Peter Malm (22 September 1800 – 7 August 1868) was a major ship owner and merchant in

Grand Duchy of Finland The Grand Duchy of Finland ( fi, Suomen suuriruhtinaskunta; sv, Storfurstendömet Finland; russian: Великое княжество Финляндское, , all of which literally translate as Grand Principality of Finland) was the predecessor ...

in the 19th century, and the father of Otto A. Malm.

Life

Born in Jakobstad, Malm moved to

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

, Finland for his studies. He worked as a merchant in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

between 1818–1824, and opened his own business in Jakobstad in 1823. As of 1840, Malm had the largest shipping fleet in Finland, consisting of 13 sailing ships. Peter Malm was the first Finnish ship owner to send his ships on transoceanic voyages. In 1845–1847, the

barque A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel with three or more mast (sailing), masts having the fore- and mainmasts Square rig, rigged square and only the mizzen (the aftmost mast) Fore-and-aft rig, rigged fore and aft. Som ...

Hercules was the first Finnish ship to circumnavigate the earth. The

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

was a major setback to the business, as the British and French naval operations in the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...

made it virtually impossible to conduct trade. Finland was at the time an autonomous part of the Russian empire, and thus also a target of the British-French fleet during the war. Peter Malm founded a steam powered saw mill on the small island of Stockholmen outside Jakobstad in 1854, which was only the second such installation in Finland.

References

19th-century Finnish businesspeople People from Jakobstad 1800 births 1868 deaths Swedish-speaking Finns {{Finland-bio-stub