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History
 Suomen Joutsen (The Swan of Finland), is a three-mast, steel
hull, full rigged ship. She was built in 1902 in St.
Nazaire, France
During her French period the name of the ship was Laënnec.
On her first trip she carried coal cargo from Cardiff to
Iquique, Chile. Then she carried saltpetre cargo from
Iquique to Bremerhaven.
In 1906 she was sold to Compagnie Plisson. Under the French
flag the ship made 15 transatlantic voyages.
In 1922 the ship was sold to H.H. Schmidt & Co., Hamburg,
and was renamed Oldenburg. On her voyage from Hamburg to
Callao in ballast she lost most of her rigging of main mast
near Cape Horn on 15th of May 1925. She had to take refuge
at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. From Port Stanley
she sailed to Montevideo for repairing. Finally she was on
25th of September in 1925 in Hamburg.
In 1928 she was sold to Seefahrt Segelschiffs - Rederei
G.m.b.H., Bremen.
In 1930 on her voyage from Fernandina, Florida to Malmö,
Sweden she had a list of 55 degrees in a stormy weather on
the North Atlantic, because the phosphate cargo shifted in a
Hurricane.
The ship made eight transatlantic voyages as a
cargo-carrying sail training ship under the German flag.
In August, 1930 after inspection in the Bremen dockyard, she
was purchased by the Finnish Government to be used as a
training vessel of the Finnish Navy. She was docked again at
Uusikaupunki, Finland where new lodgings and two Scandia
motors were installed. The vessel was renamed Suomen Joutsen
on the first of November 1931.
She set sail on her first ocean voyage as a training ship on
22th of December 1931.
She made eight ocean voyages:
I (22.12.1931 - 22.5.1932)
Helsinki - Copenhagen- Trangisvaag (Far-Islands) - Hull -
Las Palmas (Canary Islands) - Ponta Delgada (Azores) - Vigo
(Spain) - Helsinki
II (18.10.1932 - 3.5.1933)
Helsinki - Las Palmas - Porto Grande (Cap Verde) - Rio de
Janeiro - Montevideo - Buenos Aires - Port Castries (St.
Lucia) - Charlotte Amalie (Virgin Islands) - Ponta Delgada -
Helsinki
III (1.11.1933 - 15.5.1934)
Helsinki - Marseille - Aleksandria - Napoli - Santa Cruz
(Tenerife) - Port au Prince (Haiti) - Lissabon -Helsinki
IV (31.10.1934 - 3.5.1935)
Helsinki - Cartagena (Spain) - Pireus (Greece) - Saloniki
(Greece) - Beirut - Haifa - Aleksandria - Casablanca - Ponta
Delgada - Gravesend - Kööpenhamina - Helsinki
V (9.10.1935 - 2.7.1936)
Helsinki - Lissabon - La Guaira (Venezuela) - Cartagena
(Colombia) - Balboa (Panama) - Callao (Peru) - Valparaiso
(Chile) - Buenos Aires - Rio de Janeiro - Ponta Delgada -
Helsinki
VI (2.11.1936 - 1.5.1937)
Helsinki - Leixoes - Dakar (Senegal) - Ciudad Trujillo
(Dominican Republic) - Vera Cruz (Mexico) - Havanna - New
York - Oslo - Helsinki
VII (20.10.1937 - 12.5.1938)
Helsinki - Funchal (Madeira) - Montevideo - Cape Town -
Calais (France) - Helsinki
VIII (27.10.1938 - 23.4.1939)
Helsinki - Bordeaux - Casablanca - Pernambuco (Brazil) - San
Juan (Puerto Rico) - Ponta Delgada - Rotterdam - Helsinki
On her third voyage from Port au Prince, Haiti to Lissabon
she made a list of 55 degrees in a Hurricane without
damages.
On her fifth ocean trip she was visit on 6th - 11th of
February 1936 in Valparaiso. From Valparaiso she sailed via
Cape Horn to Buenos Aires.
During the Second World War she was laid up as a mother ship
for submarines. After the War, Suomen Joutsen became the
mother ship of the minesweeping Fleet. She served as the
base for minesweepers operating far from shore in the Gulf
of Finland.
She was re-rigged again in 1946 - 1948 for few short trips.
In 1951 she made her last trip on the Baltic Sea and Gulf of
Finland.
In 1961 - 1988 she was served as a Naval Trade School in
Turku. The permanent mooring of the vessel was to be the
Aurajoki River in Turku.
Nowadays she is owned by Turku City. She celebrated her
100th Anniversary in 2002 in Turku.
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