Lettische Butter (Latvian Butter)National Butter Export Control Board of Latvia, 1929

The Ships Krišjānis Valdemārs and Nordland

We were curious to find out more about these two ships: a Latvian icebreaker and a German passenger/freight steamer built and launched within a year of each other in the first decade after WWI.

Krišjānis Valdemārs

The Krišjānis Valdemārs was a Latvian icebreaker of 2,800 tons displacement launched June 9, 1925, built by Beardmore & Co. and Vickers in their Glasgow shipyard. The Krišjānis Valdemārs was powered by coal-fired triple expansion boilers providing a top speed of 15 knots and carried a complement of 55 crew.

The ship was pressed into the Soviet Navy as an auxiliary by the invading Soviets. The general account (including the one below) is that it sank in 1941 after hitting a mine. However, recent military scholarship (2007, 2010) indicates that the Krišjānis Valdemārs along with the (formerly) Latvian transports Skrunda and Atis Kronvalidis and the Lake Lucerne were sunk in air attacks by German Junkers Ju-88's in the battle to take Tallinn. The fleet evacuating the port sailed into a minefield off Cape Juminda—21 ships were sunk with more than 5,000 Soviet casualties including the former Estonian steamer Vironia, which, in perishing, took many leading Communist officials escaping from the Baltic States with her to her watery grave1.

Krišjānis Valdemārs' maritime namesake appears on the Latvian 10 Lat coin commemorative coin issued August, 1998. From the central Latvia Bank site:

The icebreaker Krišjānis Valdemārs was the pride of the Republic of Latvia's fleet in 1920s and 1930s. She was utilized to free the Riga port from ice in winter and to escort state visits.

The ship was built by two British companies, William Beardmore and Vickers, in Glasgow from 1924 to 1925. Her carrying capacity was 1 932 gross register tons, length 60 metres, width 17 metres, draught 6.7 metres and power 5 200 HP. The ship's maximum speed was 14.4 nautical miles in ice-free water, and 3 nautical miles in water covered with hard and smooth ice. The new icebreaker was entered in the registers of the Latvian fleet, and was named after Krišjānis Valdemārs (1825-1891), the man who established the first naval colleges and promoted shipbuilding in Latvia. The Krišjānis Valdemārs set on her maiden voyage on January 13, 1926. The ship was the property of the Navigation Department of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and was registered at the Riga port. Her first captain was Karlis Cerps (1875-1931), under whose command she remained until his death. He was succeeded by Fricis Veidners (1883-1942), from 1931 to 1940, and Peteris Mauritis (1887-?), from 1940 to 1941.

Soon after the [Soviet] occupation of Latvia, the ship was nationalized, and during World War II, she was evacuated to Tallinn together with merchant ships. At the end of August 1941, the icebreaker sailed from Tallinn to Kronstadt, and on August 28, she struck a mine and perished.

The Krišjānis Valdemārs in dry dock.
Original at www.shipsnostalgia.com/guides/Image:Valdemars.jpg.

Schematic of the Krišjānis Valdemārs.
Original at www.archaeology.org/online/interviews/mass.html.

Nordland

The Nordland was ice-breaking capable passenger and freight steamship built in 1924 by the Vulcan A.G. shipyard in Stettin: 79 meters in length, 11.3 meters beam, a top speed of 12 knots driven by a 1,400 hp engine, with a gross register tonnage (BRT) of 1,902. It carried 120 passengers with a crew complement of 36.

It was originally owned by the Stettin-Rigaer Dampfschiff Gesellschaft (Stettin-Riga Steamship Society). It was pressed into service during World War II by the German Navy and turned over to the Soviet Union after the war (March 10, 1946) in reparations. It was renamed the "Derzhavin" for the Russian poet-stateman Gavrila Derzhavin and commissioned into the Soviet Merchant Marine. It operated until 1966, when it was sold for scrap and decommissioned in Navskov (Denmark). It sank in a violent storm off the coast of Norway while being towed to be scrapped.

The Nordland in its post-WWII war incarnation as the Державин.
Original at radikal.ru/F/s004.radikal.ru/i208/1002/13/dfc931608a59.jpg.html.

Additional Reading

• Stettin-Rigaer Dampfschiffs-Gesellschaft, Maritime Historical Securities site (in German)