This room presents the age of steamboats and motor boats. We concentrate in the operations of the shipping company of the Nordström family, founded and owned by Ragnar Nordström.

In the showcase by the door you will see a model of the coastal passanger ship LOVISA berthing at a quay, which as such does not exsist any more. 

Please, view the room clockwise.

13. THE AGE OF PASSANGER STEAMBOATS AND STEAM SAILING SHIPS 1839-1946

The first steam engines were assembled on board around 1800. The American engineer and inventor Robert Fulton is credited with developing the world’s first commercially successful steamboat carrying passengers.

Finland’s first steamboat, a wheel-driven steam tugboat ILMARINEN, was built in Puhos in the Eastern Finland only in 1833, but the steamboat traffic between Stockholm and Turku had started as early as in 1821.

In June 1839 the first steamboat arrived at Loviisa. It was a propeller ship HELSINGFORS which started regular passenger and cargo transports on the Helsinki-Porvoo-Loviisa route. The passenger steamboat traffic along the southern coastline continued for 107 years, until 1946. At least 28 different passenger steamboats stopped regularly at the docks of Loviisa. The longest in traffic were S/S MURTAJA (1841-1858), S/S OULU (1866-1897), S/S AAVASAKSA (1871-1911), S/S SVEN DUFVA (1897-1912) and S/S LOVISA (1907-1943). The bus traffic that started in the 1920s gradually displaced the passenger steamboat traffic, which was limited to the ice-free part of the year.

In 1907 a new shipping company called “Lovisa Ångfartygs Ab” started to traffic with the newly built S/S LOVISA – commonly known as the Loviisa-ship, which came to symbolize the steamboat traffic for the citizens of Loviisa. Year 1943 was the last year she was in traffic on the Loviisa-Helsinki route. The passenger steamboats S/S ULRICA and S/S SÖDERN which sailed the same route belonged to the shipping company’s fleet on a short period of time.

The era from 1880 to 1910 was the golden age of steamboats. Several smaller steam-powered boats (at least 15) sailed in the bay of Loviisa and in the archipelago nearby. Worth noting are the steamboats of the merchant and ship owner Mr. Arseni Terichoff: S/S LOVISA (I) and LOVISA (II) as well as URANUS which trafficked between the old harbor of Loviisa (Laivasilta) and the new harbor of Valko transporting workers from the town to the harbor.

In the list bellow you can find the passenger steamboats which trafficked to Loviisa during 1839 and 1946 in chronological order.