Vasa's sister ship Äpplet found – a unique historical discovery

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Vasa's sister ship Äpplet found – a unique historical discovery

Marine archaeologists from Vrak - Museum of Wrecks, have found the wreck of the ship Äpplet (the Apple). The ship was launched in 1629 and was constructed by the same shipbuilder that built the ship Vasa only a year earlier. Experts within the research programme "The Forgotten Fleet" can now confirm that the discovery is in fact the Apple - Vasa's sister ship.



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Gunport at Äpplet. Photo: Jim Hansson Vrak/SMTM

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Äpplet (the Apple), port side of the hull with cutout for cannon port. Photo: Jim Hansson, Vrak/SMTM.


www.su.se

Vasa's sister ship Äpplet found – a unique historical discovery - Stockholm University

Maritime archaeologists from Vrak have discovered the wreck of ship Äpplet (The Apple), a 17th century warship.
www.su.se www.su.se

www.vrak.se

Vrak - Äpplet

When king Gustav II Adolf ordered ships for his fleet one of them sank and became world famous: Vasa. But the ship has a sister: Äpplet.
www.vrak.se www.vrak.se
 
Take a look at the video (40 min) at the end showing a conference, where they analyse the Äpplet wreck - unfortunately in swedish, but I guess our friend and member @fred.hocker knows more.....

www.gp.se

Vasas systerskepp Äpplet har hittats: ”Pulsen steg”

Museum of Wrecks marinbiologer har gjort ett spektakulärt fynd. Det är Vasas systerskepp Äpplet som har hittats i Östersjön. – Det här är en viktig och stor dag för den svenska marinen, säger marinchefen Eva Skoog Haslum.
www.gp.se www.gp.se


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digitaltmuseum.se

Äpplet – Vasas systerfartyg

Vrak – Museum of Wrecks
digitaltmuseum.se digitaltmuseum.se


"Gustav II Adolfs Äpplet"
Två stora skepp som var samtida med Vasa

in Marinarkeologisk tidskrift nr 4, 2002.

 

Attachments

translated with google:

The Apple was, along with the royal ship Vasa , one of two large warships that Sweden built in the late 1620s on behalf of Gustav II Adolf . The apple was built at the same shipyard as Vasa but was completed a little later and came to have slightly different proportions. The reason may be that a new master builder, Hein Jakobsson , took over and modified the ship after the original master builder Henrik Hybertsson died in 1627. Jakobsson claimed to have widened the Vasa by just over a footand probably had even better opportunities to modify the design of the Apple .

The Apple should not be confused with the Apple that was built in Västervik a few years earlier but was sold by the crown as early as 1625. There is not much literature on any of the ships but some of what exists confuses the construction of the 1628 Apple with a repair of the earlier Apple .

The apple was launched in 1629, less than a year after the sinking of the Vasa. The ship was not a success but was used, among other things, in 1630, when the Swedish army was shipped over to Germany during the Thirty Years' War . Although other ships were smaller, the Admiral chose them more often, as they moved better. In 1658, the Apple was worn and the damage was deemed too costly to repair. After almost 30 years in use, the Äpplet was sunk outside Vaxholm to block off the strait as a protection against enemies.

In December 2021, marine archaeologists from the Wreck Museum found a large shipwreck off Vaxholm . In the spring of 2022, marine archaeological investigations of the wreck were carried out through, among other things, wood samples and measurement. In October 2022, as a result, the Wreck Museum was able to confirm that it was the regal ship Äpplet that they found off Vaxholm. The apple was judged to be relatively well preserved even if parts of the upper cannon deck collapsed. There were various factors that suggested that it was the Apple that had been found, including that the beam bearings resembled those on the regal ship Vasa and that the oak used had been cut down in Mälardalen in 1627, where the oak used for the sister ship Vasa had also been felled earlier.

Regalskeppet Äpplet (1629) – Wikipedia

sv.wikipedia.org sv.wikipedia.org
 
The above PDF mainly details why the Apple just found is not another Apple built in 1602. Vasa actually had three sisters built after her. The sisters were named Kronan (the crown) , Göta Ark (götaland is a part Sweden, and ark is the same as in Ark Royal) and finally Scepter. Tthey were all built after Vasa and all changed to include more stability which neant thet they did not sink prematurely. Two of them, Göta ark and Scepter even had a career in the navy but the Apple mostly stayed in her dock in Stockholm. She really was too big for the conditions in the Baltic in the mid 1650:ies. That probably is a contributing factor to her being rotten enough to be sunk as a blockship already 1658.

What intrigues me, and what I have not yet been able to find out, is if she was as decorated by sculptures as Vasa. Maybe the sculptures would have been removed before sinking, but maybe some were left. It will be interesting to find out and I will be keeping an eye out. If I find something I will post it here.

Oh, by the way. The apple seems like an unlikely name but is is not because we Swedes really like apples (we do, but that is beside the point) but rather names for one of the kingly regalia. In swedish it is called the ”riksäpplet”. A straight translation would be the ”Apple of the land”, but in English the same regalia is called by its latin name, ”Globus cruciger”, or if translated to English ”the globe surmounted by a cross”. Below I have included a link to the Swedish regalia. The apple is at the bottom right.


https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sve...tre,_orb_&_key_of_the_King_of_Sweden_2014.jpg
 
This discovery is very exciting to me. Thanks for sharing it with us. I get a thrill from seeing something that was built almost 400 years ago, or almost anytime before I was born.
 
Äpplet should be very interesting to look at in detail! I am looking forward to working with our archaeological diving team on the analysis.

As a matter of technical detail, one could consider Äpplet as a sister ship to Vasa, as they were built to the same design, with a few modifications made to Äpplet even before Vasa was launched. For example, Äpplet was about three feet wider. Otherwise, the construction appears to be very similar. Äpplet had similar problems to Vasa, with low initial stability. Her armament was reduced after her first sailing season, and she was not sailed much after the early 1630s. The navy after Gustav Adolf's death had little interest in big ships in any case, preferring smaller vessels.

The later ships Kronan, Göta Ark and Scepter were new designs, with different proportions and fewer guns, so are probably not proper sisters to Vasa, but they might be considered a development of the idea that the king began with Vasa. Kronan and Scepter were designed by Hein Jacobsson, who had taken over the completion of Vasa and Äpplet, so have some connection to the early vessels, but he had very different ideas about ship design than Vasa's designer. These later ships were in service for decades, some appearing in the naval battles of the Danish war of the late 1650s.

The question from Armengar about sculptures is interesting. We have not seen any so far in the wreckage, and we can see evidence that the hull was stripped before it was sink. Will keep you posted!

Fred
 
fred.hocker said:
Äpplet should be very interesting to look at in detail! I am looking forward to working with our archaeological diving team on the analysis.

As a matter of technical detail, one could consider Äpplet as a sister ship to Vasa, as they were built to the same design, with a few modifications made to Äpplet even before Vasa was launched. For example, Äpplet was about three feet wider. Otherwise, the construction appears to be very similar. Äpplet had similar problems to Vasa, with low initial stability. Her armament was reduced after her first sailing season, and she was not sailed much after the early 1630s. The navy after Gustav Adolf's death had little interest in big ships in any case, preferring smaller vessels.

The later ships Kronan, Göta Ark and Scepter were new designs, with different proportions and fewer guns, so are probably not proper sisters to Vasa, but they might be considered a development of the idea that the king began with Vasa. Kronan and Scepter were designed by Hein Jacobsson, who had taken over the completion of Vasa and Äpplet, so have some connection to the early vessels, but he had very different ideas about ship design than Vasa's designer. These later ships were in service for decades, some appearing in the naval battles of the Danish war of the late 1650s.

The question from Armengar about sculptures is interesting. We have not seen any so far in the wreckage, and we can see evidence that the hull was stripped before it was sink. Will keep you posted!

Fred
Click to expand...
Many Thanks Fred for the additional interesting information.
I am looking forward the future news and knowledge which will come up .....
 
New developments. Dives at the wreck this summer has showed that sculptures, at least from the stern of the ship, is on the bottom alongside the hull of the ship.

So far parts of the coat of arms and other sculptures from the stern of the ship has been found in the sediments close to the wreck. Additionally at least one lions head from a gunport lid has been found. I have included two links below. One is the press release from June this year (in English) where the discoveries are reported. The second one is a short film, unfortunately in Swedish, where images from dives to the wreck is shown. The lions from the coat of arms and one of the gunport lids is shown.

www.vrak.se

Vrak - Sculptures from Äpplet shipwreck discovered

Just over a year after Vasa’s sister ship Äpplet was discovered by maritime archaeologists from Vrak – Museum of Wrecks and the Swedish navy, new investigations reveal startling new finds.
www.vrak.se www.vrak.se

www.vrak.se

Vrak - Äpplet - new findings

www.vrak.se www.vrak.se

Below is also an image, in Swedish, showing where the different sculptures could have been mounted on the stern. (I have borrowed it from where I found it since I could not find a link to it on the vrak.se website. But the copyright should be Vrak - the museum of wrecks in Sweden)

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I am still keeping an eye out for scholarly publications on the subject but have not found any so far. Since the authorities have so far only allowed photography of the wreck, the sculptures are still in situ in the bottom silt. As I understand the process of receiving permission to move and also excavate around the sculptures is underway, we might have more Information in the coming years. A few podcasts where the archaeologists involved in the dives have talked about the finds and their plans for the future can be found out there, but as always regarding this subject the podcasts are all in Swedish.

Hopefully Dr. Fred Hocker (@fred.hocker ) can advise us on the progress. He is, as you perhaps already know, the research leader at the Vasa museum and one of the worlds foremost experts on Vasa.
 
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Hej Armengar,

I am involved in this project as an advisor and can report a little more. We will be carrying out more dives and documentation at the site, but it is unlikely that there will be any substantial excavation in the near future. The visible sculptures are partly buried under a large thicket of fallen timbers, which would have to be removed first. There is heavy traffic directly over the wreck, so it is not possible to keep a working vessel moored over the site for heavy lifting operations. We will investigate the possibility, but the process may take time.

Generally speaking, the trend in maritime archaeology in recent years is to document things in place rather than recovering them to the surface. Recovery means conservation, which takes years, and a place to stored the conserved objects. We now have very effective tools for 3d mapping of shipwrecks, and we are using those to develop a good idea of what lies on the bottom. We can see, for example, that the large national coat of arms on Äpplet is proportioned differently from the one on Vasa, suggesting that the transoms on the two vessels have slightly different shapes (the information contained in the poster reproduced in Armengar's post).

The first objective on Äpplet is to develop an accurate understanding of exactly how much of the ship survives and how the loose pieces are distributed. After we have a good overall picture, we can start to plan objectives to answer specific questions.

Fred
 
Hej Fred,

I understand the problems of lifting out any sculptures. And the 3D mapping is a useful tool, but if I am allowed a wish here it is that some (most!?!) of the sculptures can be revealed form the silt but still be kept underwater. Then they also could be 3D mapped and when the examination is finished they could be reburied in the silt to preserve them.

My personal area of research is metals and corrosion of metals at high temperatures, not much use in this context. I do however have an understanding of the need for prioritisation of the research effort.

Ever since I heard of the discovery of Applet I have nurtured this idea about how the sculptures were maintained. We know that Vasa sank just after completion. Her sculptures are in a sense pristine. Applet was 30 years old when she was sunk but the decorations likely made by the same sculptors. Her sculptures had been subjected to the Swedish weather for all of that time. Had the sculptures been repaired? Were they regularly repainted? Had they been altered when the tastes of the admirals changed and the fashion of the day went from baroque to rococo? The sculptures was left on the ship when was sunk. Was the reason that the sculptures had degraded enough to be essentially worthless. When I was in the navy in Karlskrona I seem to remember being told that some of the sculptures in the small parish churches near the town was repurposed ship decorations. Wouldn't some of the sculptures from Applet have been suitable for that?

Anyway many questions. But I am certain that any excavations will be properly executed and according to what is possible with respect to the site and its difficulties. I just hope that some effort will be directed to the decoration of the ship.

/Armengar
 
Hej Armengar,
The questions that you have are many of the same ones we have. We will document as much of the wreck as can be reached, but there is a big pile of loose timbers lying on top of the coherent part of the wreck as result of blasting the ship in the 19th century to clear the blockage. A large part of the starboard side is broken off and leaning against another ship which lies alongside Äpplet. That may still have decoration along the quarter galleries visible, if we can reach it. The questions about the sculptures are related to other questions about how thoroughly the ship was stripped before it was sunk. We can see, for example, that all of the gunport sills had been removed, probably as part of a major survey of the ship in 1658. One might imagine that the main sculptures on the stern, which represent the ship's name and the riksvapen (as it was in 1629) were not reusable, especially as the dynasty had changed by the time Äpplet was sunk, but that other smaller elements could have been removed and repurposed. Stay tuned for updates!

Fred
 
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