Trevor Draeseke
Fieldwork, Recording techniques, Warship, Swords, Early Modern
For the past several days members of the Arkeologienheten at Sjöhistoriska have been out at Beckholmen recording ship timbers as they are exposed by the excavator machine.
Due to environmental conditions diving in the shallow water was not an option, so we've had the not so easy task of having to make sense of the wreck in pieces.
On Friday, what we believe to be the ship's sternpost appeared and on it, a nut and bolt.
This, of course, means the wreck is not very old. The first precision lathe-made nuts and bolts were made in Great Britain in 1797.
Given the extremely good preservation of the ship timbers, it is likely the wreck is associated with the filling of the area in the mid 1800s. This is also consistent with the nut and bolt seen above. It was common to use old ships to give stability to sediments as they were dumped in the water when expanding a waterfront area or quay.
Below you can see what appears to be an intentional cut in the ship's garboard strake to scuttle the ship.
Below is an attempt at reassembling what is believed to be the ship's sternpost with the garboard strake.
Karin found this on the site of Wreck IV, the more carefully finished wreck associated with the coin from 1676.
By the size and overall form it is believed to be a sword grip. It has a leather wrapping with brass wire wraps on the top and bottom to hold the leather in place.
In this photo you can see where the blade's tang entered the grip.
The production of swords in Sweden, for the vast military of the 17th century, was handled through a series of government cutleries. If wreck IV is associated with the naval dockyards of Blasieholmen, as we suspect, this sword may have been produced at Vira Bruk. Established by Admiral Clas Fleming in 1630, Vira Bruk lay just 50 km outside of Stockholm.
Sjöhistoriska has returned to Strängnäs for further investigations, having first been here in August of this year. We're back to define the extent of the cultural layer and do some more detailed investigations of a couple shipwrecks in Västerviken. This time we brought in some help for some of the heavy lifting...
This time we had the help of a 22 ton digger with a 16 meter long arm. Foto: Gustav Bergljung.
The digger was used to excavate a test trench in order to further our understanding of the bay's stratigraphy (or arrangement of layers in the sediment). Upon nearing completion of the test trench, a new frame timber came up in the scoop and digging halted.
Frame with treenail. Foto: Trevor Draeseke.
Work continues, lucky for us no ice just yet...
Foto: Mikael Fredholm.
Today I was given a chance to see the site from a very new perspective...suspended some 25 meters over the site in the crane's basket.
We are now down to a depth of 7 meters across the site--10 meters in some areas.
Already looking forward to the next time I'm sent up!
