This section presents the outer archipelago of Loviisa. The theme on the connecting bridge is safety at sea and the history of maritime rescue work in Loviisa and in Finland.
QR-Plate No. 11 refers to boards hanging on your right side.
11. ORRENGRUND – THE INLET FAIRWAY TO LOVIISA
All cargo traffic to and from the ports of Kotka, Hamina and Loviisa passes Orrengrund. The shallow waters near the island proved to be the fate of many ships before the safety of this busy approach route was improved.
In September 1931, the Finnish Maritime Rescue Society established the 15th maritime rescue station in Finland on Orrengrund island. The personnel consisted of pilots and lighthouse keepers that occupied the island at the time. Initially, only the most essential equipment was acquired for the rescue station: a Norwegian rocket pistol, rescue ropes and a rescue chair. The pilot station’s semi-covered motorboat was used in the rescue operations.
In difficult weather conditions, rescue work with small pilot boats was almost impossible. The extension of the traffic season to January brought its own challenges to navigation: smog could surprise midway through the journey. The channel marks were removed for the winter, but in the early 1950s many ships were still navigated by using only a compass and visible landmarks. In heavy ice, both the vessel being assisted and the icebreaker could drift outside the fairway.
In 1958, a new pilot station was completed on Orrengrund. It became the first in Finland to use radar. This allowed ships to be detected even in fog. Three years later, a radio beacon with synchronized nautofons, or foghorns, were installed on the island to protect ships traveling in fog.
Since the early years, the traffic safety for increasingly larger and deeper-drafting vessels has been improved by deepening and straightening the narrow channels between Orrengrund, Kotka and Loviisa.
Pilots of Orrengrund pilot and rescue station are presented in the photo above the life boat. The photo is taken in the 1930s.
11. ENIGHETEN SHOAL – TAINIO LIGHTHOUSE
The maritime history of Loviisa includes many shipwreckings. In the autumn of 1746, the merchants of the town equipped their first sailing ship, ENIGHETEN, for a voyage to Spain, where it took on a cargo of over 4,000 barrels of salt. The following autumn, when it reached Loviisa, the ship ran aground and lost its valuable cargo. The shoal area that became the fate of ENIGHETEN was named after the ship.
In 1956, Finland’s third caisson-type lighthouse was completed on the western side of the Enigheten shoal to protect ships heading towards Kotka from that shoal. The lighthouse was named TAINIO, after Sakari Tainio, the head of the Pilotage and Lighthouse Services.
The lower part of the caisson lighthouse was cast hollow at the Suomenlinna shipyard, from where it was towed into place, sunk into the seabed and filled with concrete. A lighthouse tower was built on top of the sunken caisson. The automatic fog bell removed from TIISKERI lighthouse was placed in the new lighthouse of TAINIO.
In April 1964, the pilots on Orrengrund island noticed that the light and fog beacon of TAINIO lighthouse had disappeared without a trace. The lighthouse had broken under the weight of ice masses and collapsed into the sea. Investigations revealed a material defect in the steel protection of the caisson.
In 1966, the TAINIO lighthouse was rebuilt – now entirely on the mainland. Today, the light is powered by solar energy. Its light range is 6 nautical miles. The tower has a Racon radar beacon, which responds to the ship’s radar pulses with a standardized radio signal.
11. OUTER ARCHIPELAGO – TIISKERI
The outermost island off Loviisa is called Tiiskeri. The first sea mark on this rocky island was a beacon cairn, which is mentioned in Johan Månsson’s sailing guide from 1644. A higher beacon of stone was erected on the island in the mid-18th century for ships heading to the staple town of Loviisa.
To protect the growing shipping traffic, the Pilotage and Lighthouse Board planned to build a lighthouse on Tiiskeri islet in the 1880s. However, the shallow islet was a challenging site, and building and maintaining a large, guarded lighthouse was expensive. The plans were not realized until 1933.
Thanks to AGA technology, invented by the Swedish engineer and inventor Gustaf Dalén, the lighthouses no longer required constant monitoring. Acetylene gas cylinders were replaced once a year.
With the Tiiskeri lighthouse, Finland’s lighthouse network finally covered almost the entire coastline. The lighthouse served for six years before it was blown up in November 1939, on the eve of the Winter War, so that it would not serve as a landmark for enemy aircraft.
During the interwar period, in the summer of 1940, the lighthouse was rebuilt – this time from reinforced concrete. At the same time, an automatic fog bell, operating with a pressure of 1000 kg of carbon dioxide, was installed at its top. The lighting equipment was renewed in 1967, when the light was changed to a rotating one. Since the summer of 1984, the Tiiskeri lighthouse has operated on wind power.