The ship was built in Saint-Nazaire , France in 1902 and initially operated as a cargo ship between Atlantic and Pacific ports under the name Laënnec . At the end of the 1920s, the tall ship was renamed in Oldenburg and operated in Germany for three years as a sailing training ship for the merchant navy. In 1929/1930 it was badly damaged in a storm on a journey from the USA to Sweden.
Finnish Navy
In 1930, the Oldenburg was bought by the government of Finland in order to be used as a naval training ship. Before the Second World War , she made eight trips in this capacity. During the Winter War and the Continuation War , she was used as a storage ship for submarine and speedboat torpedoes , after the wars she was used as a support boat for a mine clearance boat and was stationed near Utö on the Åland Islands. In 1956 she was converted into a stationary training ship for the Finnish Navy.
Museum ship
Since 1991 she has been in the port of Turku on the Aurajoki as a museum ship . In September 2016, the Suomen Joutsen temporarily left her berth in order to be overtaken in Naantali in the following weeks .