Maintaining the Family

Abstract

After the Napoleonic Wars Finnish ship owners increasingly contributed to global trade by selling their tonnage capacity internationally. In spite of its peripheral position as a Grand Duchy within Imperial Russia (since 1809), Finland played an important part in the traffic of the high seas during the late age of sail, largely due to the ready availability of labour. In this chapter, I study how long-distance trade affected sailors’ families in Pori on Finland’s west coast between 1830 and 1860. I show how boundaries of biological kinship were crossed in housing arrangements families made to ensure social and economic security, and how the community supported and dealt with these families.