‘Äpplet’, the 17th-century sister ship of Sweden’s infamous ‘Vasa’
In August 1628, a huge warship was called Vasa (named after Sweden’s royal family) began its long-awaited maiden voyage from Stockholm. To say it didn’t go well would be the understatement of the 17th century: King Gustav II Adolf had wanted the ship to be massive on an unprecedented scale, and builders never quite landed on the right proportions for such a task. The future crown jewel of the Swedish fleet sank before it even reached a mile.
Its sister ship, The apple (“the apple”), had better luck. Taking notes from his latest failure, shipbuilder Hein Jakobsson fine-tuned the shape of the hull and widened the entire vessel to better accommodate its bulk. All in all, the size was not directly a selling point: Like Sweden’s Wrecks – Museum of Wrecks explains, huge ships required more expensive maintenance and were also more difficult to sail than their smaller counterparts; Thus, The apple probably spent much of his naval career just sitting. But at least it stayed afloat well enough to participate in the Thirty Years’ War and remain in service until 1658. After that, you believe it the ship was deliberately sunk to help create underwater nail strips, which formed a barricade in the water off Vaxholm’s coast that could damage enemy ships.
The exact location of The apples final resting place has been a mystery for the past few centuries. So in one respect Vasa fared somewhat better than its rude younger sibling: The wreck was excavated back in the 1950s and is now displayed in its own, very popular museum.
But now, finally, The apples remains have also been found. The discovered was made by naval archaeologists from Vrak – the Wreck Museum as part of Stockholm University’s program “The Forgotten Fleet” – an initiative that maps and studies ships from Swedish naval history. The researchers first discovered The apples then unidentified wreck in December 2021 after teaming up with the Swedish navy to investigate a strait off Vaxholm.
“Our pulses went up when we saw how similar the wreckage was Vasa,” Vrak maritime archaeologist Jim Hansson said in a press release. “Both the construction and the powerful dimensions seemed very familiar. The hope of finding one of Vasas sistership ignited within us.”
Earlier this year they tested some timber taken from the wreck and found that some oak samples came from the same area (and roughly the same time period) as Vasathe wood had come from. With that detail—and other archival evidence and design similarities—the team concluded that the anonymous Vaxholm Shipwreck was actually The apple.
In order to preserve the wreck, there are currently no plans to remove it from its grave. Instead, archaeologists will study digital data collected underwater. A central focus of the research is to determine exactly how The apple differed from its ill-fated predecessor.
“This will help us understand how the great warships evolved, from the unstable Vasa to seaworthy giants who could control the Baltic Sea — a decisive factor for Sweden’s emergence as a great power in the 17th century,” explained maritime archaeologist Patrik Höglund in the press release.