Document Collection

The Maritime Museum of Finland’s document collection includes, among other things, ship and boat drawings, nautical charts, ship inspection documents and crew lists, ship’s logs and engine room logs, small private and corporate archives, and seafarers’ memoirs. Extensive individual collections include, for example, Valmet’s drawings, Karl Albin Johansson’s private archive, and the FÅA-Silja Line archive collection. The materials in the document collection can be browsed in Finna(ulkoinen linkki).

Maritime Administration materials

For maritime history researchers and enthusiasts, one of the most interesting collections in the Maritime Museum’s document collection is the Maritime Administration’s old ship record cards for vessels decommissioned from the mercantile marine database. It contains ship registry cards for vessels that were part of the Finnish Mercantile Marine Database from approximately 1918 to 1984. The card index includes, among other things, the ships’ names, sizes, places of construction, and ownership information. Not all merchant ships from the period covered by the collection are included (smaller vessels, in particular, are missing), but the collection contains at least basic information on most of them.

The Maritime Administration’s records also include crew lists for Finnish merchant ships from 1938 to 1981, which are organized alphabetically by ship name. The cards contain the following information about the crew members onboard: name, position on the ship, place and date of pre-service medical examination, and place and date of discharge medical examination. Until the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, only the officers were listed on the cards; later cards also include information on the crew. Crew cards were initially issued only for ships engaged in international trade, but were later also issued for ships engaged in domestic trade.

The Maritime Administration’s old vessel inspection documents contain information on vessels under 15 meters and over 15 meters in length, as well as those under 500 BRT that have been struck from the register. The documents are arranged in alphabetical order by vessel name. The documents include certificates of engine inspection, hull inspection, and seaworthiness inspection. The material held by the Maritime Museum was organized by the Maritime Administration in 1991, at which time the documents for vessels whose last inspection was 10 years or less ago were separated from the rest. Corresponding older records can be found in the “decommissioned vessels” folders, which are arranged alphabetically by vessel name. These folders primarily contain seaworthiness inspection certificates from the 1940s through the early 1980s.

The Maritime Museum has also received a collection of ship boiler records from the Maritime Administration, including inspection records for steam ships from the late 1920s to the early 1970s. The A2 cards—that is, the boiler inspection summary cards—play a key role in locating other records for a specific ship. The A2 cards are organized alphabetically by ship and contain information that can be used to locate each ship’s records in other collections. The A2 cards list the boiler’s registration number and delivery number. Using the delivery number, you can locate the operating permit for each boiler, which are filed in folders in order of delivery number. The boiler inspection summary cards also include the boiler drawing number, if available. The drawings can be found in their own folders, arranged by drawing number.

The Maritime Museum has also received ship hull inspection cards, which have been grouped by ship type in alphabetical order. Similarly, there are engine inspection cards for motor vessels from 1950 to 1973.

Please note!
The architectural drawings from the Technical Office of the Maritime Administration (including drawings of lighthouses and pilot stations) have been transferred to the National Archives of Finland via the Finnish Transport Agency.

Questions regarding the Finnish Maritime Museum’s document collection and requests for materials should be submitted through the Finnish Heritage Agency’s Permit and Collections Service(ulkoinen linkki)