Wood samples, measurements of deck beams and frames, and thorough archival research have all led to an answer about which ships were previously discovered. The museum’s maritime archaeologists can confirm that the ships are the warships Apollo and Maria, which were transporting troops to Poland in preparation for an invasion by Charles X Gustav. Both ships took part in the Battle of Møn in 1657 and were also used in the Battle of the Sound in 1658.
“Identifying the ships has been a real mystery to solve, and there were many pieces that needed to fall into place,” says Jim Hansson, maritime archaeologist and project manager for the dives at Vaxholm. “These are large ships with impressive dimensions. We took a number of wooden samples for age dating purposes, and the results show that the oak the ships were built with was felled during the winter of 1646/47. This means that the ships should have been built one or two years later.”
Hansson continues:
“When we dived on the ships, we got ‘a Vasa feeling’ – the timbers were huge, so one clue pointed to the possibility of finding some of Vasa’s sister ships, which we know were sunk outside Vaxholm. But the dates didn’t add up. Vasa’s sister ships, Äpplet, Kronan and Scepter, were built shortly after Vasa sank in 1628. We wondered if the samples we had taken could have possibly come from parts of the ships that had been repaired, in the 1640s.”
The maritime archaeologists starting diving again, taking more samples for analysis that clearly showed that both ships must have been built from oak felled during the winter of 1646/47. The oak from one ship came from northern Germany and the other from eastern Sweden.
Intensive efforts to identify the ships
To reconstruct the ships, work began on making sketches and digitising them. By measuring deck beams and frames and then matching that information with hull details, the archaeologists were able to get a good picture of the size and shape of the ships.
“We found that one ship had been 8.7 metres at its widest point,” Hansson says. “By having both the width and shape of the ship, we could estimate the length to be about 35 metres. This also matched well with the length and width ratios that were common in the 17th century.”
Through archival research, the maritime archaeologists came across two ships built in 1648: Apollo, built in Wismar, Germany, and Maria, built at Skeppsholmen in Stockholm. According to the archives, their measurements were consistent with what they themselves had concluded. According to the sources, both ships would also have been scuttled at Vaxholm in 1677.
“In the end, we had all the pieces of the puzzle we needed to be able to tell which ships were involved,” Hansson says. “The dimensions and shape of the ships matched the measurements from the sources. And the origin of the wood samples, where we had thought northern Germany for the smaller ship Apollo and eastern Sweden for the larger Maria, were also correct.”
“We also know that the really big ships of the same type as Vasa were primarily King Gustav II Adolf’s idea, and that idea died with him in 1632,” says Patrik Höglund, assistant project manager. “After his death, medium-sized warships were built instead, since they could be used for many different purposes and were more seaworthy than the bigger unwieldy ships.”
Höglund continues:
“This type of medium-sized ship was equipped with heavy artillery. Although the ships were not especially large, they were very robustly built to withstand the weight of the artillery. The firepower of the ships grew in relation to their size, and Apollo and Maria are good examples of this.”
“It’s interesting to get to tell about these ships,” Hansson says. “The type of ships that Apollo and Maria represent have never before been documented archaeologically, and they have so much knowledge to convey,” he concludes.
There are more wrecks at Vaxholm, according to the archives, including Vasa’s sister ships and conquered Danish ships, which is why the museum’s maritime archaeologists will continue investigations in the area.
The continuing investigations in Vaxholm are part of a research programme called “The Lost Navy – Sweden's ‘Blue’ Heritage 1450–1850”, which is being run in partnership by CEMAS at Stockholm University, the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums (which Vrak – Museum of Wrecks is a part of), and the Finnish Heritage Agency. The research programme is being funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.
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Password: Vaxholm
For more information, please contact:
Catrin Rising, Communications Officer
Email: catrin.rising@smtm.se
Telephone: +46 (0)737-35 16 02
Cecilia Eriksson, Communications Officer
Email: cecilia.eriksson@smtm.se
Telephone: +46 (0)8-519 558 43
Vrak – Museum of Wrecks is a new maritime archaeological museum that will be housed in a boat hall next to the Vasa Museum, at Djurgården in Stockholm, Sweden. The connection to the Baltic Sea will be natural, with the proximity to former navy yards and shipwrecks.
The museum opens late 2020 and is part of the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums, a government agency together with the Vasa Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the National Naval Museum and the National Railway Museum.
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