Voima was a Finnish and later Soviet steam-powered icebreaker. Laid down at Werft Becker & Co. in Tallinn in 1916 and fitted with engines in Danzig in 1918, the unfinished icebreaker was towed to Helsinki in 1920 and completed by Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstads Ab in 1923–1924. After two decades of successful service Voima was handed over to the Soviet Union as war reparation in 1945 and renamed Malygin (Малыгин). She remained in service until 1970 and was broken up in 1971.
Voima was the first state-owned icebreaker acquired by the independent Finland. She can also be considered as the first state-owned icebreaker designed by Finnish naval architects and delivered by a Finnish shipyard.
History
Background and construction
When Finland signed the Treaty of Tartu on 14 October 1920, it agreed to return the Russian icebreakers that the Finnish White Guard had seized during the Civil War in 1918. As a result, the Wäinämöinen, the largest and most powerful state-owned icebreaker of Finland at that time, was handed over to Estonia and the smaller Ilmarinen to the Soviet Union in 1922. While Finland got the Avance back in return, there was a definite need for a powerful icebreaker — both the size of the ships calling the Finnish winter ports and the amount of exported goods, especially forest products, had increased considerably since the First World War. When the forest industry owners voiced their concerns, the Finnish shipowner John Nurminen stepped in and offered the state an unfinished icebreaker he had purchased from Germany two years earlier.
The partially completed icebreaker he was offering was one of the two icebreakers ordered by the Russian Baltic Fleet from Werft Becker & Co. in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1916. Laid down as Shtorm, the icebreaker was intended not only for escort operations on the Baltic Sea, but also naval tasks such as laying mines during the winter months and transporting troops and supplies to Russian warships and coastal forts. The construction proceeded slowly during the war and in 1918, shortly after the ship had been launched, the unfinished icebreaker was captured by Germans and towed to Danzig, where she was fitted with boilers. However, the German Revolution of 1918–1919 stopped the construction of the ship, now known as Hansa, shortly afterwards. Nurminen bought the unfinished icebreaker in 1920 and had her towed to Helsinki.
When Nurminen began offering Hansa to the state of Finland, he faced severe opposition even though he even offered to accept the old and, to some people, outdated icebreaker Murtaja as part of the payment. Her rusted hull was seen as a pile of scrap, not worth the government's scarce funds, and she didn't even have a bow propeller which was seen as a crucial component of a modern icebreaker. However, several maritime professionals saw her potential and the owner of Götaverken, Hugo Hammar, even said that once finished, Hansa would outperform the largest icebreakers of Finland at that time, Sampo and Tarmo. As a result, the Finnish Board of Navigation reserved FIM 17 million for the purchase and completion of Hansa.
The rebuilding of Hansa was awarded to Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstads Ab in Helsinki and the work began in late spring 1923. During the ten months the icebreaker spent in the shipyard she received a new bow with a bow propeller and two German steam engines with an official combined maximum output of , making her the most powerful Finnish icebreaker at that time. On 15 December 1923 she was given the name Voima, meaning "strength" in Finnish, and during the first sea trials on 6 March 1924 she turned out to be an excellent icebreaker that left a broad ice-free channel behind her. Voima had also cost considerably less than a new icebreaker with similar characteristics and performance.
Career
Commissioned in March 1924, Voima was usually sent to the Gulf of Bothnia where she assisted ships to the port of Vaasa until late December. As the ice conditions got worse, she moved south until, from February on, she was tasked to maintain an open channel between Finland and Sweden on the Turku-Stockholm route.
In 1927, after the loss of the Finnish torpedo boat S2, Voima was used as a gunnery training ship by the Finnish Navy. As a result, she already had deck gun mounts when the Winter War began on 30 November 1939 and the icebreakers were armed against Soviet fighters. During the war Voima assisted ships in the Bothnian Sea and stayed outside major conflicts.