Ghost Ship of the Baltic

Deep Sea Productions is researching a Baltic wreck nicknamed 'the Ghost Ship.' They spent a day filming the Kalmar Nyckel because it's the only vessel afloat that resembles the Ghost Ship. Afterwards, they gave us a talk about the wreck and showed us pictures of their work. They are producing a documentary that should appear in the spring of 2011 (March or April) on the National Geographic channel. You can find the Deep Sea Productions website with information about the wreck here: http://www.deepsea.se/

Briefly stated, the Ghost Ship is sitting on the bottom in 130 meters of water. It is upright and mostly intact. It's extremely well preserved. They believe it to be a Dutch-built fluyt from circa 1640. They have not yet identified it. It is about 84 feet at the waterline. I didn't hear the exact figure, but they said it was a few feet shorter than the Kalmar Nyckel, and we are 89 feet at the waterline.

Two masts are standing and the mizzen mast is present, but is detached from the vessel and lying 25 or 75 meters away. (With the presenter's accent, I'm not sure which it was.) The spars are present. The sails and lines are gone. A number of its decorative works still exist. One, the figure of a cavalier, had fallen from the stern and was lying on the seabed. They raised it to study it, but that is the only item they have removed from the vessel. The hatches are still nailed down, so they have had only a limited view of the interior, but have used side scanning sonar to map the wreck.

When the mizzenmast came out, it tore a hole in the deck, so there is some damage aft. They have not been able to determine the layout of the stern cabin(s). They do know that the crew lived aft. There was a tile fireplace for the galley in the coach next to the whipstaff on the port side. There were bunks in the same location on the other side. They did not mention, but I assume a bulkhead separated the coach from the weather deck as was common in vessels of this era. Their ROV is too large to enter and their small ROV isn't certified for these depths and started leaking. One possibility is to sacrifice the small ROV, getting as many pictures as they can before it quits working, but they have not yet made a decision on that.

They don't know if the 'great cabin' space was open for barracks style communal living, or subdivided into petty cabins. The living arrangements would say a great deal about the culture of the sailors and officers. They have not yet found any human remains, and assume the crew got off the vessel. (No boat is present.)

Although the lines do not remain, they can tell by the positions of the blocks and other tackle relative to one another that they had struck the fore topsail. They believe the vessel had hove to, judging by the angle of the yardsr. All the spars except the mizzen appear to have dropped straight down and remained undisturbed where they were.

They did not offer any theories on what caused the ship to sink, but because the fore topsail was struck, they think they had warning. The mizzen mast is close enough to the wreck that they speculate impacting the bottom might have been enough to unstep it, but they don't know.

They are very interested in the wreck because it's a typical merchantman of the era. They told us about the Danish tolls that were collected from the late 1400s up to 1850, with the results that every ship entering and leaving the Baltic is in the records. That was 3000 - 5000 transits each direction each year of the 17th century. About 75% of the vessels entering the Baltic were were Dutch during the 17th century. Most of them were bulk carriers of things like wool and timber.

Given the vast number of vessels entering and leaving the Baltic, they need to narrow down the vessel's time period and origin as much as possible. Right now they have a piece of wood they can date to 1636, but wood used in ship-building often stripped away the out rings of the wood, so they can only say the vessel wasn't built before 1636. If that particular piece of wood was harvested in 1650 and trimmed down, then it would appear to date to 1636, but not actually be so.

There is also the possibility of new wood being used to mend an older vessel; one sample is not enough to draw any conclusions from. One of their goals is to try and recover a stick of firewood. Firewood is usually only seasoned for a year or two, and usually has the bark on it, so that would let them date the firewood, and then they would know that the ship sank within two years of that. Based on the aesthetic elements of other items they have observed, stylistically the ship belongs to the period of 1630-1650.

They are also trying to identify the stern ornaments. So far they have identified two cavaliers and part of a bird. The bird sculpture is broken and they have not found all the pieces. Ships from the Netherlands often used their city of origin's coat of arms as stern decoration, so if they can identify the bird, they may be able to figure out which Dutch city was the home port for the vessel. By narrowing down the years, they would have only a few thousand records to search looking for a vessel of the size, type, and city. Once they have found candidates, they could then search for one that went into the Baltic, but did not come out. Then again, if the ship operated exclusively within the Baltic (possible), it wouldn't be in the Danish toll records at all.

One of the interesting things they discussed was life expectancy and promotions. They said that if a man hadn't made captain by the time he was 25, he probably wasn't going to make it at all. They also mentioned female captains. At this time, many vessels were owned by individuals. It was common for the owner to be the master, and it was not unusual for the wife to serve as a member of the crew, commonly as a mate. The crews on these vessels were usually the family members of the owners. If a ship owner died, his wife inherited, and since she knew the business of the ship, would serve as the captain, unless they had a son old enough to take over. Likewise, if a family prospered so that they could buy a second ship, the wife would captain the second ship. He mentioned that there are still a handful of family operated canalboats in Germany that operate this way.

However, because the public perception is that a ship captain is a grizzled old man, they cast one of the deckhands in that role. The female members of the crew, including the captain and boatswain, wore male clothing. At a distance they were indistinguishable from the male crew, but will not appear in close-ups of faces. Also, because our captain is 29 years old -- which was exactly the right age for ships of the time -- she was not cast in the role of captain, because they felt that viewers would be confused by seeing such a young-looking person in the role of captain. She was actually captaining the vessel, while the deckhand in the captain's costume stood around looking stern and nautical.

I have now discovered the origin of the Smurf cap: it was the fashion of this time. Our boatswain had to wear one as part of her costume. It kept sticking up straight and causing general hilarity until needle and thread was obtained to tack it down.

The Kalmar Nyckel got special dispensation from the Coast Guard to sail with all eight sails set in spite of having passengers (the film crew) on board the ship. Sadly, I was the dockhand, being at the bottom of the list in seniority. She was far enough out that when she had all sails set I could see a lump and knew she was fully set, but I couldn't actually distinguish a silhouette. It was overcast and misty, which was perfect for the film crew, as they think the Ghost ship went down in winter. They made 7.2 knots under all eight sails. Conditions were calm with light breezes. (Ship's best is 12 knots. That was in a gale.)

Prepping the ship for filming was a lot of work. First, we had to fix improperly rigged sails--uprig had been cut short by a storm. But second, we had to move or disguise modern equipment. Like the Danforth anchor. We also had to move the guns and hide them because the Ghost Ship was not armed. The Baltic Sea of the time period was a Swedish lake and thoroughly patrolled. Not being among the costumed, I got to watch them casting -- it was a very informal business. Mostly it amounted to who had the right kind of hair and beard: shoulder length hair worn loose, and a pointy beard. The documentary team was small: director, advisor, sound, and camera. They also had a chase boat with a cameraman on it.

The advisor then went through the crew member's personal costumes and the ship's costumes to pick out those that were suitable. They also supplied a couple of costumes for the principals they would be filming, complete with wool socks and garters and smurf hats. Watches were removed, revealing tan lines, which then had to be hidden by rope bracelets or other period disguises. His main criticism of the crew as that they were too clean and their clothes in too good a condition :) 6:30 am the boatswain called 'all hands to the saloon for a fashion show'.

The dockhands went ashore and cast off and watched them sail away.

~K~

Thanks for the information. I'll have to keep an eye open for the documentary, it should be interesting.

Here's an article at Delaware Online, with video and photographs.

Although the article says women weren't captains during this time, that's not true. In the presentation the director made to us, he said most ships were family owned, and wives often served as mates on the vessels. If the husband died and there was no son old enough to take over as captain, the widow continued the business. Further, if a family was prosperous enough to acquire a second vessel, the wife often captained it. In each case, crew was typically made up of family members. Crews were small compared to hull size. The Kalmar Nyckel can be sailed with as little as eight people, so it is possible to see how a family could operate a vessel.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100520/NEWS/5200351/Delaware-s-sailing-star