Kronan
The 126 gun battleship Kronan was built in 1668 by Francis Sheldon and was one of the world's largest ships in its time. She was 53 m long and 14 m wide.
During battle against a Danish-Dutch fleet in June 1676, Kronan listed heavily during a badly prepared turn, then suddenly exploded and quickly sank with 800 men. Only 42 survived. What caused the blast is a mystery, perhaps something broke loose during the list and ignited the gunpowder. Possibly Lorentz Creutz, the newly appointed commander and admiral, is to blame for incompetence, because he had no naval experience before commanding the ship.
Discovery
This was one of the lost wrecks that engineer/archaeologist Anders Franz?n found in Swedish archives and placed on a search list. Finally, Franz?n together with Bengt Grisell and Sten Ahlberg found the ship in 1980 off ?land in the south Baltic Sea on 27 m depth.
The hull is broken apart but a large section of the port shipside is intact and laying with the outside facing the bottom clay. This will possibly be salvaged in the future.
Bronze guns
Already shortly after the sinking, between 1680 and 1686, 60 guns were salvaged using primitive dive bells, and then the ship was forgotten for centuries. But the old divers only got half of the guns. Originally, she had between 124 and 128 bronze guns. So fortunately the wreck has remained a gold mine for bronze guns. Between 1980 and '87 another 32 guns have been salvaged. They are in sizes from 6 to 36 pounds, and cast between 1514 and 1661. Some of them may well have come from the Vasa, sunk in 1628. The oldest gun, from 1514, is the oldest known muzzle-loaded gun in Scandinavia.
Investigations
This has become the largest underwater archaeology project in Sweden. Initiated in 1981 and will continue a few more seasons. Plenty of well-preserved objects have been excavated so far. Among the finds are about 400 kg bones from the victims. These remains have been investigated by the osteologist Ebba During.
During 1982-83 a cask with ca 260 gold coins was found ? that's the largest gold coin treasure ever found in Sweden.
In 1998 a complete cross staff was found as well as a magnificent case of tin bottles.
In 2001 a pharmacy chest was found, containing 70 bottles and medicine cans.
