It's Alive! Ride on the Sankt Erik

It's Alive!

Hissing, whooshing, and rumbling the great beast charges forth.....

...with a ferocious fire in its belly.

Hallelujah, a dream come true!

I finally got my chance to take ride on my old floating home, Sankt Erik.... and thanks to Blogger's new video uploading feature, you get some of the action shots too!

During the visit of the Tall Ships Race to Stockholm, the icebreaker Sankt Erik made several excursions. Being my former home, I followed each of these sailings closely. Then, after four runs, it was my turn.

I got myself aboard for a special evening cruise arranged for the National Maritime Museums' staff and big name donors (being a destitute student, it goes without saying that I was attached to the former group). The excursion was clearly a big to-do, but despite all the luxuries of wine and hoeur d'oevres...

...despite the wonderful narrated tour given by the Vasa Museum's director, Klas Helmerson...

...and despite our cruise route past all the Tall Ships lined up along the waterfront, I managed to miss virtually all of it. In fact, I was hardly on deck at all.

Instead, I disappeared down into the bowels of the ship, uncontrollably drawn into the hot, steamy realm of gnashing metal and scalding gases in the engine room. I just could not refrain from going below to marvel at Northern Europe's largest operational steam piston engine at work.




There is something inexplicably compelling about such mammoth machines, hissing away effortlessly with those massive grease-smeared steel components swooshing and swinging about, somehow transforming hundreds of tons of steel ship into a mobile creature jauntily slicing through the water.

Along with a handful of other spellbound engine admirers, I spent much of the trip close to the chief engineer, watching him monitor and control the huge engine. One could see in his motions that he was as much a part of the machine as any other component; it flowed in his veins.


Then the telegraph would ring as its little arrow swung across the dial face to 'slow astern' or 'half ahead'. The engineer would reply, throwing the telegraph lever back and forth to ring the bell and then leaving it in the position signalled from the bridge. Then he would crank a valve or two, pull a lever, and the engine would smoothly change speed and sometimes even reverse direction. He did it so expertly that you almost couldn't see it happen.

After tearing myself away, I trotted up to the forward engine room. Things were almost as exciting up there as the main engine room. The 'little' 1200 h.p. engine turning the bow propeller hissed and chugged away, its piston rods shooting up and down on top of the cylinders like a game of whack-a-mole (the blurry rods inside the little rope-railing here).

The most fantastic thing was the sense of life and energy in the engine rooms. For one, all that cold steel was hot to the touch--even the handrails were hot. Then there was the vibration, subtle and smooth, but still a definite vibration that reverberated through everything. To those who think machines are just inanimate hunks of steel, I recommend taking a trip into a steamship's engine room as that encounter will make a believer out of anyone who experiences how steam engines live and breathe, animating their entire surroundings in a throbbing heat that feels like the pulse of life itself.

Steam Power!

Though the engine room is clearly the beating heart of the beast, I did not encounter its raging soul until I entered the dragon's lair; the boiler room.

When I lived aboard Sankt Erik, the boiler room was the darkest, coldest part of the ship.

How things have changed! Stepping through the water-tight hatch from the main engine room, I entered a blazing, roaring Hell (Heaven for me). The inferno in the firebox roared away with an tenacity that stunned even an old steam boat nut like me. Nearing the firebox under the No. 1 boiler, I could feel the raging fire suck the air out of my ears and throat. It was like encountering the essense of anger and hunger as a single concept. The roaring fire had such a consuming presence, like a black hole except that a blinding orange light beamed out through the tiny viewing ports. Standing in front of the burner was almost deafening to and the heat it gave off was absolutely searing. In that dim cavern where the fires roar away, I knew I was indeed in the dragon's lair...and he was close.

But the only inhabitant of that hellishly hot compartment was a very jovial and friendly stoker. He was hopping back and forth tending the two boilers, making sure that the fuel was burning with maximum efficiency and that the boiler pressure was staying relatively stable as steam was vented off to drive the engines.

He had only two of Sankt Erik's four boilers up and running. The other two were undergoing restoration, but on an ice-free summer day two was more than enough to keep the Sankt Erik chugging along (This is the oil-sprayer unit fitted on the front of one of the boiler's three fireboxes--note the glow of the fire inside).

Baked by the heat, I finally stumbled up on deck for a little air. By that time we had been underway nearly and hour. On deck I found Leif and Magnus. These two men are critical members to the Sankt Erik story, Leif having directed much of the original restoration of the ship in the mid 1990s and Magnus doing much of the work for the most recent overhaul of the interior. Bengt, the fellow who restored the engines and boilers almost single-handedly, was scarcely to be seen all evening. He was always wriggling about between bits of machinery in the engine room--and always with a grin. For these fellows, this was their day.

Trotting up to the foredeck, I found Sankt Erik steaming up the main shipping channel out toward the Baltic, the very route she kept clear of ice for sixty winters.

It was mighty grand to be out there on her deck. I had gotten used to her being a permanent fixture on the dock and then suddenly here we were--the same ship but totally different surroundings. That's how it ought to be. A 'stationary ship' is just a confusing contradiction in terms.

While I was on deck, I decided I had better go up to the wheel house and have a look.

Usually the wheel house was empty, a vacant command post with a very fine skipper's chair that I had grown slightly accustomed to perching myself in.

But not today. The wheel house was jammed with so many people that I really began to worry about the safe handling of the ship. The captain had to shout over people to order a crewman to wriggle through the crowd to the telegraph and send a message to the engine room to slow her down. Meanwhile, the helmsman wasn't far from hooking someone's evening gown on the wheel spokes and the din of chatter totally drowned out the marine radio. It was far too tight up there so I skidaddled out.

Out on the bridge wing things were a little calmer. It was a fine, still evening and just a light breeze drifted over the bridge, carrying with it a waft of oil smoke from the funnel.

But the view was fantastic as we came around and began to steam up-channel again...

...passing various vessels including the car ferries to Finland, the coastal passenger boats, and a giant Russian trawler refitted as a luxury yacht.

Astern, Sankt Erik left only a slight wake as we made our way back into Stockholm Harbor.

After another trip to the engine room, we docked back at the Vasa Museum. Home from a fantastic journey into the past, an unforgettable experience aboard an incredible steamship.

What a fine evening....I think I'll do it again.

Well, I'll leave you with the requisite sunset picture, the lightship Finngrundet moored beside Sankt Erik.