Vasa is an example of a wreck that was raised first and excavated after. A team led by Per Lundström consisting of ten archaeologists, a photographer and an artist, were charged with the task. Working conditions were exceptionally harsh. The ship had to be sprayed constantly with cold, fresh water to keep it from drying out, meaning that the team had to work in an invariably wet environment. Garden hoses and spray nozzles were used to wash away the black mud covering Vasa’s decks. What was revealed was an astonishing assemblage of artefacts still lying in place.

On both gundecks, the gun carriages stood at their gun ports and the belongings of sailors were still stored in chests toward the bow. In the hold, hundreds of cannonballs were found, but also barrels of salted meat – over time reduced to bones – and huge coils of anchor cable. In the cabins, pewter plates, hunting rifles and a gilt brass table clock were found, the belongings of the officers. Perhaps the most remarkable find were the carefully folded remains of six of Vasa’s sails plus the sails for the longboat, still tied up as they had been delivered from the sailmaker in 1627. The archaeologists registered each artefact, recorded its find place and gave it a unique find number after which the object was placed in water-filled tanks to await conservation.

However, diving work also continued at the site where Vasa sunk. Many pieces of the ship had fallen off the vessel and lay around it. From 1963 to 1967 divers surveyed the site and recovered the collapsed beakhead, the upper sterncastle, parts of the foremast and mainmast, many sculptures, the ship’s anchors and the longboat, a large vessel in itself measuring 12 m long, which had another smaller boat inside it. By the time the excavation of Vasa and the diving on the site of her sinking was complete, over 40 000 objects had been registered, including almost all of the parts of the ship needed to reconstruct Vasa more or less completely, and to tell the story of the people who made up the crew.

The discovery, raising and excavation of Vasa was one of the key developments in the theory and practice of the – at that point in time – new field of maritime archaeology, primarily in Sweden, but also internationally. Together with other significant finds from the 1950s and 1960s, such as the excavation of the remains of five Viking ships found in Roskilde Fjord, Denmark, under Olaf Olsen and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, the medieval cog discovered in the River Weser at Bremen in Germany and, on the other side of the world, the wreck of the VOC ship Batavia in Western Australia, the work on Vasa demonstrated the potential of this growing corpus of ‘underwater’ archaeological finds to produce meaningful and significant insights into our past.

The research on the history and archaeology of Vasa and the 40 000 objects found with the ship is ongoing and tackles a wide range of topics including social, environmental, economic, political and technological issues affecting the northern European world of the first half of the 17^th century. Doing this are a team of international researchers and students from – next to the conventional fields of history and archaeology – disciplines such as genetics, ballistics, metallurgy, zoology and economics. Recent projects have focused on the test firing of a replica of one of the ship’s 24-pounder bonze cannon, DNA analysis of the human remains found on the ship and inquiries into the role of woman in the Swedish economy. The research on Vasa is not just the analysis of a particular ship and how it sank, but has demonstrated to have the potential to contribute to wider technological and socio-economic questions, ranging from how the ship was built and sailed to the role of Sweden in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).

Sources

• Museum website: http://www.vasamuseet.se/en
• Adams, J. 2013. A Maritime Archaeology of Ships, Innovation and Social Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
• Cederlund, C. O. & Hocker, F. 2006. Vasa I: The Archaeology of a Swedish Warship of 1628. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
• Hocker, F. 2011. Vasa: A Swedish Warship. Stockholm: Medstroms Bokforlag.

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The sea and the world’s coastlines have always been a great lure for me which is why being a maritime archaeologist and exploring how humans have and continue to interact with this fascinating environment is possibly the perfect job.

My roots are in Near Eastern archaeology and harbours and maritime networks of the eastern Mediterranean particularly during the Late Bronze Age. More recently I have explored harbours and connectivity in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf spanning the Roman through to the late Historic period. I have conducted and directed numerous coastal surveys and ancient harbour projects in the region including in parts of Alexandria and along the Red Sea coast of Egypt, Eritrea and Oman. I have published over fifty publications that report on the results of this work.

I am also a self-confessed ‘boat nerd’ particularly fascinated in small traditional working boats that operated around the world’s coasts both past and present. For more than ten years I have recorded boats in the western Indian Ocean region, noting their form and construction and how this changed over time. I am also interested in the role they play within the maritime societies that build and use them.

I like to work in collaboration with colleagues in the countries that I conduct research. After a long history of collaboration with the University of Alexandria, Egypt, in 2009, having secured a European Union TEMPUS grant, I helped establish the first Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Underwater Cultural Heritage (CMAUCH) in the Arab world within the University of Alexandria. Subsequently, further collaborative initiatives have been undertaken in my role as director of the Maritime Archaeology Stewardship Trust. MAST aims to build capacity for maritime archaeology and coastal heritage management relating to training, education and resource enhancement in the Arab region, with activities to date in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Qatar and Oman.

I am also a HSE qualified commercial diver and have been involved in a number of shipwreck survey and excavation projects. Recently I directed a three-year collaborative research project in Montenegro, the Montenegro Maritime Archaeological Research Project. It was funded by the Headley Trust, supported by the Montenegro Ministry of Culture and co-directed by the Bar Museum. This three- year collaborative project aimed to train students of archaeology in Montenegro and provide opportunities for Southampton Masters students to participate in underwater survey and excavation. This project was completed in 2013 and is currently being written up for publication as a co-edited monograph.

Besides active research projects, teaching and academic publications, I have a very keen interest in communicating the subject of maritime archaeology to a wider audience. In 2007-2008 I was one of four expert presenters on the BBC/Discovery co-funded eight-part documentary series ‘Oceans’. Subsequently I have undertaken further presenting work for Channel 4 and National Geographic and am currently working on a one-hour documentary on Egypt’s Sunken City for BBC2. I am a lifelong supporter and current Vice President of the international Nautical Archaeology Society, a founder member of the UNESCO UniTwin Maritime Archaeological Network, and have recently been appointed Special Adviser for the Honor Frost Foundation.

During this course I will expand on some of the themes highlighted above – ancient seafaring, trade and harbours and of course further explore the threats currently faced by the world’s maritime and underwater cultural heritage.

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