History | |
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Finland | |
Name: |
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Namesake: | Finnish for "strength" |
Owner: |
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Port of registry: | Helsinki, Finland |
Builder: |
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Yard number: | 239 |
Laid down: | 1916 |
Launched: | 25 February 1918 |
Christened: | 15 December 1923 |
Commissioned: | March 1924 |
Decommissioned: | 24 February 1945 |
In service: | 1924–1945 |
Fate: | Handed over to the Soviet Union |
Soviet Union | |
Name: | Malygin (Малыгин) (1945–1971) |
Namesake: | Russian Arctic explorer Stepan Malygin |
In service: | 1945–1970 |
Fate: | Broken up in 1971 |
General characteristics | |
Type: | Icebreaker |
Tonnage: | 1,510 GRT |
Displacement: | 2,070 tons |
Length: | |
Beam: |
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Draught: |
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Boilers: | Four coal-fired boilers with mechanical ventilation |
Engines: | Two triple-expansion steam engines, 2,500 ihp (1,900 kW) (stern) and 1,000 ihp (750 kW) (bow) |
Propulsion: | Bow and stern propellers |
Speed: | 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph) in open water |
Crew: | 44 |
Armament: | Armed during the Second World War |
Voima was a Finnish and later Soviet steam-powered icebreaker. Laid down at Werft Becker & Co. in Tallinn in 1916 and fitted with engines in Danzig in 1918, the unfinished icebreaker was towed to Helsinki in 1920 and completed by Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstads Ab in 1923–1924. After two decades of successful service Voima was handed over to the Soviet Union as war reparation in 1945 and renamed Malygin (Малыгин). She remained in service until 1970 and was broken up in 1971.
Voima was the first state-owned icebreaker acquired by the independent Finland. She can also be considered as the first state-owned icebreaker designed by Finnish naval architects and delivered by a Finnish shipyard.
When Finland signed the Treaty of Tartu on 14 October 1920, it agreed to return the Russian icebreakers that the Finnish White Guard had seized during the Civil War in 1918. As a result, the Wäinämöinen, the largest and most powerful state-owned icebreaker of Finland at that time, was handed over to Estonia and the smaller Ilmarinen to the Soviet Union in 1922. While Finland got the Avance back in return, there was a definite need for a powerful icebreaker — both the size of the ships calling the Finnish winter ports and the amount of exported goods, especially forest products, had increased considerably since the First World War. When the forest industry owners voiced their concerns, the Finnish shipowner John Nurminen stepped in and offered the state an unfinished icebreaker he had purchased from Germany two years earlier.