Abstract
Icebreakers have traditionally been seen as symbols of technological nationalism. While ship science for open-water vessels developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, understanding of how to cope with polar and subarctic ice conditions lagged behind. This led state organizations in charge of icebreaking services to minimize risks in the development of new vessels by encouraging transnational expert cooperation. This article argues that such interactions were critical to the evolution of the modern icebreaker. We examine the development of three icebreakers in different countries in successive decades, and the critical technologies with which they are associated: the Ymer from Sweden and diesel–electric propulsion (1933); the American ‘Wind’ class and power-hull proportion (1942–1946); and the Voima from Finland and twin bow propellers (1956). We reconstruct the flow of information to explain the rationale for transnational cooperation in maritime technology development. The concept of ‘technology carriers’ is deployed in the analysis to enhance understanding of the role of international cooperation in polar and winter seafaring.
Highlights
Icebreakers have traditionally been seen as symbols of technological nationalism
The process of advancing from transnational survey to the construction of the ‘Wind’ class icebreakers was described in detail in a presentation by US Coast Guard (USCG) Rear Admiral Harvey Johnson before the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineering in 1946.51 Even if the US was aiming to develop a polar icebreaker at the time, the most important design solutions originated in the Baltic Sea region: ‘the outstandingly successful Swedish icebreaker Ymer offered the closest approximation to the problem in hand, in that considerable power was installed in a ship of relatively short length, and it served as a prototype for the development of the Northwind-class vessels’
No state had the resources for radical experimentation through trial and error, and neither was any shipyard willing to risk building an icebreaker that possibly would not work
Summary
Icebreakers have traditionally been seen as symbols of technological nationalism. While ship science for open-water vessels developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, understanding of how to cope with polar and subarctic ice conditions lagged behind. ASEA was a national technological jewel with close ties to government officials, and as such, it could inform development in other industries.[36] The company’s technical chief engineer, Ragnar Liljeblad, gave a speech on icebreakers to Swedish shipbuilding engineers in 1930, where he stressed the following points: What are we waiting for?
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