The Funeral That Buried a Fleet

The funeral that buried a fleet It is incredible to think that the Baltic Sea has provided so little evidence of the many bloody naval battles that took place between the Swedish and the combined Danish-Lübeck fleet in these waters more than 400 years ago. Tens of carvel-built vessels sank off the coasts of Öland, Bornholm, Gotland and Rügen, but no one has managed to locate them. At the bottom of the Baltic Sea somewhere near the coast of Öland lies the wreck of the Swedish Navy's flagship, the legendary snow-white carvel-built Mars, also popularly known as Makalös (the Incomparable) because of its enormous size and beauty. Built in 1564 the Mars was the biggest ship on the Baltic Sea, putting the old record-holder Elefanten - a ship almost half its size - into second place. The new vessel, which carried as many as 107 cannon, had a short life. Just one year after its launch, it was involved in an engagement with Danish and Lübeck ships, during which a powder keg stored on deck was hit by an enemy cannon ball and blew up. The ensuing fire spread rapidly through the whole ship. The Mars exploded and sank with several hundred crew, just as a prize crew from the Lübeck ship was coming aboard. Some eyewitnesses claimed to have seen an enormous grey shadow rise out of the sea and envelope the ship. It was, they said, the Goddess of the Sea who had come to claim her victims. Of the many ships that sank during these naval battles only one has been found. The discovery was made by navy divers from former East Germany during military manoeuvres near the Isle of Rügen. They discovered a small bronze cannon with an unusual design. It was in two parts, a breach and an octagonal barrel, and was a type of cannon used in Denmark in the 16th century. But more widely used by the navy, however, was the solid bronze muzzle- loaded cannon. It did not fire as rapidly but was more reliable; breach-loaded cannon tended to blow up when fired. The ”two-piece” gun which was found off the Isle of Rügen thus came from a brief period in the mid-16th century when experiments with ship's weaponry were being conducted. The following inscription which is embossed on the barrel proves that its origins are Danish and that its year of manufacture was 1551: ”CHRISTIAN VON GOTES GENAD KONICH CH THO DENEMARCKEN NORDWEGEN UND DER GOTEN ANNO DOMINI 1551”. The military people handed the cannon over to the Rostock Maritime Museum but never recorded the exact map coordinates of the site. It wasn't their job to investigate the section of sea bed where the cannon was found. It wasn't until 1994 that marine archaeologists located the wreck while combing the coastal waters with sonar equipment. It lay at a depth of 3 metres, two hundred metres from land. At such a shallow depth, however, only the 20-metre bottom section remained intact. The remains of the wreck had been ravaged by fire and there were cannon balls spread all over the area. Researchers maintained that this was the ”Hamborger Jegeren”, which was built in Hamburg and used by Lübeck in the war against Sweden. In all probability it was a merchant vessel which was hurriedly armed with the help of Lübeck's allies the Danes. On 21 May 1565 the ”Hamborger Jegeren” and nine other ships were trying to escape capture by a squadron of 50 Swedish warships. The chase began off the coast of Bornholm and ended near the Isle of Rügen, where the Swedes trapped their opponents in a shallow bay. Then the wind subsided and with it all hope of hoisting sail and trying to break out and escape. Faced with the inevitable, the Danes brought part of their artillery ashore and set fire to their ships. The elements frequently had a decisive effect on military operations at sea during the course of the Nordic Seven Years' War. The destruction it caused was as heavy as the damage caused by cannon balls. While the calm at Rügen sealed the fate of the Danish squadron, a storm off the coast of Gotland a year later caused the Danish-Lübeck fleet's biggest catastrophe in history. Evidence of this tragic event were not discovered until recently. It was almost as if the Baltic Sea itself had conspired to teach the vain allied aggressors a lesson for having started the war on such a trivial pretext. It all began with a dispute over the right to use the three crowns insignia. Even decades after the bloody collapse of the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Denmark never missed an opportunity to claim that the dissolution was just a historical misunderstanding. The best way to provoke Sweden was to usurp its coat of arms. Thus from the early 1550s onwards the insignia began cropping up on Danish coins with irritating regularity. And on the royal seal, on flags and on carriage doors. The three crowns had previously symbolised the unity between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. For Swedes the message was clear: Denmark was asserting its right to revive the union. Towards the end of his life Gustav Vasa viewed the Danes as the embodiment of all evil, who grasped any opportunity to shed Swedish blood. But he did not want to stoke the fires of conflict for such a trivial reason. Sweden gained its independence but at a high cost, for now it faced a conflict whose outcome would be far from certain. For his eldest sons, Erik and Johann, on the other hand, seeing the three crowns on the Danish insignia was like waving a red rag to a bull. War clouds began to gather in the summer of 1560 when Johan, who decided he'd had enough of the Danes' impudence, took his sword and severed the Swedish coat of arms from the stern of a Danish ship. The ship was anchored opposite the Royal Palace in Stockholm. When he heard about what had happened, Gustav Vasa, foresaw the coming bloodshed and reconciled himself with the inevitable. It wasn't until three years after his death in August 1563, however, that a Danish envoy - a Frenchman in the service of Fredrick I - arrived in Stockholm carrying a Letter of Feud, which was a Declaration of War. Erik XIV, who had only recently come to the throne, was very pleased to hear the news and welcomed war with open arms, for he had been making meticulous preparations for it. The Danish envoy was led past the palace guard, which stood on either side of the road in full battle dress. The psychological effect on the Frenchman of having to walk several hundred metres from the Great Church to the Throne Room was devastating. He so terrified and appalled that he could not utter a single word. The regal king, flanked by his subjects, calmed the Danish envoy and asked him in quietly to read out the Letter of Feud. Fredrick I declared war on Sweden. One of the pretexts for the war was that Erik had used the Danish lion on the Swedish coat of arms (a crafty reply to the Danish experiments with the three crowns); his attempt to persuade the Danish king's brother, who was Bishop of Ösel, to switch allegiance to Sweden; obstructing free trade in the Baltic Sea and prohibiting Danes from travelling to Livonia. Lübeck joined Denmark in declaring war on Sweden. But Erik refused to receive the German emissary in person because he was sent not by a monarch but by “a mere town mayor”. This was a real insult considering that Lübeck was the chief Hanseatic city. So Lübeck's emissary had to settle for reading out the Declaration of War to the Mayor of Stockholm in a more humble settling, the Town Hall. Thus started the Northern Seven Years' War between Denmark and Sweden; one of the bloodiest, brutal conflicts in history. Both the Swedish and Danish monarchs were young and hot-headed, and the dispute about the three crowns and the three lions caused their blood to boil over on several occasions. There is no doubt, however, that both were calm and collected enough to list other reasons for going to war. Lübeck was allied to Denmark. The peace-loving, pragmatic merchants from Lübeck only took up arms if their source of revenue was under serious threat, and now control of Russian trade was at stake. In 1558 Russia gained access to the Baltic Sea for the first time. Ivan the Terrible's forces had defeated ageing Livonia and captured the city of Narva. Russia now had a deep-sea port and could trade freely with the west without intermediary hands. Dutch, English, French, Danish and Lübeck merchant ships began using Narva and the price of western goods in Russia plummeted. For Reval, however, who had previously enjoyed a dominant position in Russian foreign trade, the opening of a new trade route was a disaster. In their correspondence to Sweden, Reval's merchants claimed to weep openly as they stood on the city walls watching the ships pass Reval on their way to Narva. They did, however, have a card up their sleeves for persuading western merchants to return to their hospitable city: they had equipped their own pirate navy, which stopped and plundered ships bound for Narva. But it soon became clear that Reval alone could not cut this major trade artery.

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