Aztec Treasure House. Evan S. Connell
It is certain, though, that they got this far on several occasions, and it would be exceedingly strange if they traveled no farther. Even the most conservative archaeologists admit the possibility of Viking sites on the mainland.
A lump of coal uncovered in a Greenland house strongly implies a voyage to Rhode Island. This house, which stood at the head of Ameralik fjord in the western settlement, may have belonged at one time to Thorfinn Karlsefni and his wife, Gudrid. The coal was found deep in the ruins by Danish archaeologists, and there are two curious things about it. First, there was just one lump, with nothing but woodash in the fireplace. Second, it is meta-anthracite, which does not occur in Greenland, nor anyplace along the east coast of North America except in Rhode Island.
And there is an eleventh-century Norse penny, probably struck between the years 1065 and 1080, during the reign of Olaf III, which turned up at an Indian site near Bar Harbor, Maine. It’s possible, of course, that the penny was lost by a Colonial American coin collector. Or it might have been brought from Newfoundland by an acquisitive Indian. However, the obvious deduction seems best: eleventh-century Vikings either lived or traded in Maine.
What all of this means is that you are at liberty to follow the mooring holes of imagination as far as you care to. Through the Saint Lawrence waterway, for example, to the Great Lakes and beyond. After all, nobody can prove that a party of Norse adventurers did not reach the Mississippi and follow it to the Gulf, and from there sail west, following the downward coast.
The Mexican Indian legend of Quetzalcoatl says that a bearded white man appeared out of the east on a raft of snakes and later departed in the direction from which he had come, promising to return in 500 years. So you may imagine a Viking ship with a carved serpent head on the prow, with a fair-haired bearded Norwegian in command. And when five centuries had passed a bearded foreigner did arrive, not exactly commanding a raft of snakes, although many people swear he had a complement of snakes aboard. He was, of course, much darker than a Norwegian; and his name, Hernando Cortés, is not unfamiliar.
You will get a chilly reception from anthropologists if you attempt to relate Quetzalcoatl to a Viking, or any other such fabulous theory. But the alternative is to join the conservatives, in which case you will have to be satisfied with a spindle whorl, a bone needle, and some furnace slag.
KING GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS was of the opinion that building small ships was a waste of young trees, so when he wanted a new flagship to intimidate his enemies he commissioned a monster.
The Vasa was 165 feet long, 40 feet wide, 180 feet from the keel to the tip of the mainmast, and weighed 1,400 tons. She carried sixty-four bronze cannons—forty-eight jutting through a double row of gunports on either side, sixteen smaller ones on the top deck—and she was decorated like an opera house. A gigantic golden lion lunged from the prow, a golden lion’s head roared from every gunport, and both decks were painted bright red so that the sailors’ blood would scarcely be noticed. Above this majestic spectacle floated the orange-yellow and deep indigo colors of seventeenth-century Sweden.
The captain, Söfring Hansson, should have been delighted with such a command, but there were things about the ship that he did not like. He thought the Vasa was too long and narrow and the superstructure uncommonly large. He reported as much to the grand admiral of the Swedish Navy, Klas Fleming, but the admiral did not respond; or, if he did, Captain Hansson was not satisfied.
Consequently, a few weeks before the scheduled launching, Hansson invited Admiral Fleming aboard to witness a test. With the ship tied up at her mooring thirty sailors were told to run across the deck. When they did so the Vasa heeled “by the breadth of one plank.” Hansson immediately ordered them to rush across the deck in the opposite direction. This time the ship heeled by the breadth of two planks. Hansson sent them across the deck a third time and the ship heeled still farther. At this point, according to testimony given during the court-martial, Admiral Fleming ordered the demonstration stopped.
Because the meaning of Captain Hansson’s test was perfectly clear you would assume that preparations for the launching were suspended. After all, it would be insane to continue outfitting a ship for disaster.
But of course the work went right ahead.
The explanation for such a paradox is simple and it will not surprise the good student of human affairs. King Gustav had commissioned this vessel. He had selected the builder and personally had approved the plans. Gustav looked forward to the Vasa leading his fleet. Nobody wanted to tell him what was going to happen.
So, about three o’clock one Sunday afternoon in August of 1628, while thousands of Stockholm citizens crowded the wharves to wish her Godspeed, Captain Hansson gave orders to cast off. The Vasa had been loaded with 2,000 barrels of food, plenty of beer and cannonballs, 133 sailors, assorted bureaucrats and politicians, and a good many wives and children. There may also have been 300 soldiers aboard; the Vasa was to carry them, but perhaps they were ashore. They may have been at Älvsnabben, waiting to get on when the visitors got off.
It is said that a mild breeze was blowing across the harbor that afternoon, yet the Vasa listed farther than expected when the first sails were broken out. As she righted herself the chief ordnance officer, Erik Jönsson, ran below to make certain the cannons were lashed in place.
A few minutes later a gust of wind blew around the high cliffs of Söder and the Vasa heeled sharply. Again she righted herself, but Captain Hansson ordered the topsails cut loose.
The wind dropped. The ship moved heavily toward Beckholmen.
Then a fresh gust struck the sails and for the second time Jönsson ran below. Water was pouring through the open gunports. He gave orders to untie the cannons on the lower side and to haul them up the slanting deck, but this was impossible. Several cannons broke loose, crushing the sailors who unwisely had tried to push them.
The Vasa went down almost at once and came to rest nearly upright on the bottom, her mainmast angling above the surface and Sweden’s banner fluttering valiantly in the sunshine. She had traveled less than a mile.
About fifty people drowned. Many more would have been lost except that the giant ship was accompanied by a fleet of pleasure boats which picked up survivors.
Captain Hansson, along with every other officer, was arrested that same afternoon. Also arrested were those involved with the construction—excluding the designer, a Dutchman named Henrik Hybertsson who had died the previous year.
On September 5 a formal inquiry opened. The official record seems to have been destroyed, though we do not know whether this was deliberate or accidental. However, copies of certain parts of it have been found so that the procedure, as well as quite a few names and details, can be established. We know there were seventeen members of the court including six councilors of the realm, two naval captains, and the lord mayor of Stockholm. The president was Lord High Admiral Carl Gyllenhielm, King Gustav’s half brother.
The court’s first purpose was to determine the cause of the disaster, then to fix the blame. Yet it becomes obvious that while they did want to know why the ship went down they were more anxious to learn who was responsible. The suspects may or may not have been aware of this priority; if they were, they must have felt uncomfortable because seventeenth-century punishment was no pat on the wrist.
For instance, according to Swedish naval articles of 1644, a helmsman who ran his ship aground could be keel-hauled, which meant being towed underwater from stem to stern. Or he might be dragged from port to starboard by way of the keel. The penalty for causing a fire aboard ship was more direct: the guilty man was promptly thrown into the flames. Less serious offences, such as whispering during a lecture, brought fourteen days in irons. Nor does there seem to have been much plea bargaining.
If records of the Vasa inquiry are accurate, the first crew member of any importance to