400-year old sunken warships aren?t the sisters of doomed Vasa after all

Thanks to analysis of wood samples obtained from the wrecks, we now know they are actually two rather younger war ships, the Apollo and Maria.Wooden sailing ships were the high-tech military vehicles of their day, and Vasa and her sisters—Äpplet, Kronan, and Scepter, all built on the order of King Gustav II Adolf (1594-1632)—were among the earliest to carry large numbers of heavy cannon. That analysis concluded that the winter of 1646/1647 was the likely date when the oak trees used to make the ships were felled."When we dived on the ships, we got 'a Vasa feeling'—the timbers were huge, so one clue pointed to the possibility of finding some of Vasa’s sister ships, which we know were sunk outside Vaxholm," said Hansson. The two wrecks couldn't be Vasa's sister ships. Both Apollo and Maria transported troops to Poland as part of a planned invasion by Charles X Gustav, and took part in both the 1657 Battle of Møn and the Battle of the Sound the following year.There are still many more shipwrecks at Vaxholm, including Vasa's sister ships, so there will continue to be diving expeditions and investigations—all part of an ongoing research project focused on Sweden's so-called "lost Navy." But for now, "The type of ships that Apollo and Maria represent have never before been documented archaeologically, and they have so much knowledge to convey," said Hansson.