“Finnish Sailors, 1750-1870”

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.