Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Tribute on the Occasion of his Forthcoming Retirement as Professor of Maritime History at the University of Helsinki”
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Man of the Sea”
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen and the Development of Maritime Economic History”
- “Finnish Sailors, 1750-1870”
- “Finnish and International Maritime Labour in the Age of Sail: Was There a Market?”
- “Five Years before the Mast: Observations on the Conditions of Maritime Labour in Finland and Elsewhere”
- “The Maritime Labour Market: Skill and Experience as Factors of Demand and Supply”
- “Owners and Masters: Management and Managerial Skills in the Finnish Ocean-Going Merchant Fleet, c. 1840-1880”
- “From Low-Cost to High-Cost Shipping: Finnish Maritime Labour Costs after the Second World War”
- “The Modernization of Finnish Coastal Shipping and Railway Competition c. 1830-1913”
- “British Timber Imports and Finnish Shipping 1860-1910”
- “Baltic Timber-Trade under Sail: An Example of the Persistence of Old Techniques”
- “Coal and Canvas: Aspects of the Competition between Steam and Sail, c. 1870-1914”
- “Dutch Shipping and the Swedish Navigation Act (1724). A Case Study”
- “Seamen Ashore: Port Visits of Late Nineteenth-Century Finnish Sailors”
- “Wreck-plundering by East Finnish Coastal People - Criminal Tradition or Popular Culture?”
- “From Days and Knots to Pounds and Dollars: Some Problems in the Study of the Economics of Late Nineteenth Century Merchant Shipping”
- “Tons and Tonnages: Ship Measurement and Shipping Statistics, c. 1870-1980”
- “International Freight Markets in the 1830s and 1840s: The Experience of a Major Finnish Shipowner”
- “Shrinking the World: Improvements in the Speed of Information Transmission, c. 1820-1870”
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Maritime Bibliography”
“Wreck-plundering by East Finnish Coastal People - Criminal Tradition or Popular Culture?”
- Frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Tribute on the Occasion of his Forthcoming Retirement as Professor of Maritime History at the University of Helsinki”
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Man of the Sea”
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen and the Development of Maritime Economic History”
- “Finnish Sailors, 1750-1870”
- “Finnish and International Maritime Labour in the Age of Sail: Was There a Market?”
- “Five Years before the Mast: Observations on the Conditions of Maritime Labour in Finland and Elsewhere”
- “The Maritime Labour Market: Skill and Experience as Factors of Demand and Supply”
- “Owners and Masters: Management and Managerial Skills in the Finnish Ocean-Going Merchant Fleet, c. 1840-1880”
- “From Low-Cost to High-Cost Shipping: Finnish Maritime Labour Costs after the Second World War”
- “The Modernization of Finnish Coastal Shipping and Railway Competition c. 1830-1913”
- “British Timber Imports and Finnish Shipping 1860-1910”
- “Baltic Timber-Trade under Sail: An Example of the Persistence of Old Techniques”
- “Coal and Canvas: Aspects of the Competition between Steam and Sail, c. 1870-1914”
- “Dutch Shipping and the Swedish Navigation Act (1724). A Case Study”
- “Seamen Ashore: Port Visits of Late Nineteenth-Century Finnish Sailors”
- “Wreck-plundering by East Finnish Coastal People - Criminal Tradition or Popular Culture?”
- “From Days and Knots to Pounds and Dollars: Some Problems in the Study of the Economics of Late Nineteenth Century Merchant Shipping”
- “Tons and Tonnages: Ship Measurement and Shipping Statistics, c. 1870-1980”
- “International Freight Markets in the 1830s and 1840s: The Experience of a Major Finnish Shipowner”
- “Shrinking the World: Improvements in the Speed of Information Transmission, c. 1820-1870”
- “Yrjö Kaukiainen: A Maritime Bibliography”
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.
- Type
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- Information
- Sail and SteamSelected Maritime Writings of Yrjö Kaukiainen, pp. 151 - 162Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2004