Suomen Joutsen - General Characteristics

General Characteristics

Suomen Joutsen is a steel-hulled full rigged ship with three square rigged steel masts. Both main mast and bow mast have six yards, the longest ones being 27 metres (88 ft 7 in) long and weighing four tons, while the mizzenmast has five yards. The height of her main mast, which consists of three parts, is 52 metres (170 ft 7 in) from the waterline. The sail area of Suomen Joutsen is 2,200 square metres (24,000 sq ft) and three sets of sails, each weighing three tons, were carried on training voyages. Her standing and running rigging consist of over 30 kilometres (19 mi) of manilla ropes and steel cables. The typical sailing speed of Suomen Joutsen was around 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph), but once in the North Sea she reached a record speed of 16.4 knots (30.4 km/h; 18.9 mph) with only topsails and the foresail.

The overall length of Suomen Joutsen is 96 metres (315 ft 0 in). Her hull is 80 metres (262 ft 6 in) long at the waterline, has a beam of 12.3 metres (40 ft 4 in) at midship and depth of 7.29 metres (23 ft 11 in) to main deck. When she was carrying cargo, her tonnage was 2,393 register tons gross, 1,734 register tons net and 3,100 tons deadweight. The ship drew 6.35 metres (20 ft 10 in) of water when loaded, but as a school ship she sailed with a ballast draft of only 5.15 metres (16 ft 11 in). With 1,200 tons of stones as sailing ballast, her displacement was 2,900 tons and metacentric height 0.699 metres (2 ft 3.5 in). Later some of the stone ballast was replaced with concrete and iron. Internally her hull was divided into five watertight compartments.

When Suomen Joutsen was converted to a school ship for the Finnish Navy, her general arrangements were changed considerably in order to accommodate up to 180 men on long international voyages. In addition to living quarters, bathrooms and toilets, this included building kitchens and six refrigerated rooms for provisions, workshops for a carpenter, shoemaker and tailor, laundry room, hospital with ten beds and a small isolation ward, classroom, library, canteen, and more storage space for sails, ropes, paint, sand and coal. Nine freshwater tanks with a total capacity of 206 tons were also built, but in order to conserve water a traditional Finnish sauna was not provided. Instead, hot steam could be diverted into the washing rooms under the forecastle.

Originally built without auxiliary propulsion, Suomen Joutsen was refitted with two Skandia hot bulb engines, each producing 200 hp, coupled to three-bladed fixed pitch propellers. The twin-shaft propulsion arrangement was very uncommon at that time. In practice the engines were found out to be underpowered, but they could still be used to assist manoeuvering in ports and in heavy weather. Two generators (5 kW and 8 kW) were added to produce electricity for about three hundred lights. While Suomen Joutsen had a steam boiler for central heating, she did not have steam winches — anchors and yards were lifted using a manual capstan.