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A fifteenth - century regal warship resting off the coast of Sweden once served as a " floating castle " for an intrepid king , according to new submerged investigation that reveal cannons , handguns , crossbows and the watercraft ’s austere superstructure .
The raw finds on the crash of the Gribshunden — the flagship of King Hans ( or John ) of Denmark until it sank in 1495 — show the vessel plied the sea as a fearsome ship of war gird with dozens of gun and pack with soldiers .
One of the archaeologists excavating the Gribshunden, led by Sweden’s Lund University, explores some of the ship’s timbers.
It ’s thought that the Gribshunden was armed with up to 90 early cannons , although they were much small than the ship - smashing carom of the previous sixteenth century , and that they were complemented by armoured soldiers firing handguns and crossbows from the ship ’s upper deck , forecastle and sterncastle — the tall superstructures built at each end of the ship .
The 115 - foot - long ( 35 meter ) wooden ship was one of the first vessels design to carry artillery . It also utilized the new " carvel " ship building technique , import to the Baltic from the Mediterranean , of bring together the planks of the Cordell Hull edge to border on a wooden frame of reference instead of overlapping them in " lapstrakes . "
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The wooden hull and superstructures of the 500-year-old ship are in a remarkable state of preservation because the eastern Baltic Sea is too cold and brackish for shipworm to infest the wreck.(Image credit: Brett Seymour)
That meant the Gribshunden could be built heavy and potent than ship with lapstrakes , and so it could carry more in grievous seas .
" This is kind of a fresh technology , " Brendan Foley , a maritime archeologist at Lund University in Sweden who is conduct the latest excavations , told Live Science . " It was design to carry artillery , and King Hans use the ship in a fashion that no other king does . "
Royal flagship
From the mid-1480s , Hans oft journey on the Gribshunden throughout his realm , often besiege by a expectant royal fleet , Foley say , add that the ship was intended to intimidate the king ’s competition .
The Logos of the premature Danish king , Hans ruled Denmark from 1481 and reach the crown of Norway in 1483 , but Sweden did n’t take to his formula until 1497 .
" His kingdom is Denmark and Norway , and he ’s assay to get Sweden to rejoin the Nordic Union , " Foley state . " So Hans is sweep around on this ship all the time . " ( The Nordic Union of Denmark , Norway and Sweden was also called the Kalmar Union , after the town in Sweden where it was agreed in 1397 . )
The Gribshunden was new technology for its time, with a hull built in the “carvel” style of planks fitted edge-to-edge that allowed it to be big enough to carry guns.(Image credit: Brett Seymour)
Hans embark on the Gribshunden ( which means " Griffindog , " although it originally seems to have been call " Griffon " ) for negotiations at Kalmar in 1495 when the ship mysteriously sank , supposedly after a flame break out , at an anchorage ground just offshore near the town of Ronneby .
The king and his retinue were onshore at the clip , buta looker to the disastersaid many of the roughly 150 men onboard were killed .
Many of the ship ’s guns were probably salvaged shortly after the sinking , Foley state ; the latest excavation found only 14 gun carriages near the austere , but many more were likely situated near the bow .
As well as recovering small cannons, handguns, crossbars and other artifacts, archaeologists on the latest dives captured 3D data for digital reconstructions.(Image credit: Brett Seymour)
A peculiarity of the eastern Baltic Sea is that it ’s too cold and brackish for infestations of teredinid ( which is not a louse but a mollusk , Teredo navalis ) . Because of that , the wooden gun stroller are still intact , although the iron guns have rusted aside , he said .
But there was no sign of fire , so the ship probably sank quickly after being hole below the water line , maybe because its store of powder had explode . " It ’s one of the first ships carry powder , so they in all probability had n’t worked out standard operating procedures for prophylactic , " Foley said .
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The Gribshunden wreck was rediscovered in the 1970s off the coast of Sweden by local divers, but it wasn’t identified until 2013.(Image credit: Blekinge Museum)
Floating castle
Local divers rediscovered the wreck of the Gribshunden near Ronneby in the seventies , beneath about 33 feet ( 10 m ) of water . It was name in 2013 , and in 2015,archaeologistsrecovered several artifacts , including thefigurehead of a personclutched in the jaw of a dog ordragon , Live Science reported at the clip .
Foley led dives to the wreck in August and September , during which the team recovered more artifacts and captured three - dimensional data for a digital reconstruction .
The shipwreck is consider a proxy for the ships from the Age of Exploration , such as those of Christopher Columbus andVasco da Gama , which were built at about the same time but are now drop off . " Nothing else like this has been find oneself , " Foley said .
The Gribshunden sank in 1495, supposedly after a fire broke out on board. According to witnesses, roughly 150 men on board were killed in the sinking.(Image credit: Blekinge Museum)
The combination of shooter and crossbows , as well as the remnants of shirts of ring armor armour that were also found , show the changeover from other arm to gunpowder , he added .
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Artifacts recovered from the Gribshunden wreck are being restored and researched by archaeologists on dry land.(Image credit: Blekinge Museum)
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The larger ship ’s guns were mounted on swivels within their wooden carriages and fired projectiles about the size of golf orchis . Meanwhile , the handguns were very round-eyed — about 16 inches ( 40 centimeter ) long , with projectile like musket orchis that were can by touching a friction match to a hole in the back . " They were essentially like a small cannon , " Foley say .
Fritz Jürgens , a maritime archaeologist at Kiel University in Germany is n’t involve in the study of the Gribshunden , but he ’s leading research into arare 400 - year - old shipdiscovered in the outer stretch of the Trave River in the western Baltic . He noted that the Gribshunden is the sure-enough carvel - built ship ever find in the Baltic and one of the quondam purpose - build warships ever discovered .
" In the Middle Ages and in the later Hanseatic period [ when a trading bloc command the Baltic , from the 13th to seventeenth C ] , they take normal cargo ship and put Sagittarius on it , " Jürgens said . " But the Gribshunden had artillery on the forecastle and sterncastle — it was specifically built for warfare . "
to begin with published on Live Science .
