Old Tall Ships

« A mast and sails on a Finnish Tall Ship during a 90 minute tour around Kruunuvuorenselkä on Helsinki Day. »

On Helsinki Day we got tickets for the Old Tall Ships Tour on the Inga-Lill. The Brits and the Dutch seem to titter at the Finnish tall ships since, of course, theirs are larger and they both had navies of some repute, but the Finns do like to remind them that without Finnish pine tar their boats would have sunk in rather short order. The day was as wet as it could be without it being a full monsoon which made it somewhat difficult to take pictures, but it was still a treat to ride out into open water under full sail without the help of an engine.

There is something terribly romantic about these wooden ships in an age of the giant metal cruise ships which insulate you as much as possible from the idea that you are on the water. The captain of the ship did give a reasonably long talk about the history of the tall ships in Finnish which I hope I have remembered correctly. The Inga-Lill was built in 1947, after WWII, as a cargo ship to transport goods around the Baltic and the archipelago. Most of the surviving tall ships were built around this period since there were a lot of idle shipwrights in the post-war slump and they needed work. When more modern cargo ships were developed these boats were left behind but have been restored to their original beauty in recent years thanks to enthusiasts and charter cruises. The crew mentioned that the Traditional Sailing Ships Association welcomes new members, which would be a really interesting thing to do, but I'm not much of a sailor. There is a very thorough tall ships website which has a lot of history and details on boats from many different countries and also the Maritime Museum of Finland which covers the history of the tall ships in Finland.