Author Description

This collection provides a tribute to the career of maritime historian Yrjö Kaukiainen, composed upon his retirement from the University of Helsinki. It collects seventeen of his maritime essays written in English, reprinted in order to celebrate his career and impact on the field of maritime history. The selected essays encompass the following themes: maritime Finland; maritime labour; sail, steam, coal, and canvas; the timber-trade; maritime communication and networks; ship measurement and shipping statistics; the economics of merchant shipping; managerial skills in Finnish merchant fleets; and international freight markets. The collection primarily concerns Finnish shipping, and the maritime relationships between Finland and the wider international community, including the British timber-trade, the wider Baltic timber-trade, and Dutch shipping in relation to the Swedish Navigation Act. The essays are prefaced by three tributes of Kaukiainen’s career, penned by Lars U. Scholl, Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen, and Lewis R. Fischer, respectively. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Kaukiainen’s work on maritime history, in both Swedish and English, from 1981 to 2003.