One of His Majesty's ‘Beste Kraffwells’: the wreck of an early carvel‐built ship at Franska Sternarna, Sweden

Abstract

We report recent fieldwork on an early‐16th‐century wreck in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. The discovery not only provides new insights into early carvel shipbuilding and its adoption across northern Europe but manifests the changing role of ships and the nature of power and agency in the process of state formation at the dawn of the modern world.

© 2012 The Authors

Key words:

• carvel
• shipwreck
• Gustav Eriksson Vasa
• agency
• state formation
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

As well as our respective universities, the Swedish National Maritime Museum provided a substantial proportion of the funding as well as administrative and practical support. Stockholm County Authority provided permits, funding and considerable encouragement. Logistically, key sponsors included Boston Shipping; Stolt Comex Seaway; Gas & Equipment, Aberdeen; Dundee Port Authority; the Royal Swedish Navy; Anders Tegnerud, Nynäsdyk and Lars Göran Uthberg, ProMare. Many colleagues commented on earlier drafts, including Carl Olof Cederlund, Seán McGrail, J. D. Hill, Jerzy Gawronski, Alex Hildred and Nick Rule. We are also indebted to Carl Henric Ankeberg of the Stockholm County Authority and to Jan Glete who also kindly read the article from a historical perspective. Professor Glete's death in 2008 robs us of a pre‐eminent historian of European political and maritime history. This paper is therefore in part dedicated to him and also to team members. Errors that remain are our responsibility.

Notes

1. By the time Anders Franzén gave a paper on the Franska Stenarna wreck at a symposium at Fort Bovisand in March 1993, he stated that it was probably not the Swan, and encouraged the present writers to push forward investigation of the wreck.

2. In a review of Adams and Rönnby (1996) for this journal, Michael Springman doubted whether so much would have been spent on this project had it been realised that the wreck was not that of the Swan (1998: 270). Firstly, we had been of the opinion that this ship could not be the Swan since inspecting it in 1991, and secondly, the cash budget for a project of this size was modest. While the total cost of the 1994 operation would have exceeded £175,000 at commercial rates, the majority was provided through sponsorship or help in kind (see acknowledgements).

3. The depth, the very low light levels, the often fragmentary and distorted nature of the structure and its generally precarious situation make detailed recording a slow process and the plan varies in the degree of accuracy between different parts of the wreck. The position of some peripheral datums, for example on the collapsed stern section, mainmast and lower guns, are provisional at this stage. These and any other points surveyed with fewer than four measurements will be expressed at a finite 3‐D position with no indication of error. Their apparent perfection will flatter the overall result. Hence the true absolute average residual is probably around 20-mm. As of August 2007, 707 distances and relative depths have been taken, of which 40 were ignored (5.6%).

4. The ‘Anthony Roll’ is an illustrated manuscript presented to Henry VIII in 1546 by Anthony Anthony, as part of ‘A Declaration of the Royal Navy’, listing naval ships, their ordnance and other equipment. It is now in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College Cambridge.

5. Various formulae were used to calculate the capacity of a vessel, originally equated with the number of Bordeaux wine casks (tuns) which could be stowed, for example (keel‐length × breadth × depth in hold) ÷ 100 (Salisbury, 1966).