The Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.  Jottings Issue 2004/4; Visit Supliment.

I took my daughter, Vivienne, over to Stockholm in Sweden for a four day and four nights long weekend in the second weekend in September to see the ‘Vasa’ the Swedish warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. Apart from the car breaking down on the way to Heathrow the flight was a delight, swiftly through customs and baggage handling and straight to the Express from Airport to Central Station in the City.

 First thing we noticed was the cleanliness of the station, even the gravel was clean. Tickets were machine issued but a very nice female blonde train attendant helped us through it before we spotted the English option. Everyone speaks English as well as Swedish and everyone is very friendly and helpful. The train was fast and clean and had computer screens for announcements as well as multi language guard announcements. The hotel was only a short walk from the Station and the city is like Amsterdam, meaning everything is within walking distance all around the centre.

 We decided to visit the Vasa Museum the next morning, Friday, which was a good move as it was less crowded than at the weekend. We walked down a main street then along the harbour side and passed the tour and commuter boats to the islands that make up the rest of Stockholm, while on the land side were beautiful buildings from an exhibition in 1900 when different world architects competed to design the best buildings, obviously within similar parameters and it was understandable that film stars etc., lived in the apartments overlooking the harbour. 

Further on there were many old sailing ships, sloops and yawls being refurbished, apparently this is encouraged and mooring fees are subsidised for this. There was also a floating restaurant where we ate later, then over the bridge to an adjacent island where the Vasa building stands out. Three steel masts sticking out of the roof, symbolising the actual height of the Vasa’s original masts, signal its treasure inside.

We managed to beat a party of the ubiquitous Japanese to the entrance where Vivienne got a cheaper ticket as a student. The sight of the bow of the ‘Vasa’ as you walk in is awesome and it is difficult to know where to start.  

There are tours every hour with Swedish and English tours being the greatest number, and there is also a short film, about 25 minutes, showing the history of the time that she sank and the salvage of the ‘Vasa’. Seeing the ship appear above the waterline drew comparisons with the Mary Rose salvage and seeing her patched up at bow and stern but actually floating into the dock in 1961 was tremendous.

The films are in Swedish or English in the off-season with French, or German etc subtitles whereas in the summer there are more foreign language films. 

We started going around the ship on the ground floor and went to the film when it was announced. Because there were not so many people there we could read the displays easily, (Swedish and English) and could listen in on titbits from any passing tour, but if it was busy the tour would be the best option. There are at least three floors to view the ship from to give you some size of the vessel and any wood that is not original is left so that while it blends in it is apparent it has been replaced. They said it was like putting a jigsaw together by matching holes in one bit to see where another odd bit went. For instance one side of the gingerbread (decorative carvings) on the stern is original and worn while the other is a clean edged replica. A representation of a variety of possible decorative colours is on the adjacent wall. Looking up to the full height of the stern and down to the keel gave you some idea of its sheer size as does the picture below; compare the people with the ship.

The bowsprit is extraordinarily long and high with a lookout top on it but who would relish clambering out along its length in even the quietest sea. There is also a reconstructed top on the highest floor at mast height, which overlooks the ship and the void below and just standing on there made me uneasy, despite the railings, as I have no head for heights so with my seasickness as well I would not have been much use. 

There is a brand new exhibition about the people found on board the wreck so that as well as their skeletons, there are details of how they looked from reconstructed faces, their diseases, most were malnourished, and any fractures or deformities they had. Many artefacts from inside the ship are displayed around the floors with details of life aboard, the battle and the sinking and the way the ship was built and who by. Dutchmen by all accounts and I had seen the ship’s boat earlier on, which had the drop down steering side flaps? that the Dutch use in their shallow zees so that made sense. 

The fore and main mast, are original up to the first top while the mizzen is a replica. The ‘Vasa’ is dry so everything is clear to see and you are only about ten feet away from touching her at any point and you can peer in through the open gun ports to see inside or look down on her decks or rigging. I was interested to see if they had a fishplate where the stern joins the keel and as it was quite gloomy in there I asked one of the restorers working under the bow, who said they had found no such fish plate. 

I had books on the ‘Vasa’ but never thought I would see her in the flesh, it is well worth seeing and as I told Vivienne there is nothing like it in the World. Don’t make a comparison with the Mary Rose they are different and offer different views of a ship’s construction, one is whole the other a cutaway. However both sank in similar circumstances and in each case both were found by one man’s obsession.  

The ‘Vasa’ is to undergo treatment for sulphuric acid contamination due to the water content from the thousands of visitors reacting with the sulphur in the ship’s wood creating the acid, which then eats away the iron bolts but millions of kronor have been set aside to do it. 

Having achieved the salvage and the original treatment to conserve the wooden hull I have no doubt that the Swedes will overcome their present problems, in the meantime enjoy it if you get the chance. 

I purchased a 25 minute video, which I think is the same as the film shown in the Museum and I will put it onto computer shortly.

SW

Musée Maritime on Ile Tatihou, France - Jottings Issue 2004/4; Visit Supliment.

Cherbourg is only 2½ hours from Poole by Brittany Ferries fastcat service and just 30km from St Vaast-la-Hougue, the pleasant fishing port on Normandy’s NE coast that is the embarkation point for the crossing to Ile Tatihou by a quaint amphibious boat - 7.60€ return including museum entry. The 5 cable crossing takes 10 minutes as it chugs past, or at low water springs, drives round the famous oyster beds when most of the trip is overland after the tide has dropped 5.7m! On the island there is a fine fort built by the celebrated 17^th century military architect Vauban, a seabird sanctuary and the Musée Maritime.

 In 1692 a French and Irish army had gathered at St Vaast and set sail for Britain in an attempt to restore the deposed Stuart King James II to the English throne. However the fleet was destroyed by a combined Anglo-Dutch force before it could get any further than La Hougue. The battle took place just off Tatihou and the Museum’s central display consists of material recovered from the five French ships sunk.

The main exhibit located in the Lazaret of the fort is elegantly simple with artefacts displayed in context using modern materials, for example wooden deadeyes are suspended by thin stainless steel wire and rigged with new hemp ropes, a few barrel staves are attached to a full-size wire barrel frame, slightly obscure pieces of structure are displayed with a detailed construction drawing showing its complete shape and where it was positioned in the wreck highlighted by a masked light and the underwater video was shown in a darkened area behind a porthole. Outside a full-size re-production of the keel, keelson, first futtocks, bow and stern posts gives a sense of proportion to the exhibits inside. Picture were taken of some of these ideas that I am sure could be simply applied to a future Weymouth and Portland Maritime Museum.

In addition it usually has two temporary exhibitions, this year has one on the origins of romantic maritime fiction, very originally displayed, including Herman Melville, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Fenimore Cooper and of course many French authors.

The second shows the depiction of boats and maritime activities in church stain glass windows (Right). Both are very interesting and one wonders if there are many of our English churches with similar pictures. The only criticism was the lack of English translations, unlike the main exhibition which was well documented in English.

 It is also possible to easily take in some of the Normandy invasion beaches, Utah, the most westerly of the D-Day invasion beaches, is just 15km south. Here is the powerful ‘Musée de la Liberté’ at Quinéville that strongly evokes the emotions of being an occupied country and then being devastated by the liberating armies. One of its highlights is to walk down a reconstruction village street adorned with German posters announcing the strict nightly curfew and rewards for turning in saboteurs to the sound of songs from that period.

 11km north of St Vaast-la-Hougue is the harbour of Barfleur, once the biggest port in Normandy in the 13^th century with a population of 9,000, now reduced to 600. A plaque on the harbour commemorates the fact that William the Conqueror embarked for England in 1066 in a ship, the ‘Mona’, built in Barfleur and captained by M. étienne from Barfleur. A short walk from the lifeboat station, the first in France, takes you to the huge 75m. Gatteville light house built in 1834 where, William’s descendant, and Henry I son, sadly died in 1120 with 300 others when his boat “flew swifter than winged arrows, sweeping the rippling surface of the deep, but the carelessness of the intoxicated crew drove her onto a rock, which rose above the waves not far from the shore”.

DJC

Metals Conservation Course - Jottings Issue 2004/5

Ron Howse attended this two day NAS Part III course at Portsmouth on 23^rd and 24^th of October.

 The first morning was a lecture on the causes and reasons for corrosion followed in the afternoon by a practical in which the group was split into pairs and given pieces of crud from the Mary Rose to X-Ray, measure and record before careful extraction of the item in the crud. The best find was 3 small cannon balls while the most unusual was a scaffold clip from the initial excavations in the ‘70s which demonstrated how much corrosion can occur in just 30 years in the sea. Speculation has been rife that this scaffold clip was the actual one that Prince Charles held onto when he dived the wreck before it was raised.

 Day two started with a lecture on conservation and finished in the afternoon with a behind the scenes tour of the Mary Rose workshops and stores.

 Ron described the weekend as the best course he had attended at NAS and that he will be pleased to pass on the knowledge gained, and go through the handouts received on the course, with any interested members of the Weymouth Lunar Society.

DJC

‘Extreme Archaeology’ meets ‘Massive Nature’ By David Carter- Issue2004/7

Following a stimulating talk by Dr Dolores Elkin at the 2003 NAS Conference about her work on the wrecksite of a British Naval ship sunk in Argentinean waters in 1770 an invitation was made to form an international team to participate in the November 2004 season of survey work. The 18 members of the team, including both professional and amateur archaeologists from Argentina (4), UK (8), Australia (2) and representatives from Canada, Colombia, Ireland and Switzerland, met-up in Buenos Aires. Two days of site-seeing of the Argentinean capital taking in the famous Casa Rosada and Eva Peron’s tomb enabled British Airways to find our baggage in time for us to fly 1,500km south to Comodoro Rivadavia and transfer to a characterful coach for the last 280km to Puerto Deseado where ‘HMS Swift’ finished her days and we were to spend the 14 days.

On the 13^th March 1770 Captain George Farmer  in HMS Swift, a British “sloop-of-war” based in the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, was making an unscheduled cartography voyage when she tried to enter the Puerto Deseado estuary in Southern Patagonia and became grounded on an uncharted submerged rock. After several manoeuvres she freed herself without major damage but then the wind and current pushed her further into the estuary where she grounded again on another rock covered by the high tide in the vicinity of what is now the harbour area and started to take on water. Despite the efforts of her crew she sank beside the rock that caused the tragedy, fortuitously, of the 90 or so crew aboard, only 3 died.

Discovered in 1982 by local divers just 50 metres from the shore, near Puerto Deseado’s large fishing fleet and within a few metres of the rock that sank her, she lies on her port side at an angle of about 60⁰, with her stern in 20 metres, while her bow is only 10 metres below the surface. Much of the port side has collapsed and the main deck is broken but she is remarkably well preserved with perhaps 66% of her structure remaining. Much of the structural timbers can be seen, as well as cannon, her capstan and two anchors. Over a number of seasons a small team of dedicated Argentinean archaeologists have surveyed a large area of the site and raised and conserved an interesting selection of artefacts, some of which can be seen in the local museum. The quality and quantity of the archaeology has been compared with the ‘Mary Rose’ and to my amateur eye I would agree

The diving conditions were challenging due to very poor visibility, currents up to 3 knots and variable sea conditions in the estuary. On the one day my turn in the water coincided with the optimum conditions it was still only 1 metre and for all of the other dives it was substantially less than that, one dive had to be limited to just a buoyancy check, another had to be aborted through zero viz, and the last day abandoned due to adverse sea conditions, never-the-less it was a privilege to just be there. However the underwater objectives of the expedition were to survey the bow area and over the 2 weeks about 200 measurements were taken and put into the software package “Site Surveyor” and in addition sketch drawings were made of the bow area. On the final day a plate that had become exposed was raised for conservation and a delicate leather artefact that had become partially exposed was protected by a sand covered membrane.

Whilst the diving activities must be described as disappointing the local fauna and scenery was spectacular and exceeded all expectations. It both looked and felt like the “Far Side of the World”. Clear blue skies, sensational red sunsets, awesomely desolate pampas, stunning bird life with Megallanic penguins and kelp gulls unoblivious to us as we carefully wandered through their nesting grounds, three types of cormorants, rheas, flamingos and a host of unfamiliar birds requiring the purchase of a local nature guide to identify. Black and white Commerson’s dolphins looking like small killer whales played in the estuary as we kayaking to Penguin Island and colonies of sea lions lauded it on rocky outcrops whilst on land guanacos (cousins of the camel) and hares inhabited the pampas with the occasional sheep and wild horse. Apart from the natural beauty of the area the site-seeing highlights were the tower of the local church which also doubles as a lighthouse and the Railway Station built by Eastern European master craftsmen who completed the civil engineering aspects of a planned but never completed trans-continental railway in the early 1900s. An afternoon boat trip took us to an inlet several miles up the estuary where in 1615 the Dutch navigators Schouten and Lemaire beached their boats to burn off the marine growths but unfortunately the fire got out of control and the ‘Hoorn’ was lost leaving them just one boat to round the southern tip of South America which they named Cape Horn after their unfortunate ship. What remains of the ‘Hoorn’ is unknown but shards of early 17^th century pottery still lie exposed on the beach which we left undisturbed.

Whilst most evenings revolved around indecently large amounts of excellent steak and Patagonian red wine one night we gave a series of lectures to a local audience including a short resume of our work on the ‘Earl of Abergavenny’. We were very fortunate to meet Marcos Oliva Day, public prosecutor, local historian, Patagonian explorer and environmentalist who runs a unique voluntary project in the town giving free kayak lessons to the children in the summer holidays who took some of us kayaking and on trips to see some of the beauty of his country and after the farewell dinner, on the final night, to the top of the hill overlooking the town and estuary to listen to the evening chorus of the seabirds competing with the deep melodious honking of the penguins.

After most of the team flew back to Buenos Aires from Comodoro Rivadavia, four of us travelled 450km further north by bus to Trelew where the original 19^th century Welsh immigrants settled and then onto the prosperous coastal town of Puerto Madryn, the gateway to the Peninsula Valdes Nature Reserve to see and film the Southern Right Whales with their calves. We were not disappointed as 7 or 8 whales happily obliged coming so close that one actually touched the boat as it passed under our small RIB. This was followed by two relaxing dives on a purposely-sunk wreck and a visit to their sensational Eco Centre before starting for home. Our flight back to BA was enlivened by Alfredo Casero, a larger than life film star/director/singer we had bumped into earlier, who invited us to stay and dive with him next time we were in the area! Finally we just had time for one last steak, a night in BA and to catch up with some of the others before taking our Business Class seats, offered by BA as compensation for losing our luggage on the way out, back to London and dear old Weymouth.

Was it all worthwhile? For me, definitely yes. What was achieved?

·  Profile raised of maritime archaeology and specifically of the Swift Project at Municipal, National and International levels.

·  Knowledge transfer of the application and benefits of the use of ‘Site Surveyor’ to Argentina and also to other members of the group not already familiar.

·  National, International and inter-disciplinary networking.

·  An opportunity for professional and avocational practitioners to have the opportunity to understand the skills and expertise offered by the other.

·  Further development of the ‘Swift’ survey concentrating on the bow area using ‘Site Surveyor’.

·  Extension of the skill sets of some of the members into low visibility and strong current diving.

·  A wonderful introduction to the Southern Patagonia peoples and their magnificent natural resources.

PS: Oh yes! and I got mugged in Buenos Aires, too painful to recount, my own fault really, one must always remain on guard,  in any city in the world!