Dry dock
A dry dock is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction and repair of ships and other watercraft; the use of dry docks in China goes at least as far back the 10th century A. D. In 1088, Song Dynasty scientist and statesman Shen Kuo wrote in his Dream Pool Essays: At the beginning of the dynasty the two Che provinces presented two dragon ships each more than 200 ft. in length. The upper works included several decks with palatial cabins and saloons, containing thrones and couches all ready for imperial tours of inspection. After many years, their hulls decayed and needed repairs, but the work was impossible as long as they were afloat. So in the Hsi-Ning reign period a palace official Huang Huai-Hsin suggested a plan. A large basin was excavated at the north end of the Chin-ming Lake capable of containing the dragon ships, in it heavy crosswise beams were laid down upon a foundation of pillars.
So that the basin filled with water, after which the ships were towed in above the beams. The water was pumped out by wheels so that the ships rested quite in the air; when the repairs were complete, the water was let in again. The beams and pillars were taken away, the whole basin covered over with a great roof so as to form a hangar in which the ships could be protected from the elements and avoid the damage caused by undue exposure; the first English and oldest surviving dry dock still in use was commissioned by Henry VII of England at HMNB Portsmouth in 1495. This dry dock holds the world's oldest commissioned warship, HMS Victory; the earliest description of a floating dock comes from a small Italian book printed in Venice in 1560, called Descrittione dell'artifitiosa machina. In the booklet, an unknown author asks for the privilege of using a new method for the salvaging of a grounded ship and proceeds to describe and illustrate his approach; the included woodcut shows a ship flanked by two large floating trestles, forming a roof above the vessel.
The ship is pulled in an upright position by a number of ropes attached to the superstructure. The Saint-Nazaire's Chantiers de l'Atlantique owns one of the biggest in the world: 1,200 by 60 metres; the largest graving dock of the Mediterranean as of 2009 is at the Hellenic Shipyards S. A.. The Alfredo da Silva Dry Dock in Almada, was closed in 2000; the largest roofed dry dock is at the German Meyer Werft Shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, it is 504 m long, 125 m wide and stands 75 m tall. Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is the site of a large dry dock 556 by 93 metres; the massive cranes are named after the Biblical figures Goliath. Dry Dock 12 at Newport News Shipbuilding at 662 by 76 metres is the largest dry dock in the USA; the largest floating-dock in North America is named The Vigorous. It is operated by Vigor Industries in Portland, OR, in the Swan Island industrial area along the Willamette River. A graving dock is the traditional form of dry dock, it is narrow basin made of earthen berms and concrete, closed by gates or by a caisson.
When open, a vessel is floated in and the water pumped out, leaving the craft supported on blocks. The keel blocks as well as the bilge block are placed on the floor of the dock in accordance with the "docking plan" of the ship. Routine use of dry docks is for the "graving" i.e. the cleaning, removal of barnacles and rust, re-painting of ships' hulls. Some fine-tuning of the ship's position can be done by divers while there is still some water left to manoeuvre it about, it is important that supporting blocks conform to the structural members so that the ship is not damaged when its weight is supported by the blocks. Some anti-submarine warfare warships have protruding sonar domes, requiring that the hull of the ship be supported several metres from the bottom of the drydock. Once the remainder of the water is pumped out, the ship can be inspected or serviced; when work on the ship is finished, water is allowed to re-enter the dry dock and the ship is refloated. Modern graving docks are box-shaped, to accommodate the newer, boxier ship designs, whereas old dry docks are shaped like the ships that are planned to be docked there.
This shaping was advantageous because such a dock was easier to build, it was easier to side-support the ships, less water had to be pumped away. Dry docks used for building Navy vessels may be built with a roof; this is done to prevent spy satellites from taking pictures of the dry dock and any ships or submarines that may be in it. During World War II, fortified dry docks were used by the Germans to protect their submarines from Allied air raids. Today, covered dry docks are used only when servicing or repairing a fleet ballistic missile submarine. Another advantage of covered dry docks is. A floating dry dock is a type of pontoon for dry docking ships, possessing floodable buoyancy chambers and a "U"-shaped cross-section; the walls are used to give the dry dock stability when the floor or deck is below the surface of the water. When valves are opened, the
Ferry
A ferry is a merchant vessel used to carry passengers, sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi. Ferries form a part of the public transport systems of many waterside cities and islands, allowing direct transit between points at a capital cost much lower than bridges or tunnels. Ship connections of much larger distances may be called ferry services if they carry vehicles; the profession of the ferryman is embodied in Greek mythology in Charon, the boatman who transported souls across the River Styx to the Underworld. Speculation that a pair of oxen propelled a ship having a water wheel can be found in 4th century Roman literature "Anonymus De Rebus Bellicis". Though impractical, there is no reason why it could not work and such a ferry, modified by using horses, was used in Lake Champlain in 19th-century America. See "When Horses Walked on Water: Horse-Powered Ferries in Nineteenth-Century America".
See Experiment. The Marine Services Company of Tanzania offers passenger and cargo services in Lakes Victoria and Malawi, it operates one of the oldest ferries in the region, the MV Liemba, built in 1913 during the German colonial rule. The busiest seaway in the world, the English Channel, connects Great Britain and mainland Europe, with ships sailing to French ports, such as Calais, Dieppe, Cherbourg-Octeville, Caen, St Malo and Le Havre. Ferries from Great Britain sail to Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Ireland; some ferries carry tourist traffic, but most carry freight, some are for the use of freight lorries. In Britain, car-carrying ferries are sometimes referred to as RORO for the ease by which vehicles can board and leave; the busiest single ferry route is across the northern part of Øresund, between Helsingborg, Scania and Elsinore, Denmark. Before the Øresund bridge was opened in July 2000, car and "car & train" ferries departed up to seven times every hour. In 2013, this has been reduced, but a car ferry still departs from each harbor every 15 minutes during daytime.
The route is around 2.2 nautical miles and the crossing takes 22 minutes. Today, all ferries on this route are constructed so that they do not need to turn around in the harbors; this means that the ferries lack stems and sterns, since the vessels sail in both directions. Starboard and port-side are dynamic, depending on the direction the ferry sails. Despite the short crossing, the ferries are equipped with restaurants and kiosks. Passengers without cars make a "double or triple return" journey in the restaurants. Passenger and bicycle passenger tickets are inexpensive compared with longer routes. Large cruiseferries sail in the Baltic Sea between Finland, Åland, Estonia and Saint Petersburg and from Italy to Sardinia, Corsica and Greece. In many ways, these ferries are like cruise ships, but they can carry hundreds of cars on car decks. Besides providing passenger and car transport across the sea, Baltic Sea cruise-ferries are a popular tourist destination unto themselves, with multiple restaurants, bars and entertainment on board.
Many smaller ferries operate on domestic routes in Finland and Estonia. The south-west and southern parts of the Baltic Sea has several routes for heavy traffic and cars; the ferry routes of Trelleborg-Rostock, Trelleborg-Travemünde, Trelleborg-Świnoujście, Gedser-Rostock, Gdynia-Karlskrona, Ystad-Świnoujście are all typical transports ferries. On the longer of these routes, simple cabins are available; the Rødby-Puttgarden route transports day passenger trains between Copenhagen and Hamburg, on the Trelleborg-Sassnitz route, it has capacities for the daily night trains between Berlin and Malmö. In Istanbul, ferries connect the European and Asian shores of Bosphorus, as well as Princes Islands and nearby coastal towns. In 2014 İDO transported the largest ferry system in the world. Due to the numbers of large freshwater lakes and length of shoreline in Canada, various provinces and territories have ferry services. BC Ferries operates the third largest ferry service in the world which carries travellers between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland on the country's west coast.
This ferry service operates to other islands including the Gulf Islands and Haida Gwaii. In 2015, BC Ferries carried 20 million passengers. Canada's east coast has been home to numerous inter- and intra-provincial ferry and coastal services, including a large network operated by the federal government under CN Marine and Marine Atlantic. Private and publicly owned ferry operations in eastern Canada include Marine Atlantic, serving the island of Newfoundland, as well as Bay, NFL, CTMA, Coastal Transport, STQ. Canadian waters in the Great Lakes once hosted numerous ferry services, but these have been reduced to those offered by Owen Sound Transportation and several smaller operations. There are several commuter passenger ferry services operated in major cities, such as Metro Transit in Halifax, Toronto Island ferries in Toronto and SeaBus in Vancouver. Washington State Ferries operates the most extensive ferry system in the continental United States and the second largest in t
Passenger ship
A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freighters once common on the seas in which the transport of passengers is secondary to the carriage of freight; the type does however include many classes of ships designed to transport substantial numbers of passengers as well as freight. Indeed, until virtually all ocean liners were able to transport mail, package freight and express, other cargo in addition to passenger luggage, were equipped with cargo holds and derricks, kingposts, or other cargo-handling gear for that purpose. Only in more recent ocean liners and in all cruise ships has this cargo capacity been eliminated. While passenger ships are part of the merchant marine, passenger ships have been used as troopships and are commissioned as naval ships when used as for that purpose. Passenger ships include ferries, which are vessels for day to day or overnight short-sea trips moving passengers and vehicles.
An ocean liner is the traditional form of passenger ship. Once such liners operated on scheduled line voyages to all inhabited parts of the world. With the advent of airliners transporting passengers and specialized cargo vessels hauling freight, line voyages have died out, but with their decline came an increase in sea trips for pleasure and fun, in the latter part of the 20th century ocean liners gave way to cruise ships as the predominant form of large passenger ship containing from hundreds to thousands of people, with the main area of activity changing from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea. Although some ships have characteristics of both types, the design priorities of the two forms are different: ocean liners value speed and traditional luxury while cruise ships value amenities rather than speed; these priorities produce different designs. In addition, ocean liners were built to cross the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and the United States or travel further to South America or Asia while cruise ships serve shorter routes with more stops along coastlines or among various islands.
For a long time, cruise ships were smaller than the old ocean liners had been, but in the 1980s, this changed when Knut Kloster, the director of Norwegian Caribbean Lines, bought one of the biggest surviving liners, the SS France, transformed her into a huge cruise ship, which he renamed the SS Norway. Her success demonstrated. Successive classes of ever-larger ships were ordered, until the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth was dethroned from her 56-year reign as the largest passenger ship built. Both the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 and her successor as Cunard's flagship RMS Queen Mary 2, which entered service in 2004, are of hybrid construction. Like transatlantic ocean liners, they are fast ships and built to withstand the rigors of the North Atlantic in line voyage service, but both ships are designed to operate as cruise ships, with the amenities expected in that trade. QM2 was superseded by the Freedom of the Seas of the Royal Caribbean line as the largest passenger ship built; the Freedom of the Seas was superseded by the Oasis of the Seas in October 2009.
Because of changes in historic measurement systems, it is impossible to make meaningful and accurate comparisons of ship sizes over time beyond length. Three alternative forms of measurement are ship volume and weight of water it displaces. A fourth, deadweight tonnage, is a measure of how much mass a ship can safely carry, is thus more relevant to measuring cargo vessels than passenger ships. Gross register tonnage was a measure of the internal volume of certain enclosed areas of a ship divided into "tons" equivalent to 100 cubic feet of space; the displacement is a measure of both a ship's weight and the weight of water it displaces, which are one and the same by Archimedes' principle. While straightforward, it has four variants in measure, Loaded displacement, Light displacement, Normal displacement, Standard displacement. Of these, the first is most appropriate to measuring a passenger vessel. Gross tonnage is a comparatively new measure, only adopted in 1982 to replace GRT, it is calculated based on "the moulded volume of all enclosed spaces of the ship", is used to determine things such as a ship's manning regulations, safety rules, registration fees, port dues.
It is produced by a mathematical formula, does not distinguish between mechanical and passenger spaces, thus is not directly comparable to historic GRT measurements. While a high displacement can indicate better sea keeping abilities, gross tonnage is nowadays promoted as the most important measure of size for passenger vessels, as the ratio of gross tonnage per passenger – the Passenger/Space Ratio – gives a sense of the spaciousness of a ship, an important consideration in cruise liners where the onboard amenities are of high importance. A ship's GRT and displacement were somewhat similar
Perno shipyard
Perno shipyard is a shipyard in Turku, south west Finland that specialises in building cruise ships, passenger ferries, special vessels and offshore projects. The yard area is 144 hectares; the yard is operated by Meyer Turku Oy. The dry dock is 365 metres long, 80 metres wide and 10 metres deep, equipped with 1 bridge crane with a capacity of 600 tonnes. New bridge crane with capacity of 1200 tonnes is under construction and when finished, it will be the largest one in the Nordic region. Wärtsilä's shipbuilding grew in the 1960s and over time the old yard area on both banks of the Aura river that runs through Turku became too small; when Tankmar Horn was appointed the new general manager of Wärtsilä in 1971, the idea of a modern "ship factory" started to evolve, inspired by the Swedish Götaverken Arendal yard. The area selected for the new yard was in Perno part of Raisio, some ten kilometres from the centre of Turku; the area was joined to Turku, on 8 April 1974 the city council approved a plan of selling 144 hectares of land and 34 hectares water area to Wärtsilä for a new shipyard.
The work was launched in a ceremony held on 16 May 1974, when president Urho Kekkonen detonated the first explosive charge of the site work. The number of construction workers rose to over 1 000 people; the first part of construction was the dry dock, specified to length of 250 metres and width of 80 metres, measured for two 100 000 dry weight vessels, a bridge crane of 600-tonne capacity, 70 metres operative height and 150 metres track, two 50-tonne level luffing cranes, a warm hall of 42 000 square metres for steelworks, paint shop, service building and an office building with dressing rooms. At this stage the headcount was 1 200. Designing, special ship building up to 40 000 tonnes, diesel engine production and ship repairs were decided to be kept at the old yard for then; the schedule was tight – the first keel laying was to be in 1976 and the ship was supposed to be handed over in 1977. The record-long order book of Wärtsilä gave an additional challenge to the project. Operations in the steel sheet shop were started at the end of 1975.
Despite of tough endeavour, the first ship of Wärtsilä Perno Shipyard, Gas Rising Sun was handed over not earlier than 1978. The yard was operational in 1979, but until 1982 the vessels were tugged to the old yard for outfitting. While moving the production to the new yard, shipbuilding methods were developed. Hulls were now constructed from large modules and an increasing proportion of welding and sheet metal work was performed indoors. Wärtsilä started a new computing centre in Perno in 1978. Ten years the yard started first in the world computer aided line production of modules with system developed jointly with Norwegian company Total Transportation Systems. CAD/CAM system was introduced in 1984. Production rationalisation affected on outfitting work in particular, outsourced. At the end of the 1970s Wärtsilä produced gas tankers, passenger ships and cargo ships. At the early 1980s the Soviet exports, low in the previous years, went up again and reached until the mid 1980s – they postponed the impact of the European shipbuilding crisis, caused by price dumping of Asian shipbuilders.
Wärtsilä and Valmet put together their shipbuilding businesses, creating Wärtsilä Marine at the beginning of 1987. At that time Perno yard had only one non-started project on its order book, cruise ship NB 1294 to be delivered in 1988; the number of personnel was reduced heavily. The yard got more work in January from nine projects addressed to Valmet yard, to be closed down; the order book grew in 1987 by four passenger ships and two more orders followed in 1988. The grown order book together with errors in price calculations and other reasons led to bankruptcy of Wärtsilä Marine on 23 October 1989. At the time there were seven ships on the order book of which two were at quay for outfitting, one was under construction in the dry dock, two were started and two ship were at designing phase. Cruiseferry Cinderella was nearly ready and handed over just six days after the bankruptcy, when the shipowner SF-Line made the last payment. On 7 November 1989, just two weeks after the bankruptcy, a new company was started by Helsinki yard manager Martin Saarikangas.
The company name was Masa-Yards Oy and the owners were state of Finland, Suomen Yhdyspankki and shipowners of which ships laid unfinished at the Perno and Helsinki yards. The first task of the new company was finishing the ordered craft. On 19 January 1990 Effoa's Silja Serenade was launched. Kalypso, launched in the previous summer, was handed over in the same spring. Silja Serenade was handed over in November in the same day when its sister ship Silja Symphony was launched; the remaining two cruise ships ordered by CCL were built at Helsinki shipyard. Both the founding shipowners and the state wanted to sell their shares of Masa-Yards as soon as the operations were restarted. In 1991 the major owner became the company was renamed Kværner Masa-Yards. Soon after the situation was stabilised, the Perno yard started to gain more orders; the most significant were a cruise ship ordered by the Japanese Yusen Kaisha and four LNG carriers ordered from United Arab Emirates. At the late 1990s the yard started building Voyager class cruise ships for Royal Caribbean International.
The shipowner placed or
Neptun Werft
Neptun Werft is a German shipbuilding company, headquartered in Rostock. Since 1997 it has been part of the Meyer Neptun Group together with Meyer Werft in Papenburg; the company was founded as the "Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik von Wilhelm Zeltz und Albrecht Tischbein" in 1850 and their first iron steamship was launched in 1851. The shipyard developed and as early as in 1857 it had some 400 employees. In 1890, after several mergers and buyouts, it became the "Actien-Gesellschaft Neptun". After 1945 and the division of Germany, the shipyard focused on markets in Eastern Europe. At that time the "Schiffswerft Neptun Rostock" counted among the most renowned state-owned shipyards of the German Democratic Republic; the changing conditions of international competition following the German reunification brought about a time of change for the company. Productivity was not up to international standards, due to EU restrictions it was no longer allowed to build new sea-going vessels; the yard became "Neptun Industrie Rostock", the following years were influenced by staff cuts, re-organisation and diversification.
Focus was put on the repair and upgrading of ships and delivery of ship components, steel constructions for hydraulic engineering and complex Ro-Ro facilities. In 1997 Neptun Werft became part of the Meyer Neptun Group. Neptun Werft has geared its activities to its core maritime sector, while many companies belonging to NIR and dealing in different sectors were sold, or set up independent operations. Since the year 2000 the shipyard's activities have been centred on the premises in Warnemünde, the construction of river cruise vessels has been included in the product range. New production halls were erected in 2003 which allow ship construction independent of weather conditions. A'Rosa Bella A'Rosa Donna A'Rosa Mia A'Rosa Riva A'Rosa Luna A'Rosa Stella A'Rosa Aqua A'Rosa Viva A-Rosa Brava A-Rosa Silva A-Rosa Flora SS Denebola 10 x Type VII submarines Homepage of Neptun Werft
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal, that belongs to group 8 of the periodic table, it is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. Pure iron is rare on the Earth's crust being limited to meteorites. Iron ores are quite abundant, but extracting usable metal from them requires kilns or furnaces capable of reaching 1500 °C or higher, about 500 °C higher than what is enough to smelt copper. Humans started to dominate that process in Eurasia only about 2000 BCE, iron began to displace copper alloys for tools and weapons, in some regions, only around 1200 BCE; that event is considered the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Iron alloys, such as steel and special steels are now by far the most common industrial metals, because of their mechanical properties and their low cost. Pristine and smooth pure iron surfaces are mirror-like silvery-gray. However, iron reacts with oxygen and water to give brown to black hydrated iron oxides known as rust.
Unlike the oxides of some other metals, that form passivating layers, rust occupies more volume than the metal and thus flakes off, exposing fresh surfaces for corrosion. The body of an adult human contains about 3 to 5 grams of elemental iron in hemoglobin and myoglobin; these two proteins play essential roles in vertebrate metabolism oxygen transport by blood and oxygen storage in muscles. To maintain the necessary levels, human iron metabolism requires a minimum of iron in the diet. Iron is the metal at the active site of many important redox enzymes dealing with cellular respiration and oxidation and reduction in plants and animals. Chemically, the most common oxidation states of iron are +2 and +3. Iron shares many properties of other transition metals, including the other group 8 elements and osmium. Iron forms compounds in a wide range of oxidation states, −2 to +7. Iron forms many coordination compounds. At least four allotropes of iron are known, conventionally denoted α, γ, δ, ε; the first three forms are observed at ordinary pressures.
As molten iron cools past its freezing point of 1538 °C, it crystallizes into its δ allotrope, which has a body-centered cubic crystal structure. As it cools further to 1394 °C, it changes to its γ-iron allotrope, a face-centered cubic crystal structure, or austenite. At 912 °C and below, the crystal structure again becomes the bcc α-iron allotrope; the physical properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures have been studied extensively, because of their relevance to theories about the cores of the Earth and other planets. Above 10 GPa and temperatures of a few hundred kelvin or less, α-iron changes into another hexagonal close-packed structure, known as ε-iron; the higher-temperature γ-phase changes into ε-iron, but does so at higher pressure. Some controversial experimental evidence exists for a stable β phase at pressures above 50 GPa and temperatures of at least 1500 K, it is supposed to have a double hcp structure. The inner core of the Earth is presumed to consist of an iron-nickel alloy with ε structure.
The melting and boiling points of iron, along with its enthalpy of atomization, are lower than those of the earlier 3d elements from scandium to chromium, showing the lessened contribution of the 3d electrons to metallic bonding as they are attracted more and more into the inert core by the nucleus. This same trend appears for ruthenium but not osmium; the melting point of iron is experimentally well defined for pressures less than 50 GPa. For greater pressures, published data still varies by tens of gigapascals and over a thousand kelvin. Below its Curie point of 770 °C, α-iron changes from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic: the spins of the two unpaired electrons in each atom align with the spins of its neighbors, creating an overall magnetic field; this happens because the orbitals of those two electrons do not point toward neighboring atoms in the lattice, therefore are not involved in metallic bonding. In the absence of an external source of magnetic field, the atoms get spontaneously partitioned into magnetic domains, about 10 micrometres across, such that the atoms in each domain have parallel spins, but different domains have other orientations.
Thus a macroscopic piece of iron will have a nearly zero overall magnetic field. Application of an external magnetic field causes the domains that are magnetized in the same general direction to grow at the expense of adjacent ones that point in other directions, reinforcing the external field; this effect is exploited in devices that needs to channel magnetic fields, such as electrical transformers, magnetic recording heads, electric motors. Impurities, lattice defects, or grain and particle boundaries can "pin" the domains in the new positions, so that the effect persists after the external field is removed -- thus turning the iron object into a magnet. Similar behavior is exhibited by some iron compounds, such as the fer
STX Finland
STX Finland Oy Aker Yards Oy, was a Finnish shipbuilding company operating three shipyards in Finland, in Turku and Rauma, employing some 2,500 people. It was part of STX Europe, a group of international shipbuilding companies owned by the South Korean STX Corporation. Half of Helsinki yard was sold to Russian USC in 2010. In September 2013, STX Finland announced that the Rauma shipyard would be closed in June 2014. In August 2014, the Turku shipyard was sold to Meyer Werft the state-owned Finnish Industry Investment and renamed Meyer Turku Oy. STX Finland Oy was a descendant of different shipyard companies. Wärtsilä operated the shipyards of Turku since the 1930s. Wärtsilä Marine went bankrupt in 1989 after merging with Valmet shipyards. Masa-Yards was established by Martin Saarikangas with financing from the shipping companies to finish the ships under construction taking over the operations of Wärtsilä's former shipyards. In the mid-90s Kvaerner purchased Masa-Yards and Kvaerner Masa-Yards was born.
In 1991 the shipbuilding businesses of Hollming Oy of Rauma and Rauma-Repola of Rauma were merged to form Finnyards. This company became Aker Finnyards. In January 2005 Kvaerner Masa-Yards and Aker Finnyards merged to form the "new" Aker Finnyards Oy; the name of the company was changed to Aker Yards Oy on 7 June 2006, to STX Finland Cruise Oy on 23 November 2008. Since September 2009 the company has been named STX Finland Oy. STX Finland and its predecessors built many luxurious cruise ships, including the first modern purpose-built cruise ship, the Song of Norway. More recent cruise ships built by the company included the two Oasis-class vessels, Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas which held the record for largest cruise ships in the world until 2015 when Harmony of the Seas was launched at STX Europe Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in France. At end of 2012 STX negotiated with RCCL about an order of a large cruise ship. In order to secure the financial basis of the project, STX sent a request for loan of 50 million euros to the Finnish government and a copy of the request to media.
The Finnish government led by Katainen Cabinet, was put into a difficult situation. Employment at Turku yard was a sensitive topic for the both ruling parties National Coalition and Social Democrats. While the sum was small, financial status of STX was poor and according to an analysis the needed sum would be larger, it looked obvious that STX tried to press the Finnish government to first give a smaller sum which it would use as a leverage for subsequent demands. The government was in a politically difficult situation, as the public, opposition parties and own party members wanted to lend the money in order to secure the valuable order; the other option would have been becoming joint owner but the government did not want to have a financially unstable business partner. Instead, the government took another strategy – trying to find a new owner for Turku shipyard in secret from the Koreans and buying Helsinki-based naval engineering company Aker Arctic; the man behind the plot was Minister of Jan Vapaavuori.
Despite of the high pressure, in December 2012 the government refused providing the loan, with the formal excuse that EU does not allow giving subsidies to unprofitable companies. Turku shipyard lost the order which went to French Saint-Nazaire located Chantiers de l'Atlantique where the government was more generous; the decision of the Finnish government was received with consternation and vast criticism from every direction. STX Turku yard had two cruise ships under construction for the German TUI Cruises; the shipowner as well as other financiers of the projects had observed the financial situation of the shipbuilder and became distrustful on STX after the Finnish government's refusal of financing the new project. This led to opening of the financial basis of the TUI orders; the future of Finnish shipbuilding looked bad. Therefore, the ongoing projects had to be urgently secured. While the Finnish subsidiary was in crisis, the Korean owner remained passive. Negotiations with STX were challenging because it was difficult to find the right persons who have got the mandate to make decisions in the company, the creditors, Korean Development Bank as the biggest one, had its word in the financial decisions of the indebted company.
The Finnish government got crucially important support from main owner of TUI Cruises. RCCL made concessions to secure the financial basis. Speculatively, RCCL wanted to save the yard because it did not want to lose an important part of the global cruise ship building capacity. Moreover, STX sold the Perno shipyard area for €23.5 million and the state gave innovation support to STX. Financing of the TUI vessels was secured with these actions; the Finnish government and STX made a restructuring plan together with consulting company in June 2013. According to the report, there would not be insufficient orders for both Turku and Rauma yards, with the recommendation that the Rauma yard should be closed down. At first STX was reluctant to close the Rauma yard, however the management was convinced about the need to cut down capacity. In September 2013 STX announced the closure of the Rauma yard and the sale of the area to the town of Rauma. While this led to an outcry, it fit with the plans of the government: the shipbuilding facilities were saved for a new start.
A new shipbuilding company Rauma M
Meyer Werft (located at Papenburg)
Meyer Turku (located at Turku)
