the contempt they expressed towards landlubbers, “greenhorns” and farm hands (“with hay-seed in their hair”) implicitly also conveyed the idea of a profession that required the very best of men.
Yet maritime literature also abounds with very different characters. The popular image of ordinary seaman, “Jack Tar,” exhibits no pretensions either for advanced age or exceptional skills and experience - rather Jack was the epitome of a merry fellow who had a girl in each port and drank his earnings in a matter of few weeks. And an even starker picture of the professional (as well as moral) levels of sailors can be found in such realistic descriptions as Herman Melville's Redburn or Jack London's Mutiny on board of the Elsinore.
“Baltic Timber-Trade under Sail: An Example of the Persistence of Old Techniques”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 101-112
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For centuries small and medium-sized Finnish sailing vessels transported cargoes of wood and various wood products from the southwestern part of Finland to Mecklenburg, to Schleswig-Holstein and to various Danish ports. The existence of such a trade is not exceptional: Denmark and the German coast west of Rostock lacked sufficient forest resources and had to import increasing amounts of building materials. On the other hand, potential export areas abounded not only in Finland but all over the northern and northeastern Baltic. That trading traditions - at least as far as Finland was concerned - were concentrated in the southwestern areas, the towns of Uusikaupunki (Nystad), Rauma and Pori (Björneborg) and the rural areas of the so-called “Vacka-Finland” (vakka = wooden vessel or basket), were a medieval tradition. It is possible that the early contacts had something to do with the emigration of merchants from the south coast of the Baltic to this area: After settling down, these newcomers, who often turned into hard-core burghers in these small, local towns, retained commercial contacts with their former home areas. Even the mercantile economic system that came afterwards contributed to preserve this tradition: The towns in question were not granted full trading rights before the second quarter of the nineteenth century (in other words, they were not real “staple” towns), nevertheless, they were allowed to trade within the Baltic. Thus, for centuries the interests of the local merchants and shipowners were not diverted from the Baltic trade by any more lucrative prospects beyond the Sound.
However, what is more amazing is the fact that this traditional shipping managed to survive during the revolutionary changes in the shipping world, which took place in the late nineteenth century. Still in the 1920s and 1930s, a score of Finnish sailing vessels earned their living by transporting sawn wood to ports in Denmark and northern Germany, and a couple of wooden three-masted schooners with fore-and-aft rigs were built for this trade even in the late 1940s. These last (auxiliary) sailing vessels did not sail for long on the Baltic and they were strange features indeed in an era with increasingly rapid and regular transport systems - not only by fast motorized ships but also by cars and by plane.
“Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Maritime Bibliography”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 261-266
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“Seamen Ashore: Port Visits of Late Nineteenth-Century Finnish Sailors”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 141-150
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In Jack in Port, Judith Fingard painted a vivid description of what she called “the demise of sailortown.” Life in port cities, she claimed, underwent a profound change during the nineteenth century. The seamen of the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s still enjoyed “the unhurried pace of the pre-industrial age” which “meant that sailors’ visits to port were sufficiently lengthy to enable them to make a significant contribution to both the economy and the character of sailortown.” Yet the following generation, sailing in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s (when “the opportunities for seafaring grew by leaps and bounds”) experienced an increase in the tempo of shipping which, among other things, shortened stays in ports. But the greatest changes came at the end of the century: “The third generation sailor, active in the last quarter of the century, belonged to a dying occupation… [when] the short stopovers characteristic of the new pace of commerce allowed the sailor little time to go ashore…As a result the late 1890s saw the demise of sailortown.”
While this description is doubtless true for the principal seaports of Atlantic Canada, it is important to remember that international ports have continued to change rapidly even after “the demise of sailortown.” Indeed, present-day ports have little in common with even the most developed harbours of a century ago. Moreover, the scale and scope of the change have been different in various parts of the world as well as disparate types of ports. It is clear, however, that Fingard has underscored a fundamental change which has been equally important during this century: the shortening of time in port. While midnineteenth century sailing vessels spent weeks or even months in port, typical turnaround times for modern ships are now counted in hours. Accordingly, the presence of sailors has diminished even in traditional “steamer ports.”
While the general picture is clear enough, it is not easy to fmd relevant data on the actual speed and magnitude of the change. While there are some good local data on turnaround times, such as those published by the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project, systematic statistics covering longer spans of time are the exception. Moreover, quantitative data on time in ports are far from sufficient to understand how the profound transformation of shipping has affected ports and port cities.
“From Days and Knots to Pounds and Dollars: Some Problems in the Study of the Economics of Late Nineteenth Century Merchant Shipping”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 163-178
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In the history of shipping, the late nineteenth century stands out as an especially interesting and dramatic period. This was not only the era in which steam increasingly challenged and eventually surpassed sail but also the age which witnessed sharp changes in both the economics and business of sea transport. It is hardly surprising that such an epoch has spawned a large number of volumes dealing with ships and seafarers. The result of this approach is that we know quite a bit about the fates of the fastest clippers, the days of the last steel barques, and a host of colourful individuals such as the famed Bully Waterman. It is, I hope, non-contentious to state that the bulk of the extant literature skims only the picturesque and romantic surface of the industry. At the same time, the function and structure of shipping, especially from a quantitative perspective, have been treated much less satisfactorily. We know far too little, for example, about the volume or value of goods transported or the profitability of the industry. Yet as every student knows, shipping was first and foremost an economic activity carried on in the hope of earning profits.
This focus on the anecdotal aspects of the maritime past means, of course, that our understanding of many important topics is both distorted and incomplete. Indeed, it is only in the last decade or so that a “new shipping history” has emerged, especially in a few countries bordering the North Atlantic. While these historians have not ignored traditional questions, they are breaking new ground by compiling quantitative data sets from a variety of under-utilized sources. Some of the main - but not the only - proponents of this new approach to understanding shipping have been associated with the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project in Newfoundland.
It is quite easy to understand why the economics and profitability of shipping have not been popular subjects for maritime historians. Aside from the fact that they lack the romantic appeal of speed records and fail to capture the imagination in the way that descriptions of clipper ships do, these topics are also much more difficult to examine. Even though it is possible to study the economics of shipping without having mastered the technicalities of shipbuilding or sailing, there are other difficulties to be overcome.
“Dutch Shipping and the Swedish Navigation Act (1724). A Case Study”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 129-140
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During the first half of the seventeenth century, between fifty and seventy percent of ships registered in the Sound Toll accounts were Dutch. Not surprisingly, such a dominance of “outsiders,” in the shipping between the Baltic and Western Europe provoked different attempts by various Baltic powers to limit the Dutch economic influence. In particular, this concerned Sweden which was rising to a major military power and gaining control over the best part of Baltic coastal lands. From the 1610s onwards, a customs tariffs system favouring domestic vessels was created and later the Swedish government concentrated the trade in the most important export and import commodities (iron, copper, tar, salt, tobacco) to monopoly companies which were controlled by major Stockholm merchant houses. It seems that the Swedish economic policy was moderately successful: at least the number of Dutch ships carrying Swedish exports diminished and the merchant tonnage of the Swedish capital increased. However, this coin may have had another side: it seems probable that, in the 1690s, a substantial share of Stockholm's merchant fleet was in fact owned by Dutchmen.
However, it was only after the Great Nordic War that Sweden brought its trading policy to a logical conclusion by decreeing a full-fledged mercantilist Navigation Act (1724). Precisely as its British predecessor had done, it only allowed foreign ships to import products from their respective countries, or from their colonies. Even this act was primarily aimed against the Dutch who traditionally imported both salt and colonial goods to many Swedish ports, in particular to Finland. After the war, their position was indeed stronger than before. This depended not only on the fact that the Finnish ports had lost most of their ships, but also on the weakening influence of the Swedish capital over the eastern part of the realm with the discontinuation of the salt and tar companies. This is also clearly seen in the Sound Toll accounts: between 1722 and 1727, eighty-two percent of all ships sailing westward and loaded in Finland (a total of 275 vessels) were Dutch and fourteen percent English.
The war had actually increased Dutch interests in the eastern parts of Finland. Already in the 1680s, modern water-wheel sawmills were built at the mouth of the River Narva (on the border between Ingria and Estonia).
“International Freight Markets in the 1830s and 1840s: The Experience of a Major Finnish Shipowner”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 207-230
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Summary
There is a common belief that truly international, or global, freight markets only became possible after the introduction of steam shipping and telegraph communication. It is obvious, however, that some very important developments in maritime trade took place during the era of sail, well before these crucial technological innovations occurred.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, Douglass C. North published a series of articles on the long-run development of freight rates and shipping productivity. In these, he claimed that the costs of seaborne transport declined almost continuously from the mid-seventeenth century until the First World War, thus effectively diminishing the proportion of freight in the prices of overseas products (“freight ratio”). According to North, the fall in the real cost of shipping was steepest in the first half of the nineteenth century, that is, long before the transition from sail to steam. So far, no one else has attempted any comparable long-term analysis.
North explained this secular trend in terms of a long-run improvement in shipping productivity. He did not ascribe this solely to technological change, but also to market factors such as “the expansion in the volume of international trade” and institutional changes like “the ending of navigation laws and other artificial impediments to multilateral shipping.” This is not surprising for a scholar who is best known as an neo-classical institutionalist and has claimed that “improvements in human organization” were probably as important for economic growth as technological development.
However, while North studied the development of hull forms, ship sizes and manning ratios in some detail he did not devote as much attention to the evolution of freight markets. It is true that he identified “the reduction of time idle in port or in ballast”5 as an important contributor to the growth of shipping productivity, but he proceeded no further. Yet this seems to be one of the most interesting aspects of this complex problem: it is quite tempting to suppose that periods of unemployment, whether in port or sailing with ballast, reflect the failure of the market to transmit potential freighters’ needs to actual carriers. If this is true the reduction of “idle time” depended – more or less - on the development of the networks and institutions of the market.
“Wreck-plundering by East Finnish Coastal People - Criminal Tradition or Popular Culture?”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 151-162
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Summary
In the history of exploration, the contacts between European mariners and the people of newly found lands often make a central and most interesting topic. In contrast, in “mainstream” maritime history the relationships between coastal people and foreign seafarers sailing past their shores have received fairly little attention. Admittedly, this may be regarded a peripheral chapter in terms of maritime economic history, but it contains quite surprising and dramatic features, even examples of direct confrontation and violence. While such is not astonishing at all with regard to the Pacific Islands or the South China Sea, it is not what one expects to find on the coasts of Northern Europe, at least not after the Middle Ages. Yet such features may be of great interest to those engaged in the study of small peasant communities, and their mental history, in particular.
It seems that even as late as the end of the eighteenth century the coastal waters of the Northern Baltic in the Gulf of Finland were not as safe as one would think regarding the great volume of shipping sailing between Western Europe and the capital of Russia, St. Petersburg. Not only was the Finnish coast treacherous with all its small skerries, cliffs and underwater shoals but if a seafarer was unlucky enough to run into distress in such a “stone-soup” he could not expect much help from the local people. Rather he had better to rely only on himself and even be prepared to defend his property and life, for the fishermen living on this area had a fairly bad fame of eagerly plundering all the wrecks with which the God happened to bless their shores. In the old Dutch charts one particularly dangerous group of small islands was called Perkeischären (“Devil's Skerries”). One wonders whether this name referred only to geographical features.
An extremely interesting glimpse into the conditions of this coast is furnished by a first-hand account of a ship-wreck dating from the fall of 1808. It was written by a young English lady, Miss Martha Wilmot, who had stayed in Russia for no less than five years and left for home from Cronstadt aboard an American ship in October 26.
“From Low-Cost to High-Cost Shipping: Finnish Maritime Labour Costs after the Second World War”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 69-78
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One of the most dramatic developments in modern shipping industry has been the decline of many traditional merchant fleets and the growth of tonnage under the so-called “flags of convenience.” Although American ships were registered in Panama already in the 1920s, the trend gained real moment after the Second World War, in particular during the 1970s. Around 1950, only some six percent of global merchant tonnage was on the “convenience” registers while in 1980 the proportion was over thirty percent.
It is clear that shipowners have flagged out vessels for economic reasons. In most developed countries not only safety regulations but also requirements concerning crew's living quarters increase the price of newly-built tonnage as well as running and maintenance costs. Moreover, many national seamen's trade unions have managed to create a “closed-shop” system, which means that only members of the union can be hired on national vessels - and only in accordance with current wage and labour agreements. On the other hand, a vessel flagged out to a convenience register may spare a lot of money in not having to comply with the highest safety standards and, above all, is able to hire seamen from low-wage countries.
In the following I will look into the development of Finnish shipping. As an example of a transition from low-cost to high-cost production it is very interesting. This is mainly because the change seems to have been unusually rapid and extensive. In the 1930s Finland was a low-cost country as far as shipping was concerned. The wages of sailors were low by all international standards, roughly a third of those in Great Britain, lower than in Greece, and only the sailors of the Baltic countries were paid even less. Regulations concerning food provisions and living quarters aboard were, in addition, quite liberal, which of course kept the costs down (it was possible to use old ships with crew quarters which were no more accepted in England). The trade union for seamen was relatively weak, and there were no standards of minimum crew, apart from those for deck and machine officers.
Because of low crew costs Finland was very competitive in shipping. This was more than obvious during the “great depression” when the Finnish merchant tonnage grew considerably in spite of the low level of freights and hard competition.
“British Timber Imports and Finnish Shipping 1860-1910”
- Edited by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen
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- Book:
- Sail and Steam
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
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- 01 January 2004, pp 91-100
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Shrinking the world: Improvements in the speed of information transmission, c. 1820–1870
- YRJÖ KAUKIAINEN
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- Journal:
- European Review of Economic History / Volume 5 / Issue 1 / April 2001
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 April 2001, pp. 1-28
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- April 2001
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It is commonly believed that not much happened in the transmission of information before the introduction of the electric telegraph. This article, however, argues that this was not the case, that quite a substantial improvement in the speed of information transmission had already taken place a few decades before this technical breakthrough. Between 1820 and 1860, global dispatch times diminished remarkably, on average to about a third of what they had been around 1820. This implies that on most routes the improvement during these three decades amounted to more saved days than was achieved after the introduction of the electric telegraph. The development can be described as an evolution which started in Europe in the 1830s and was diffused gradually all over the world. The first transcontinental communications to benefit were those across the North Atlantic and to the Far East, with South America, Africa and Australia clearly trailing behind. The ‘take-off’ was initially connected with the introduction of steamships on coastal or short sea routes and subsequently on increasingly long ocean voyages. However, even traditional overland mail-coach connections improved as also did sailing-ship (‘packet’) connections over the North Atlantic until the late 1830s. It was only in the late 1840s and 1850s that railways started to shrink distances within Continental Europe.