SS'' Sankt Erik'' is an

icebreaker An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...

and

museum ship A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small numb ...

attached to the

Vasa Museum The Vasa Museum () is a maritime museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Located on the island of Djurgården, the museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th-century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship '' Vasa'' that sank on her maid ...

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. She was launched in 1915 as ''Isbrytaren II'' ("Ice breaker II") and was a conventionally-built Baltic icebreaker with a strengthened bow shaped to be lifted up onto the

ice Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...

to crush it and a forward-facing

screw A screw is an externally helical threaded fastener capable of being tightened or released by a twisting force (torque) to the screw head, head. The most common uses of screws are to hold objects together and there are many forms for a variety ...

to push water and crushed ice along the side of the

hull Hull may refer to: Structures * The hull of an armored fighting vehicle, housing the chassis * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a sea-going craft * Submarine hull Ma ...

. She also has heeling tanks which can be filled and emptied with

seawater Seawater, or sea water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has approximat ...

in turn to rock the ship to widen the channel. Her reciprocating steam engines are the most powerful functioning ones in

. She was the country's first large icebreaker, and was owned and used by the City of Stockholm to keep the channels around it clear of ice. She was also sometimes used outside the Stockholm area by the

Swedish government The Government of the Kingdom of Sweden () is the national cabinet of Sweden, and the country's executive authority. The Government consists of the Prime Minister and their cabinet ministers (). The Government is responsible for its actions ...

since it had contributed towards her cost. She was renamed in 1958 during an extensive refit, which saw her converted from coal to oil, the

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

was enclosed to protect the deck crew from the weather, and

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

and

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

fitted.

References

Vasa museum

* ttp://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz/ship/list?IDNo=5311442&search_op=OR Miramar Ship Index - ''Isbrytaren II''

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sankt Erik Museum ships in Sweden Icebreakers of Sweden 1915 ships Steamships of Sweden Ships built in Stockholm