Thursday 2 April 2015

Maritime Karlskrona

I have just had the privilege of spending nearly a week in the wonderful naval town of Karlskrona in Sweden.
15 03 19 Around Karslkrona (3)
In 1679 King Karl XI of Sweden declared that Karlskrona should become the home for the Swedish Fleet. Its first location, in Stockholm, was proving a disadvantage in their war against Denmark. The Danish Fleet, based in Copenhagen, unfroze before they did and the Swedish ships were unable to defend themselves whilst the Danish took a pop at western Sweden.

I was in a week long maritime-focused meeting based in the Naval Museum.
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (7)
What a wonderful venue for a heap of nautically passionate people!

At lunchtimes/coffee breaks, if we had time, we were able to explore.
15 03 18 Maritime Museum (2)
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (16)
An old mine hunter.
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (1)
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (6)
Karlskrona is on one of many islands and the views were wonderful. Especially as we had sun for most of our trip.
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (11)
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (8)
I found a couple of lighthouses.
15 03 16 Maritime Museum (10)
15 03 19 Around Karslkrona (1)
And even a messpunkt! (or rather a Mat Punkt - the Swedish equivalent).
15 03 16 Mat punkt
I didn’t have much time to mooch around the museum so knew exactly which exhibit to focus on.
15 03 17 Maritime Museum (4)
I made a bee-line for the navigation area.

Lots of lovely sextants, old charts and compasses.
15 03 17 Maritime Museum (2).
15 03 17 Maritime Museum (5)
We enjoyed using the astrolabe to measure our latitude.

I was hopelessly in error (the computer retorted “your crew want to know what you are up to…”).
15 03 17 Maritime Museum RFA
A naval officer then had a go – to show me how to do it properly – and he was equally off the mark.
15 03 17 Maritime Museum (7)
I suspect that when I dropped the astrolabe first off I put it back together incorrectly. Doh.

Near the naval museum is a small workshop for boat making apprentices.  We were welcomed in and indulged our senses - both visual and aromatic – gazing at these beautiful boats and breathing in lungful’s of oak scent.
15 03 19 Boat school (2)
Ooh, a chart.
15 03 19 Boat school (5)
This guy was pretty devoted to his craft. He estimated that with working 4 days a week on this boat he’d finish it around the summer of 2017. Now that’s dedication.
15 03 19 Boat school (4)
One evening we visited the Officer’s Club.  It has an amazing library with oodles of historical documents.
15 03 17 Officers Club (3)
15 03 17 Officers Club (8)
It was all somewhat casually handled: I know in our archive we touch these precious documents gloved. In this library we were allowed pick up what we fancied. Although most of us, recognising the precious nature of these items, didn’t.
15 03 17 Officers Club (9)
We also managed to fit in a visit to the submarine museum there.

This was the first submarine the Swedish Navy had which came into service in 1904. It could only dive for a few hours and there was no messing nor sleeping arrangements onboard. Cooking was done on the top deck whilst surfaced (obviously) and sailors slept where they could in the cold, single hulled vessel.
15 03 18 Submarine museum (4)
This submarine., HMS Neptun, was retired around a decade ago so a lot more modern.
15 03 18 Submarine museum (3)
15 03 18 Submarine museum (12)
A tincy tiny chart table.
15 03 18 Submarine museum (13)
On our last day it clouded over. No great shakes except it happened to be the day of the partial solar eclipse.
15 03 20 Eclipse too
I put my shades on but I hardly needed to.
15 03 20 Eclipse (1)

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