Sampo (1898 icebreaker)

Sampo was a Finnish state-owned steam-powered icebreaker, built in 1898 by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company at Newcastle upon Tyne and named after the magical artefact of Finnish mythology. She was the second state-owned icebreaker of Finland and the first European icebreaker fitted with a bow propeller, a design of the American type that the Finnish Senate chose after sending engineers to study the train ferry St Ignace; the contract of 6 June 1897 went to Armstrong Whitworth because it offered the shortest delivery time. Two triple-expansion steam engines drove a propeller at the stern and one at the bow, and on trials she held 12.4 knots in open water. She was commissioned on 15 November 1898 and was soon judged the best icebreaker in Europe, able to ram through ridges up to six metres thick. She served through the Finnish civil war and the Second World War, was decommissioned on 9 May 1960 as the second last steam-powered icebreaker in the Finnish fleet, and was sold for scrap and broken up at Mathildedal.