page_title: Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstad
section_title: Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstad / Civil War
caption_attribution_description: English: Finnish icebreaker Voima, later handed over to the Soviet Union.
context_page_description: Aktiebolaget Sandvikens Skeppsdocka och Mekaniska Verkstad was a Finnish shipbuilding and engineering company that operated in Helsinki in 1895–1938. The company was set up to continue shipbuilding at Hietalahti shipyard, after its predecessor Helsingfors Skeppsdocka, which operated the yard in 1865–1895, had bankrupted.
  The company portfolio consisted building and repairing of ships, production of tram and railway wagons, boilers, steam and combustion engines, winches and other products. Before and during the First World War the main customers were the Imperial Russian Navy and the Finnish State Railways. Following the Finnish Declaration of Independence in 1917, the Finnish Civil War broke out in 1918. The yard was closed until the Red Guards had left the city.
  Due to recession in shipbuilding the company owners decided to sell the shares to another Helsinki engineering company, Kone- ja Siltarakennus in 1926. In 1935 Kone- ja Siltarakennus was taken over by Wärtsilä, which amalgamated Hietalahti Shipyard and Engineering Works into its own organisation. The yard continued operating under name Wärtsilä Hietalahti Shipyard after that.
context_section_description: When the Finnish Civil War broke out at the end of January 1918, all production was stopped, just as in all factories of Southern Finland. The last salaries were paid on 5 February, and the white-collar workers left the plant for few days later, after placing all the important documents into a safe place. The Red Guards, who took control in the city, strove to run up the production for their own purposes, but the key personnel went into hiding.
  Despite the recently gained independence from Russia, the Russian military was still present in Helsinki but did not take part in the Civil War. The company had receivables worth of 3,000,000 marks from the Russian Navy. As it was impossible to get the payment from the local military council, Schwindt travelled to Petrograd. With the help of Admiral Maximov he succeeded in obtaining the whole payment in rubles, but managed to change just one third of it into Finnish marks, which was then smuggled to Helsinki into a safe place. Schwindt had to leave the rest of the money in Petrograd, where he made deposit agreements with the local branches of Branobel and ASEA. After this Schwindt returned to Finland through Sortavala and joined the White Guard. ASEA paid the saved amount to Hietalahti Shipyard and Engineering Works, but the sum saved to Branobel, over 1.1 million rubles, was lost due to the revolution. The collected money enabled paying the salaries of the white-collar personnel and a dividend to the owners.
  During the war, two icebreakers, Silachya and Stadt Reval had been docked by unwilling support of a yard supervisor the Red Guards had found and captured. Restarting of the plant had failed largely because the power grid and machinery had been sabotaged before the supervisors had left the yard. When the war was over, the material stock had been looted and just a part of it was managed to be returned. Work in the company was restarted when the situation returned to normal in April. The employees were taken back after each worker's role in the war was carefully investigated. As many of the company workers had taken part in the war in the Red Guards, and the number of orders had dropped, the number of personnel was significantly reduced from the level it was before the Civil War.
caption: Icebreaker Voima.
exif: {}