The Gribshunden was a Danish-Norwegian warship that basically functioned as a floating medieval death castle. Built between 1483 and 1484, this royal flagship gobbled up 8 percent of Denmark’s national budget.
King Hans used it not to find new continents or spice routes, but to cruise the Baltic in style, showing off to nobles, diplomats, and anyone else who needed a reminder of where the real power resided.
In a new study published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, researchers quite literally dove into the best-preserved shipwreck from Europe’s pre-colonial days of glory. The Gribshunden went down in flames off the coast of Sweden in 1495, but the wreck remained remarkably intact.
Archaeologists discovered oak gun beds, wooden structural elements, and even lead-and-iron artillery shot. This thing was armed to the teeth, ready to take on all comers.
The Shipwreck of a ‘Floating Castle’ Warship Is Teaching Archaeologists About 15th-Century Weapons
Armed with at least 50 small-caliber guns, the ship was designed not to sink enemy vessels, but to kill the people on them at close range. Its preserved gun beds allowed researchers to reconstruct the long-lost cannons digitally.
This offered a rare glimpse into how medieval shipbuilders and gunsmiths gradually developed a new, deadly form of naval warfare that would remain essentially unchanged for the next 300 years or so.
King Hans could have become a colonial powerhouse like Denmark’s Iberian neighbors. Still, the whole lot of politics, along with the fear of the pope’s excommunication, held it back from becoming the massive, terrifying colonizing force we now closely associate with Spain’s reign of violent occupation that extended all the way out into the Americas.
The Gribshunden demonstrates that before European nations embarked on a world colonizing spree, they had already mastered the technology and tactics needed to dominate. What better way to do it than with a ship that was basically a tiny, floating, heavily armed and armored kingdom at sea?
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