Mars (ship, 1561)

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Mars
Freely interpreted drawing of Mars by Jakop Hägg from 1909
Freely interpreted drawing of Mars by Jakop Hägg from 1909
Ship data
flag SwedenSweden (naval war flag) Sweden
other ship names
  • Macalous
  • Flawless
  • Makalosa
  • "Flawless"
  • Jute Attars
Ship type Caravel (Kravel)
Owner King of Sweden Erik XIV.
Shipyard Birkenes (today: Björkenäs near Kalmar)
Keel laying 1561
Whereabouts Sunk in the Baltic Sea on May 31, 1564
Ship dimensions and crew
length
approx. 54 m ( Lüa )
width approx. 13.50 m
displacement 1800  t
measurement 700 loads
 
crew 340 plus 16 functionaries and approx. 340 marines
Rigging and rigging
Rigging Full ship
Number of masts 3
Armament
  • 2 Swedish 48 pounders
  • 2 Swedish 36 pounders
  • 9 Swedish 24 pounders
  • 10 Swedish 12 pounders
  • 4 Swedish 9 pounders
  • 20 Swedish 6 pounders
  • 6 Swedish 3 pounders
  • 50 smaller guns

The Mars , also known as Makalös (Swedish: " Flawless ") or Jutehattaren (Swedish: "Dänenhasserin") was a Swedish sailing warship from the 16th century. She was the flagship of the fleet of the Swedish King Erik XIV and for a short time the largest warship of her time in Europe. She sank in 1564 in a sea battle during the Three Crown War between the islands of Öland and Gotland . In 2011 her wreck was found.

history

Graphic by Frans Hogenberg shows in the right half of the picture the previously failed peace negotiations in Rostock and on the left the naval battle of 30./31. May 1564. The Makalös is in the center and also labeled.

The Mars was a royal sailing warship ( regalskeppet ). It was built from 1561–1563 in Birkenes (today: Björkenäs) 3 km north of Kalmar by master shipbuilder Holger Ohlsson , who previously worked in Stockholm shipyards. The Mars was part of a shipbuilding program initiated in 1558 for large ships by the Swedish King Erik XIV, who wanted to establish and secure Swedish supremacy in the Baltic Sea . Erik XIV intended with this very large ship to underline his expansive ambitions on the Baltic Sea and also to make an impression in Western Europe.

Pictorial interpretation of the attack by the Lübeck flagship Der Engel on the Swedish flagship Mars by marine painter Hans Bohrdt from 1901

Not much is known about the Mars immediately after its completion , and it only had a short period of service. Its most important historical event was a battle during the Three Crown War, also known as the "Nordic Seven Years War", in the Baltic Sea. During this conflict, the Kingdom of Denmark , which formed an alliance with the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and the Kingdom of Poland , stood on the one hand , and the Kingdom of Sweden on the other .

On May 30, 1564, there was a two-day battle between the two conflicting parties in the Baltic Sea between the islands of Öland and Gotland . 16 Danish large ships under the command of Admiral Herluf Trolle and 10 Lübeck large ships under the command of Admiral Friedrich Knebel faced 16 Swedish large ships, which were commanded by Admiral Jakob Bagge . On the first day, the Swedish ships were able to inflict isolated damage on their opponents after short but fierce battles. At nightfall the battle was interrupted and only continued the next day. When the wind changed on the second day, the Swedish ships had to retreat one after the other because of the winds that were unfavorable for them - only Mars continued to fight alone and was surrounded by the Allied forces. The Mars nevertheless managed to sink a ship in Lübeck and damaging several Danish ships. The Lübeck Chronicle reports that the numerically superior alliance partners succeeded in disabling the Mars rudder system by firing cannons. However, this was found intact on the sea floor.

In the course of the subsequent exchange of blows, the Mars was attacked by the crew of the Lübeck flagship Der Engel under the leadership of Admiral Friedrich Knebel together with the ships Byens Løffue (Denmark) and the Lübeck Fuchs . In a very tough battle, the crews managed to get closer to Mars in such a way that they could be boarded. During the boarding, the Swedish ship caught fire, which spread quickly. The people of Lübeck managed to capture the commander in chief of the Swedish fleet, Admiral Jakob Bagge, and his deputy Arvid Trolle . In the end, the Mars exploded a little later at the moment when the Lübeckers looted the ship's magazine. At this time there were 880 Swedes, Danes and Lübeckers on the ship. A large part of them drowned or fell victim to the flames or the blast wave or flying debris. Friedrich Knebel later reported to his superiors that "500 killed, 100 captured". The Mars finally sank to a depth of 75 m on May 31, 1564.

Although the Mars had only a short period of service and was destroyed, she showed the merits of her firepower, resilience and shipbuilding size quite clearly in battle. The allies Poland-Denmark-Lübeck were apparently so impressed by their properties that they adapted their own shipbuilding program and now launched ships that were slightly larger than Mars . Two sister ships with a displacement of 2100 t were built in Lübeck, which were completed in 1567: the Danish Fortuna and the Lübeck (Großer) Adler von Lübeck . Denmark's King Frederick II was not satisfied with this and added even larger ships to his fleet: the Wol Her (2,200 t), completed in 1570, and the St. Oluf (approx. 3,500 t), which was completed in 1573. On the Swedish side, the successor to the sunken Mars, the Neptunus (2,000 t, renamed Röde Draken in 1569) was completed in 1564, after the then second largest ship in the Swedish fleet next to Mars , the Elefant (s) , during repair work sank.

The Swedish side won the arms race at the end of the war in 1570 and was able to maintain the largest fleet in the Baltic Sea with 53 ship units, which together resulted in a tonnage of 21,000 t, and thus control large parts of the Baltic Sea in the final phase of the war.

Structure of the ship

The exact structure of the ship is not yet known and can currently only be inaccurately reconstructed by experts on the basis of contemporary files, eyewitness reports and drawings. In addition, experts like to refer to findings on ships that existed in parallel, since it was customary among shipbuilders at that time to adopt certain structural features of other ships for their own construction if certain features had proven themselves or promised advantages. In this respect, a phenotype can be reconstructed, even if the previously described adoption of certain elements makes it difficult for the experts to assign the ship type, since mixed forms emerged.

What is certain is that the Mars was built from oak . It can be assigned to the ship type caravel or kraffel, although its size was actually untypical for such ships. The ship was a square sail with at least three masts ( mizzen mast , main mast and foremast ). The hull was planked in the Kraweel construction. The keel was crossed by 62 iron bolts, each weighing half a ton . On the basis of entries in the shipyard books, experts assume that the ship could have been a three- decker - perhaps even the first in the north of Europe - but current pictures of the wreck site seem to refute this assessment. Current pictures and videos of the wreckage also show that the ship had a high fore and aft fort on which many guns were housed.

There are sources that state the carrying capacity of the ship as 700 loads , but it is difficult to convert this unit of measurement to today's tonnage units. Experts believe that 700 loads could correspond to a capacity of 1000 tons . Most of the literature assumes a water displacement of up to 1,800 t.

With a length of approx. 54 m and equipped with over 100 cannons of different calibers, it was in its time the largest and at the same time most heavily armed warship in Europe.

New insights into the ship dimensions, ship type and phenotype should lead to further dives to the wreck and corresponding measurements.

Ship crew

The ship's crew is handed down as follows:

Admiral Jakob Bagge, two Hövitsman (commanders), a secretary, a chaplain, two barbers with medical training, a purser, a ship's chronicle (clerk), a drummer, a first skipper, three skippers, three first gunners and 340 other ship's crew members who are Navigator, mate, cook, steward, carpenter, turner, cooper, sailmaker, blacksmith, ordinary sailor or cabin boy . At the same time there were still a large number of marines on board.

Finding the wreck

On August 19, 2011 it was announced that the wreck of Mars was found by a team of divers at a depth of 75 meters, about 18.5 kilometers north of Öland (position 57 ° 8 ′ 25.5 ″  N , 17 ° 20 56.4 "  E coordinates: 57 ° 8" 25.5 "  N , 17 ° 20" 56.4 "  E ). The archaeologists hope for well-preserved artifacts and many new discoveries about the ship. The cold and oxygen-poor water of the Baltic Sea offers ideal conditions for the preservation of the 400-year-old ship - especially since the wood-decomposing shipworm does not occur here. In July 2013 one of the well-preserved cannons was recovered.

various

  • The destruction of Mars , which is famous beyond the borders of Sweden, was an important historical event for the people of Lübeck. The Lübeck commander Friedrich Knebel was honored for this and described the events that were placed in the city files in a seven-page report. During the Second World War , this collection of files came into the possession of the Soviets and the GDR , but was returned to Lübeck in the 1990s. These (shelf) kilometer-long Lübeck files have been re-sorted in recent years and brought Admiral Knebel's reporting to light. Both Lübeck and Swedish historians are now hoping to gain new knowledge about the events of 1564 and about Hanseatic history in general.
  • The successful battle even found its way into German song culture on 30./31. May 1564 its entry: A Nie Ledt van dem Scharmützel, so nielick, van dem Köninge tho Dennemarck, vnd the Heren van Lübeck, against de Koninck tho Sweden, gescheen, (the 30th of 31st May, Anno 1564). Contemporary Danish poets such as Hans Lauridsen Amerinus also used the destruction of the Makalös as an opportunity to compose corresponding lines of verse.
  • In the Lübeck town hall in the Red Hall there is a painting by Hans Bohrdt of the battle and shows the Lübeck's Der Engel attacking Mars .

literature

- Alphabetical -

  • Hans Lauridsen Amerinus: Egloga de Pacis Foedere ... Wittenberg, 1573, online text .
  • RC Anderson: The Mars and the Adler . In: The Mariner's Mirror. The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research , vol. 25, issue 3, 1939, pages 296-299, 1939, doi : 10.1080 / 00253359.1939.10657346 .
  • Andrew Crichton, Henry Wheaton : Scandinavia, ancient and modern: being a history of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1838, online text from Google Books .
  • C. Ekman: The Swedish Ship Mars or Makalös . In: The Mariner's Mirror , vol. 25, issue 1, 1939, p. 5-10, doi : 10.1080 / 00253359.1939.10657315 .
  • Gustav Freytag : Collected Works , Volume 18, Chapter 7: Settlement of the East - Vom Bord der Hansen, p. 233 ff., Outlook Verlag, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86403-346-9 , Book-on-Demand .
  • Jan Glete: Swedish Naval Administration, 1521-1721. Resource Flows and Organizational Capabilities. Brill, Leiden and Boston 2010, ISBN 978-90-04-17916-5 , excerpt from Google Books.
  • Bernhard Hagedorn: The development of the most important ship types up to the 19th century. With 16 illustrations and 28 collotype plates, (publications by the Association for Hamburg History, Volume 1), Curtius, Berlin 1914.
  • Jason Edward Lavery: Germany's northern Challenge: the Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian struggle for the Baltic, 1563-1576. Brill Academic, Boston 2002, ISBN 978-0-391-04156-1 .
  • Gary Dean Peterson: Warrior Kings of Sweden: The Rise of an Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeeth Century. Princeton University Press & The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1940.

Movie

  • The wreck of the century. Sensational find in the Baltic Sea. Documentary with scenic documentation, Germany, Sweden, 2014, 52:20 min., Script: Martin Widman and Malcolm Dixelius, directors: Martin Widman, underwater camera: Richard Lundgren, Carl Douglas, production: Deep Sea Productions, ZDF , SVT , arte , First broadcast: August 22, 2015 by arte, table of contents by arte.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b The exact length of the ship is not known. In the Lübeck Chronicle it is stated that it is 10 (Lübeck) feet longer than the Lübeck St. Petri Church , which corresponds to 52.6 m and refers to the dimension from the stern to the stern. An 18th century ship designer, F. af Chapman , derived the ship's dimensions between the fore and stern stem from the known weight of the armament and set it to 164 Swedish feet, which corresponds to 48.74 m. Using the same calculation, it comes to a width of 42 Swedish feet (= 12.48 m). Chapman's calculations refer to presumably incorrect Danish sources - moreover, calculations based on the shipbuilding laws of the 18th century are not necessarily transferable to ships of the 16th century. Ekman draws conclusions about the found wreck of the Swedish elephant and puts the dimensions of the found wreckage in relation to the armament of the elephant . Anderson, on the other hand, calculates on p. 297 the factor 1.2 from the traditional 400 loads of the elephant and the traditional 700 loads of the Mars - puts this in relation to the found wreckage of the elephant and thus comes to a ship width of 45 English feet (= 13 , 5 m) and a ship length of 180 English feet (= 54 m) from bow to stern.
  2. ↑ after Ekman, p. 8 .; Ohlson was also known as Mäster Hollinger at the shipyard .
  3. ↑ to Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , p 357ff.
  4. ↑ to Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , S. 358th
  5. ↑ a b c after Crichton, p. 27, online text .
  6. ↑ quoted in Peterson, p. 71. Note: Peterson gives a wrong date (May 10, 1564) of the battle, which in the majority of literature, however, is on May 30th / 31st. May 1564 is dated.
  7. ↑ after Anderson, p. 296, doi : 10.1080 / 00253359.1939.10657346 .
  8. ↑ after JE Lavery, p. 42.
  9. ↑ so listed in Lübeck file collection AHL, ASA Externa, Suecica 123, report by Councilor Friedrich Knevel, see the online finding aid for the ASA Externa, Suecica .
  10. ↑ in Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , p. 360, May 31, 1564 is given as the date of the loss.
  11. ↑ after Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , p. 361.
  12. ↑ after Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , p. 363, The Danish side only brought it to 15,000 t at the same time.
  13. ↑ New findings can U. bring the Lübeck files and dives to the wreck. The statements made here are therefore based on existing literature on the subject.
  14. ^ The large ships of King Erik XIV were referred to as Kravel in the ship registers . Hagedorn defines these ships as those in which the Kraweel construction was predominantly used. In Freytag's collected works on p. 246 it is shown that every heavy ship at that time was called a Holk and that a certain form of it was the "Kravel" (= caravel). In the 14th century these were still small two-masters, later the mizzen mast was also added, so that three-masted ships became steadily growing in size.
  15. ↑ see Hagedorn, photos from the dives to the wreck also confirm this assumption
  16. ↑ as quoted in Ekman, p. 9
  17. ↑ Ekman found indications that in relation to Mars there were always several orlops as well as the kobrygga (n) (upper deck), which would speak for a three- decker . Anderson confirms this on p. 298, and draws a comparison to the Lübeck flagship Adler von Lübeck , built in 1565 , which was very likely also a three-decker and which had to trump Mars in its dimensions in order to demonstrate its own shipbuilding superiority and by more or heavier To be able to place guns on board. Experts believe that the Mars was a model for building the eagle - at least in terms of size, structure and armament.
  18. ↑ Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 1876, p. 56.
  19. ↑ after Ekman, p. 8.
  20. ↑ according Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , p 358.
    Also in Peterson, S. 71st
  21. ↑ to Glete, Swedish Naval Administration , S. 358th
  22. ↑ see Ekman, p. 8.
  23. ↑ as quoted in Ekman, p. 8, the number of soldiers is not known, but is estimated by him at about 340.
  24. ↑ Rebecca Martin: 'New Vasa' shipwreck found on Baltic seabed. In: The Local. August 19, 2011, accessed August 20, 2011 .
  25. ↑ Wreck of what was once the largest warship "Mars" discovered. In: ORF.at . November 14, 2011, accessed November 14, 2011 .
  26. ↑ Mars cannon recovered. ( Memento from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: wreck-explorers.com , July 17, 2013.
  27. ^ AHL, ASA Externa Suecica 123, report by Councilor Friedrich Knevel, see online finding aid for the ASA Externa, Suecica of the Lübeck City Archives
  28. ↑ Dagmar Hemmie and Jan Lokers: The special archival material: ASA Externa Suecica 123. The end of the Swedish "flawless" 1564: Lübeckers sink the largest warship of the 16th century. ( Memento from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Hansestadt Lübeck , 2013.
  29. ↑ See Karl Goedeke : Ground plan for the history of German poetry from the sources. Vol. 1. Ehlermann, Dresden 1862, p. 271, no.238, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dgrundrisszurges02goedgoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn294~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  30. ↑ Hans Lauridsen Amerinus: Egloga nova et festiva, de Pacis Foedere inter Inclyta et potentissima regna, Daniæ et Sueciæ, nuper inito. Wittenberg, Clemens Schleich og Anton Schöne, 1573, (Latin, Danish).