Adventures in Marine Archaeology – Kustavi/Isoluoto

May 10, 2009 · Posted in Diving 

The the beginning of April Susi, Hakkis and I went to help a marine archaeologist buddy to look for the remains of a major sea battle that took place in 1808 between Russia and Sweden. On 30.8.1808 35 Swedish ships and 24 Russian ships spent the day shooting at each other with cannons. The Swedish forces won the battle and spent the next couple of weeks destroying the sunken Russian ships by basically dropping stones on them.

In the 60’s divers found one of the wrecks, but didn’t record the location properly, so it’s still lost. In the 70’s a bunch of… well, morons found a bunch of cannon balls and decided to bring more than 130 of them to the surface just for shits and giggles, without thinking what they should do with them. The cannon balls were stored in an earthen cellar of a local church for a year before the museum was informed, during which they turned into a pile of rust.

Information about the sea battle (in Finnish): www.palvanmeritaistelu.fi/historiaa/isoluodon-taistelu/

(The full Flickr photoset)

[flickr album=72157617950013586 num=20 size=Thumbnail]

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