Hanko (city)

Middle Ages

By the beginning of the 13th century, the Swedish kingdom included the southwestern part of present-day Finland.

First mention about Hanko - these are the records made in Tallinn in the middle of the 13th century , when the Danish king Waldemar II gave the port name Hangethe. The old Finnish name is Kumionpää ( Fin. Kumionpää ), from which the Danish Kumipe ( Dat. Cumipe ) has also been preserved. The end of the peninsula has long been an important stop for sailing ships, which were sometimes forced to wait for weeks for a fair wind.

In the 1400s, the Cape of Customs began to be used as a port on the Hanko Peninsula, opposite which, between the Cobbe and Gambla rocks, the winding Strait of Hauensuoli ( Fin. Hauensuoli , Pike intestine ) is located. About 650 cave paintings have been preserved in this place, the oldest of which are from the 16th century . Many of them are signatures of sea travelers, drawings and coats of arms.

In 1700, the Great Northern War broke out between Sweden, Russia and Denmark. After the Swedish army was defeated near Poltava in 1709, a fleet was assembled to hinder the conquest of Finland from the Hanko Peninsula. In 1714, the Battle of Gangut took place , in which the Swedish fleet was defeated by the Russians under the leadership of Peter I. In honor of the victory, many ships received the name "Gangut".

Events repeated in 1743 during the next Russo-Swedish war .

In 1747, Swedish Field Marshal Augustine Ehrensverd planned a gun battery on the Hanko Peninsula. Due to the lack of danger, the construction of the fortress did not begin.

Fortress

However, when in August 1788 a detachment of Russian ships under the command of James Trevenen (who served in the Russian fleet as an Englishman, captain of the 1st rank) appeared before defenseless Hanko for the third time, the king’s brother, the duke Karl finally gave the order to begin construction. Major G. Hans von Kierting, later nobleman Wörnjelm, completed the project in January 1789. On the cliff opposite Cape Hanko, a fortress was built in 1789-1808.

During the Finnish War of 1808 - 1809, this fortress was occupied by Russian troops. After the war, the whole of Finland was annexed to the Russian Empire as the Grand Duchy of Finland .

During the Crimean War, in the summer of 1854, the fortress defended the port of Hanko, but in August 1854 it was blown up by soldiers who were afraid to share the fate of the Bomarsund fortress on the Åland Islands , captured by Anglo-French troops.

City and Port

The location and shape of the Hanko Peninsula stretched into the Baltic Sea made it possible to sail in the winter, when other ports in Finland were still on the ice. As a result, in 1871 - 1873, the Hankovskaya railway was laid on the peninsula and a port was built. The main goal was to guarantee transportation to St. Petersburg in the winter. Thanks to this, in 1874, the port city of Hanko was founded.

The port developed rapidly and became one of the main starting points of emigration to North America . About 240 thousand emigrants passed through it in the 19th and 20th centuries .

Trade has given rise to construction. In 1879, the resort was founded in the city and until the end of the century, Hanko remained a lively resort place. Villas and hotels are being built in the city with full service for wealthy Russians who arrive by train and yacht for the summer.

The industrial territory of the northern part of Hanko begins to develop significantly since the 1880s . The most famous enterprise is the Finnish-English biscuit factory Biscuittehdas Oy, later Hanko-Keks, whose buildings are now the oldest. Another well-known enterprise is a glass factory founded in 1934 ^[2] .

During World War I, Hanko was an important city. At the very beginning of the war in August 1914, Russian troops blew up some port facilities and a railway depot, fearing the arrival of the Germans, but the chief of customs, Captain Vikstrom, stopped this work. From 1914 to 1918, Hanko was exclusively a military port.

In December 1917, Finland gained independence . At the beginning of 1918, a civil war broke out in the new country. On April 3, General Rüdiger von der Goltz , the commander of the German Baltic Division, at the invitation of the Finnish Senate, landed 9,500 people in Hanko and begins the advance to Helsinki, which they captured on April 13, 1918 . On April 7, the landing of 2,500 soldiers in Loviisa was carried out by Colonel Otto von Brandenstein, who began his advance towards the railway north and west towards Goltz.

Orthodox Church

In 1895, the Orthodox Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

Soviet naval base

After the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, Finland leased Hanko to the Soviet Union as a naval base .

On June 22, 1941 , after the start of Operation Barbarossa , the German air forces and naval forces attacked the base. After the start of the Soviet-Finnish war on June 25, 1941, Finnish troops joined the fighting against the base.

The defense of Hanko went down in the history of Soviet naval art as an example of a heroic and skillful struggle in the skerry-island region.

In October-December 1941, the defenders of the base were evacuated by sea to Leningrad and Kronstadt .

At the end of World War II, instead of Hanko, the USSR was given a base in Porkkale , which existed until 1955 .

In Hanko, the climate is transitional from marine to temperate continental .

• The average annual temperature is 6.0 ° C
• Annual rainfall - 634 mm
• Relative humidity - 73−81%

The population of Hanko is about 10 thousand people, 44% of the city’s population are ethnic Swedes , and officially the city is bilingual.

Today, Hanko is an important port city and a popular place for summer holidays. Until 2006, the Superfast Ferries shipping company maintained daily connections with German Rostock .

Hanko is one of the national yacht centers, in the summer about 7 thousand yachts moor in it.

The sights of the city include the Protestant and Orthodox churches built in 1892 , as well as the modern city hall and the fortress museum.

• Gangut battle
• Hanko Defense

• City site .
• Hanko on the Northern Fortress .