Sveriges äldsta skeppsritning : en utredning och ett tolkningsförsök

• Sweden´s oldest Ship Drawing: an investigation and interpretationSweden’s oldest drawing of a ship is kept in the National Archives. It depictsa warship with two rows of gunports, hence the working name ‘Theanonymous two-decker’. Unfortunately, nothing is known regarding itsprovenance, when it was made, or who drew it. Most likely we will neverknow which ship is depicted. However, this does not imply that the drawingis totally vapid or incomprehensible. The aim of this article is to datethe drawing, but also to narrow down in which historical context the drawingmay have been created in. The article also sets out to discuss whichships may have been of a similar design. An underlying motif is to makethe drawing more accessible for further research.38 39Drawings from the seventeenth century and earlier are very rare.Through comparing the present drawing with the few other examples thatexist it is apparent that it has not been used for calculating lines and shapeof the ship’s hull, but rather to present the general layout and arrangementof decks, gunports and different rooms aboard.An analysis of the drawing reveal that it was drawn in 1:64 scale usinga ruler of about one foot’s length as the single tool. Contemporary mastershipwrights used dividers, curve rulers and similar to produce their drawings.Hence ‘The anonymous two-decker’ is more of a sketch than a properdrawing. With no doubt it was made by a person with substantial knowledgeabout ships and how to draw and calculate with scale, but it questionableif it was a master shipwright.The drawing has several notes and texts in English. The colour of thetext differs from the colour of the ink in the drawing, which indicates thatthe text is secondary. This means that the person who drew the image andthe one who wrote on it do not have to be the same. Previous researchershave suggested that the drawing was made in England or from an Englishoriginal, but in fact there were several English and Scottish master shipwrightsworking at Swedish shipyards in the late sixteenth and early seventeenthcentury. The text could have been made by one of them.The drawing reveals the ship´s main dimensions: Length of keel, width,depth of hold, as well as some other measurements. It is not possible toidentify a particular ship that corresponds to these dimensions, but it is apparentthat the ship is proportionally wide in relation to its length, whichis archaic. The number of gunports however corresponds to what we knowregarding the Swedish ship Scepter, this without saying that the drawingdepicts this very ship. Scepter was likely much larger than ‘The anonymoustwo-decker’.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Skepp

marinarkeologi

ritning

Karl IX

skeppsarkitektur

Archaeology with General Specialisation

arkeologi med inriktning mot allmän arkeologi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)