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Great findings
Swedish marine archaeologists have discovered the long-lost sister ship of the Vasa, a seventeenth-century warship regarded as one of the Swedish Navy’s greatest achievements that sank shortly after setting sail, according to a Swedish Shipwreck Museum.
With the help of the Swedish Navy, the museum’s archaeologists explored a strait on Vaxholm, an island near Stockholm, where they discovered the wreck last winter.
“Our pulse quickened when we saw how similar the wreck was to the Vasa,” Jim Hansson, a marine archaeologist at the museum, said in the statement. “The structure and hard dimensions looked very familiar. It sprang up in us.
Using the shipment’s main technical points, as well as wood samples and measurement data, the team of archaeologists showed that the shipwreck is sister to the Vasa, sends Äpplet, according to the museum.
Unlike the Vasa, which sank less than 20 minutes after setting sail in 1628, Äpplet (meaning “the apple”) was introduced in 1629 and remained in service for about 30 years. In 1659, after an inspection that concluded the ship was not worth repairing, the government deliberately sank it.
The Hein Jacobsson shipyard built both ships around the same time. But even before the Vasa sailed, Jacobsson feared it would be too narrow and probably unstable. With this in mind, he attempted to correct those flaws in Äpplet.
Named after the House of Vasa, the Swedish royal circle of relatives at the time, sending 225 feet provided with 64 cannons, 3 masts and over 700 hand-carved wood carvings and ornaments. Many guns were on the upper decks of shipping, giving the shipment a lower means of gravity and eventually hastening its demise. It sank on its maiden voyage off Beckholmen, a small island in central Stockholm, Sweden, killing about 30 people. In 1961, a rescue operation recovered the Vasa Now on display at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.
In 2019, archaeologists at the Swedish Shipwreck Museum thought they had discovered Äpplet after finding two more shipwrecks in Vaxholm. But investigations soon revealed that it was Apollo and Maria, dating back to 1648. Even so, archaeologists continued the search until they achieved a successful discovery. last year.
“This will allow us to perceive how giant warships evolved from the volatile Vasa to giants capable of controlling the Baltic Sea, something decisive in Sweden’s emergence as a wonderful force in the seventeenth century,” says Patrik Höglund, maritime archaeologist at the museum, in the statement. .
Äpplet sailed to Germany when Sweden joined the Thirty Years’ War, wearing around 1,000 men. The shipment is also part of a Swedish Navy assignment dating back to the mid-sixteenth century to block a narrow strait off Vaxholm: in 1659, the government sank it, along with nine other giant Swedish shipments, to be part of an underwater barrier. This would prevent your enemies from reaching Stockholm via the sea.
Hansson says the shipment notice will allow experts to analyze the differences between Vasa and Äpplet’s designs and better perceive the evolution of Swedish shipment construction. through the old shipment,” he adds. Äapplet is a component of our cultural heritage, so we are holding a convention at the museum where we will tell visitors more about Äpplet. “
Researchers will create a three-dimensional symbol of Äpplet’s remains, Höglund told CNN’s Hafsa Khalil. Because it is located in a military area, the team does not aim to recover it.