Sankt Erik Underway!!

Sankt Erik is underway again!

During the Tall Ships Race Festival in Stockholm, the National Maritime Museums' 1915 icebreaker, Sankt Erik, made several passenger tours under her own steam--probably the most exciting event of my time in Sweden.

What made it so exciting for me was not just that a dashing steamship was being brought back to life, but the fact that Sankt Erik had been my home when I first arrived in Stockholm. Unable to find housing ashore, Sankt Erik had been my refuge during those bitter cold months in early 2006 when the wind howled in the rigging and the harbor ice closed in, grinding ominously against her hull plating.

But it was a fantasticly pleasant home with fine cabins, a nice wardroom for studying and reading, a decent galley...

...and plenty of decks and passageways to explore...

...including the engine room (don't worry, I didn't actually monkey around with the valves or levers--this was a semi-operational ship after all). But the engine room definitely lacked life. What should have been a swealtering hot, steamy space with warm lighting and a shuddering vibration was dark, cold, and quiet. How that has changed!

Everyone at the museum has known for almost two years that the Sankt Erik was being readied for operation during the Tall Ships Race Festival. Bengt and Magnus had been laboring feverishly to get the ship ready. While I lived aboard, they often showed up around 0600 to get started, banging and clanking about.
But the first real clue indicating that Sankt Erik was almost ready was the fuel delivery. The first shipment arrived a few weeks ahead of the tall ships aboard the little fuel tender Oljex--a stout little tanker known for being virtually everywhere in Stockholm Harbor at any given moment, fueling anything afloat.

A few days later this tanker truck rolled in and also passed a hose aboard Sankt Erik. Within days, inspectors came to conduct a boiler test at pressure and later Sankt Erik went out on her first shakedown cruise with the Coast Guard inspectors. But all this was just build-up for the main event; Sankt Erik's first passenger cruise since the 2002 Tall Ships Race Festival.


The day the first tall ships sailed in, I was sitting on a high hill overlooking the harbor when I caught sight a massive plume of greasy, black smoke rising from the Sankt Erik's funnel. Her engineers had just lit the boilers.

It was almost 3 days before Sankt Erik's first scheduled trip, but every hour of that would be needed to get the severl hundred tons of water in the huge Scotch boilers hot enough to build up a good head of steam.


Finally the day arrived and I scurried down to the pier early in the morning to catch Sankt Erik heading off on her first passenger run. When I arrived, she was almost ready to go; steam hissing out of the vent valve and cooling water from the condensers pouring out of her side.


Everything was in place. The mandatory rescue boat was swung out, ready for launching and the decks were already cluttered with excited people ready to go along for the ride...

The last pasengers were still arriving, but after just a few minutes, the gangplank was cast off and all hands took to their stations for leaving harbor.

Dock-hands stood by the lines and swung out a few big fenders to cushion the steel ship against the concrete pier (not that it did much good). Keeping the breastline secured, the skipper had the main engine run dead slow ahead and put rudder hard over. Straining against the line, Sankt Erik's stern bgan to swing out away from the pier.

As her stern went out, the bow came in, dumping hundreds of litres of luke-warm water from the cooling system onto the pier. Oops!

The line handlers stood in a virtual flood as Sankt Erik pivoted and postioned to back out from the pier.

Then, with great fanfare and applause from dozens of early morning onlookers, the final lines were cast off and Sankt Erik smoothly began to steam backwards out of the dock. As she did so, the skipper gave a thrilling triple blast on the steam whistle (note the steam cloud), the signal to passing vessels that a ship is backing out.

And off she went. My old floating home under her own steam again!

Just then, the sun broke through, brilliantly illuminating Sankt Erik. A fine omen.

Then, with the forward engine in reverse to hold the ship in place (remember, icebreakers al so have an engine and propeller in the bow to flush broken ice aft along the hull) and the main engine in forward with the rudder over, Sankt Erik began gently turning in place...

...slowly...

...but surely...

...around she went.

What a sight!

Several minutes after she had actually left the pier, a crowd remained staring at her, totally entranced.

Hans-Lennart Ohlsson, director of the Maritime Museum that manages Sankt Erik, was one of them, visibly proud as she steamed out.

That magnificent ship, alive again and moving, just gliding out into the brilliant sunlight as if it were the most common thing in the world...

There is some wonderous thing about an old ship going past that leaves you breathless. Big sailing ships or steamers like Sankt Erik....they seem almost unreal; they have an uncommonly powerful presence. They are phantoms of another age but what really stuns you is how effortlessly and silently they go by as if unaffected by this world...and as if they would not leave the slightest trace behind. No noise, no smoke...just an enourmous mass sliding by (contrary to popular opinion, an oil-fired steamship with a skilled stoker should make almost no smoke at all. Smoke indicates inefficient burning--like when the boilers are first lit and the firebox is cold).

Sankt Erik then turned toward the main harbor, taking her passengers on a scenic tour past the Tall Ships, now all settled along the harbor front. The big 4-masted bark is Sedov, the massive Russian training ship.

Then Sankt Erik swung by Slussen, the place from which Vasa set sail on her fateful maiden voyage, and then...

...on under the famous Lodbrok floating crane that lifted Vasa's cannons...

... and up along Gamla Stan before turning toward the harbor entrance again.

Then I'll just leave you to enjoy the photo montage of her steaming by...
























...and out toward the open sea.

As Sankt Erik disappeared around the corner, I relaxed at the harbor front watching the Tall Ships and the little minesweeper M20 out poking about. It would be nearly an hour ebfore Sankt Erik would come back; time to grab a hotdog at one of the carts by the park and maybe see what's happening in the shipyard.

Then, right on schedule, Sankt Erik came steaming around the point returning to the pier outside the Vasa Museum.

The only problem was that while she was away, the Russian vessel Shtandart had come by for a visit and taken her dock space. After all, Shtandart and Vasa have virtually the same rigging plan; it was a natural attraction. But no matter how many cannon Shtandart carried, a duel with the 4,000 horsepower icebreaker was not worth the risk. As Sankt Erik hove into sight, Shtandart's crew sprang to life, firing up her diesels and casting off immediately.

The crew scrambled to get the lines clear and get the ship out and turned around, even employing the man-overboard boat as a tug to spin the sqaure-rigger about.

Meanwhile, the big steamer quietly bore down on her dock and the offending Shtandart.

Out into the channel, Shtandart was shifted into 'forward'...

...and the crew prepared to take in the small boat, make sail, and scoot out of there.

It was a playful standoff as historic ships and their crews are a pretty unified group, but there was also a little bit of visible tension.

Sankt Erik was still putting on a pretty good show of looking a bit 'steamed' that her dock had been taken while she was away, venting steam from both her bow and stern windlasses.

Shtandart stood clear to let the steamer pass...

...skirting along the Skeppsholmen and Kastelholmen shores.

...and slipping under the cliff below the Royal Standard...the very place where Vasa was eventually raised in 1961.

Then Shtandart darted past the quietly hissing steamer...

...passing well astern...

...and setting sail for a little fun dodging cruiseships in the busy harbor.

Meanwhile, Sankt Erik approached the pier, drawing a crowd of onlookers.

With her windlasses steaming and ready to take the mooring lines, Sankt Erik was edged toward the pier.

...gently now...

...the forward engine went into reverse...

...turning carfully...easy...watch the pier!

...almost there...

...CRUNCH!!!

There is simply no way to bring a 1200-ton ship alongside a dock gently. The final moments had been painfully drawn-out to minimize the impact to nothing, but given her huge momentum, even a snail's pace approach sent a violent shudder through the dock and took a stripe of paint off the ship.

That done, the mooring lines were handed across in the most civilized way I've ever seen.

But all hands quickly recovered their gritty professionalism, throwing a heaving line from the bow. The dock-hands put their backs into it, hauling the heavy bow hawser down and securing it.

Of course, as the ship was snugged up to her moorings...

...she again began dumping hundreds of litres of water onto the pier. Double oops.

But before long, the lines were trimmed so as to hold the ship squarely beside the pier (and keep the cooling water going into the harbor). The windlasses clanked and hissed away, tightening the lines, and all was pronounced secure.

The gangplank went across and nearly 250 delighted apssengers came off the ship, chattering away and grinning from ear to ear.

The crew (this is just the 1st mate and deckhands) relaxed a little, a job well done.

So that is the photo story of the Sankt Erik's first 2007 passenger cruise, the resurrection of my old floating home.