At the entrance to Helsinki’s South Harbor stands the old Pilot House. Perched atop a natural granite platform on Hylkysaari (“Wreck Island”), the tall tawny facade was long a reassuring sight for seafarers entering the deceptively tranquil, rock-laden haven. But underwater scanners eventually replaced the human navigators. The harbor pilots moved out and the Maritime Museum of Finland moved in.
The Maritime Museum was the marine archeology appendage of the National Board of Antiquities (NBA), the government’s main agency for overseeing Finnish cultural heritage. The museum was specifically charged with registering, identifying, and protecting the hundreds of old shipwrecks found in Finland’s coastal waters. In spring 1999, with preparations for a summer search well underway, Rauno thought the time was right for the Pro Vrouw Maria Association to seek favor for its quest to find the legendary shipwreck. He recruited project cofounder Petri Rouhiainen and filmmaker Mikael Martikainen for a meeting at the museum.
Rauno, Petri, and Mikael boarded a ferry at Helsinki’s Market Square for the short ride to the South Harbor islands and the Maritime Museum offices. The team did not need official permission to search for the Vrouw Maria. Only two wreck sites in Finnish waters were off limits to diving: the Sankt Mikael, the Dutch galliot near Borstö, and the Sankt Nikolai, the Russian war frigate near Kotka. Rauno requested a meeting to inform the museum of the team’s intentions and to discuss areas of joint interest should they find the fabled wreck. In the cultural bureaucratic hierarchy, the museum was a low status player and afterthought recipient of budgetary funds. To supplement its meager resources, the museum relied on the volunteer services and equipment of the Teredo Navalis divers. Most members of the Pro Vrouw Maria team were regular participants in museum-sponsored excursions and had amicable relations with museum staff. So Rauno’s proposal for private-public cooperation in a dive project was not in itself unusual. That Rauno would be running the operation, however, was most unusual.
Debarking the ferry, the trio crossed a narrow footbridge to Hylkysaari and entered the old Pilot House. The building was crammed with the administrative offices and research facilities of the NBA’s marine archeology staff, as well as a public museum holding more than 15,000 objects, and the national maritime archive. The visitors brushed past displays of model ships, nautical instruments, and navigation charts. Inside they were met by Sallamaria Tikkanen, chief marine archeologist, and Ulla Klemelä, chief conservator. The sides were already familiar with one another.
Sallamaria was a member of the Teredo Navalis Society—the first female recruit in the male-dominated club. Unlike her self-taught guests, Sallamaria was a graduate of the University of Helsinki’s inaugural program in marine archaeology. Despite its wreck-rich coastal waters, Finland lacks a major research center dedicated to maritime archaeology and underwater conservation. So, from 1994 to 1995, Sallamaria traveled to St. Andrews in Scotland, to receive postgraduate training at the well-regarded Institute for Maritime Studies. She returned home as one of Finland’s few certified divers with bona fide academic credentials. Finding employment with the NBA, Sallamaria quickly rose to become its leading maritime researcher.
Though they shared a common interest, Sallamaria and Rauno were a study in contrasts. While Sallamaria was reserved and cautious by temperament, Rauno was irrepressible and adventurous. Sallamaria earned her position through formal studies in ethnology and archeology, while Rauno’s status derived from military training and practical experience. And, where Sallamaria embraced the virtues of cultural and environmental protection, Rauno relished the thrill of discovery and the spoils of salvaging. Despite the museum’s need for cooperation, Sallamaria was not endeared to the “boys-on-holiday” culture of the community of sport divers. Likewise, Rauno did not have much regard for the boring bureaucratic routines of the museum staff. The meeting got underway amid forced smiles and ill ease.
Rauno started, and soon was gushing about the prospects of finding the Vrouw Maria. He was certain that he had figured out the location of the wreck. Furthermore, the Pro Vrouw Maria Association had assembled a highly skilled team of divers and underwater technicians, the best talent of the Teredo Navalis club, to perform the preliminary work of identifying, photographing, and documenting the wreck site. The discovery of the wreck was only the beginning, Rauno asserted. This was a long-term, game-changing project, which would lead to excavating the cargo, discovering the fate of the lost masterpiece paintings, raising the wreck, and making it the showpiece of a new museum, with a film documenting the project. Pro Vrouw Maria Association expected to cooperate with the Maritime Museum to do all this.
Rauno’s grandiose vision stunned Sallamaria and Ulla. They protested. Do you have any idea how much it costs to raise a wreck? Who is going to pay for all this? The museum does not have these kinds of resources.
The excitement caused by the discovery of the wreck would create new sources of revenue, Rauno countered. The Ministry of Culture, corporate donors, the European Union. In the meantime, research and recovery efforts will be subsidized by revenue generated from merchandizing. Pro Vrouw Maria Association planned to register a Vrouw Maria trademark and they already had designs for T-shirts, model ships, and the like, to be sold through the museum, which would share a percentage of the profits.
Rauno’s scheme for the Vrouw Maria was both fantastic and frightening. Sallamaria and Ulla were incapable of engaging their effusive interlocutor in a serious manner. “Okay then, the boys are off to have an adventure. To find Catherine the Great’s lost treasure,” Sallamaria smirked.
Rauno was provoked. “Don’t you understand what will happen if we find the Vrouw Maria? It will be the greatest thing that has ever happened to you.” He went on a rousing roll: “You will get media attention. You will get the people excited. You will get international fame. You will get serious funding for a change. You will get the new museum you want. Don’t you see what the Vrouw Maria can do? She will lift you out of your swamp.”
The Maritime Museum may have been a bureaucratic weakling, but it was still a bureaucracy, covetous of its authority. The very notion of a Pro Vrouw Maria Association aroused suspicion. This was not the usual gaggle of divers waiting to be told where to jump. It was an organized corporate entity, a potential rival. Rauno touched a nerve. “I hope you do not find it,” Ulla blurted out.
Rauno froze mid-rant. He and Mikael exchanged wide-eyed glances. Ulla’s unexpected salvo brought the meeting to a quick conclusion. Crossing back on the ferry, the team mulled over the portents of this strange reception at the museum—so incredible, so predictable. Did the Maritime Museum’s chief conservator really not want them to find the Holy Grail of Finnish shipwrecks?
Finland is for boaters. Finland’s 5.5 million people own over 800,000 boats, one of the highest boat-to-people ratios in the world. The Helsinki International Boat Fair, held every February, is the largest boat show in northern Europe, drawing 300 corporate vendors, 10,000 patrons, and mega media coverage. It was the ideal venue to launch the Pro Vrouw Maria Association.
Mikael produced a smart promotional film, telling the tale of the Vrouw Maria and her priceless Golden Age cargo, touting the underwater talents of the team, and teasing about the celebrated wreck’s impending discovery. The legend of the Vrouw Maria was the buzz of the boat show. Finland’s largest newspaper, the Helsingin Sanomat, picked up the story and ran a front-page feature, embracing the expedition’s adventurous spirit. The debut was a success. Momentum gathered as they moved to the critical task of fundraising.
The Pro Vrouw Maria team made a list of potential deep-pocket donors—philanthropic foundations and corporate sponsors—but their proposals were met with rejections. Enthusiasm waned. Without financial backing, there would be no expedition. Even more vexing, Rauno confirmed that the Archipelago Maritime Society were preparing another go at the Vrouw Maria. He was now aware that during the previous summer Erkki Talvela’s search had come within a mile of the location. It was plausible that this time they would find the wreck. “Who is funding those bastards?” Rauno asked. As it turned out, it was Pro Vrouw Maria insider Christian Ahlström. Despite the previous year’s misadventure, the Vrouw Maria’s most devoted patron tapped into the Ahlström family fortune a second time to help underwrite another search. Except this time, Christian hedged his bet by splitting the investment between the two diving teams.
Rauno fumed to learn that his partner was bankrolling his rivals. Not only was Christian a member of the Pro Vrouw Maria Association, he was privy to the new information about the ship’s physical appearance. Still, Rauno understood the historian’s motivation and recognized his importance to their team. Rauno was careful, however, not to divulge any details about the location to his collaborator. At least the venture finally had a sponsor.
Soon after Christian’s contribution was counted, a letter arrived bearing the embossed logo of Honda Marine. Rauno sighed as he knifed open the envelope, having grown accustomed to rejection. Instead, he read an unfamiliar starter: “We are pleased to inform you…” Pro Vrouw Maria Association had hooked a corporate backer. Honda Marine was Finland’s largest retailer in outboard motors. The company liked to be associated with outdoor adventure. Rauno was a perfect match with the corporate image. Fortunes were reversed. More donations followed. The bank account grew, surpassing 100,000 Finnish markka and nudging toward 150,000. It was not as much as they had hoped for, but it was enough to get them out on the water come summer.
Pro Vrouw Maria Association was still missing one essential component of a dynamic diving team—a boat. Rauno and Petri scoured the dockyards for a suitable vessel, but were frustrated by what was available within their tight budget. Petri suggested a practical alternative. They could hire the Teredo, which belonged to the Teredo Navalis Society. It was an easy negotiation, since Petri sat on the club’s executive board. Instead of buying a boat, they would upgrade the one they already used.
The Teredo was a retired fishing boat, a fifty-foot side trawler, with the wheelhouse positioned aft, the trawl winch forward, and the net gallows along the side. The diving club purchased the Teredo on the cheap for their summer dive junkets. For this new mission, the boat would need to be refitted. The Teredo’s large fish hold, where hauls of herring and cod once chilled on ice, was converted into sleeping quarters to accommodate ten crewmen. The galley and mess area were expanded and updated. In the stern, the gunwale was cut down and a platform and ladders were installed for the divers. The main deck was remodeled to accommodate the expedition’s equipment: diving gear and underwater instruments, a new air compressor, and a side-scan sonar system. And in a final Finnish touch, a sauna was installed. Besides the structural renovations, the Teredo’s rasping engines and creaking mechanical parts required an extensive overhaul. It was a substantial work order to fill, with the dive season only a few months off. While scrounging through boatyards, Rauno found a good support vessel, the Baltic Eye, a thirty-five-foot ex-naval patrol boat.
The last task was to assemble a crew. Rauno and Petri drew up a list of veteran divers, who possessed the combined skill and temperament necessary for the endeavor. The wreck was in deep frigid water, so participants must be experienced dry suit divers. Ideally, each crewman should possess an additional skill; especially useful were mechanical fix-it types, savvy high-tech types, and capable navigator types. Just as important, the crew must be able to cooperate on deck and get along with one another. The expedition would operate in a professional manner, in contrast to the imbibing recreational culture of the sport diving camps. To assure that participants were serious, Petri suggested that those selected put up a modest enlistment fee of 200 Finnish markka per week. When word got out that Rauno was leading a search for the Vrouw Maria, the team was besieged by a raft of enthusiastic recruits.
Rauno and Petri sat at the kitchen table and systematically went through the list of wannabe crewmen, matching skills and personalities. After several hours, they winnowed the names down to sixteen volunteers, including twelve divers. The roster contained former navy captains and firefighters, people who were accustomed to command chains and working in teams.
When they were done, Petri looked distressed: “Hey, what about me? I am not missing this, what is my role?”
“You’re the cook,” Rauno answered.
Petri thought about it for a moment, then picked up a chef’s knife from the countertop and stabbed the air menacingly. “I like it,” he said. “Nobody argues with the cook.”
Midsummer is the time of year when Finns get in touch with their inner pagan. Before the encroachment of Christianity, summer solstice was the high holiday of the northern Baltic. White night revels involved spring potato picnics, fermented beverage consumption, and naked dance parties (at least two of these rituals are still widely practiced). The solstice signaled the transition from spring sowing to summer growing, and the critical interlude for appeasing nature’s fickle spirits, whose mystic powers and mischievous penchants were enhanced during the midnight sun. Large bonfires were lit on midsummer’s eve to frighten off phantoms, who might otherwise spoil the harvest or burn down a barn. Young maidens, meanwhile, delicately tucked seven wild flowers, picked from seven meadows, under their pillow, in hopes of seeing their future mate revealed in a dream. Along Finland’s west coast and throughout the islands, revelers erected long-limbed maypoles, decorated with spruce garlands and jangly trinkets. Looking like a boa-clad ship’s mast, archipelago maypoles protected fishermen and sailors against the Baltic’s spiteful water demons.
Rauno chose midsummer as the launch date for Pro Vrouw Maria’s expedition. From his many years in the archipelago, he observed that the sea was uncharacteristically placid during the fortnight which followed summer solstice. Under the best circumstances, the team would have only two weeks to find and survey the wreck. He hoped to avoid the diver’s banes of bad weather and rough water.
In early June, the Teredo returned to her familiar dock slip in Helsinki’s South Harbor. The twenty-two-year-old vessel sparkled with a fresh coat of white paint on the upper deck and wheelhouse, contrasted with a coat of serene blue on the lower sides and keel. A flurry of activity enveloped the boat as boisterous crewmembers loaded supplies, tested equipment, revved up air compressors, and rolled aboard Petri’s freezer full of makkara, the sausage staple of Finnish holiday camps. The Teredo’s captain would have preferred less conspicuous preparations.
Rauno was suspicious that the Teredo was being watched by his rivals, and feared that they might try to follow him out to the wreck site. Unless a boat had divers in the water or was towing a cable line, etiquette allowed for one craft to trail another at a safe distance on the open sea. He was wary of the possibility of an awkward confrontation in the search zone. His apprehensions were affirmed just two days before the Teredo’s departure. That evening a couple of the Archipelago Maritime Society crew chanced upon several of Rauno’s crew at a dockside bar. After splurging for successive rounds of beers and shots, they turned the conversation to the Teredo’s destination. At this point, Rauno intervened. “Thanks for the drinks guys, now fuck off,” he said, escorting his tipsy crew from the tavern.
On Saturday, June 26, five days following midsummer, the Teredo set off from Helsinki for Jurmo Island, at the southern edge of the Archipelago Sea. A throng of friends, reporters, and well-wishers lined the waterfront. Representing the Maritime Museum was chief archeologist Sallamaria Tikkanen. The Pro Vrouw Maria Association crew impressed, donning crisp uniforms of collared short-sleeve khaki shirts and pressed navy-blue shorts, with the Honda Marine logo emblazoned on their caps. The media-savvy team organized a press conference, which drew Finland’s largest newspapers and state-run television network.
The press rallied behind the expedition. “Another search is underway for the ship that sank carrying precious artworks. For the past few summers, different dive groups have been searching for the wreck. But this year’s team possesses newly uncovered information about the location,” effused the major daily Helsingen Sanomat. The media showed particular interest in the Teredo’s high-tech system. “The crew is equipped with state-of-the-art side-scan sonar, which takes ‘aerial photos’ of the seabed,” the newspaper said, “Similar equipment is used by the special forces of the US Navy.” Rauno explained to the reporters how the search process would work: “All sightings resembling a wreck will be checked by divers. It’s not like there are huge letters on the hull saying ‘Vrouw Maria.’ Identifying the wreck requires expertise.” The press was eager to play along. Pro Vrouw Maria’s search to find Catherine the Great’s lost treasure ship was the perfect feel-good story to kick off the summer holiday season.
It was a brilliant send-off, but for one inevitable moment. While posing for photos, Rauno overheard Sallamaria offhandedly remark to a reporter: “There go the boys, off to play and have an adventure.” An undercurrent of mutual acrimony briefly surfaced. The normally reactive Rauno bit his lower lip, and let the comment drift away on a Baltic breeze. Sallamaria was not heard from again. The fanfare concluded by mid-afternoon, and the Teredo was ready to shove off. Looking through the windscreen of the raised bridge, Rauno piloted the vessel out of the harbor. Picking up speed, the Finnish flag slapped at the wind high above the main deck. The quest was underway.
From the outset, a purposeful mood prevailed. The expedition was conducted with the semblance of a military mission. Acting the part of squad leader came easily for ex-navy man Rauno. And the Teredo’s crew followed its skipper willingly.
Rauno set a west-southwest course, for the 130-mile voyage. The Teredo journeyed partly at night, but never in darkness. As the hour grew late, the midsummer sky turned an eerie smoky blue and faintish yellow overhead. The first half of the trip ran along the southern Finnish coast, punctuated by two jagged peninsulas. Twenty miles west of Helsinki is Porkkala, whose southern tip is just twenty-two miles north of Estonia. Given its strategic value, the Soviet Red Army refused to evacuate Porkkala for more than a decade following World War II. The Teredo next came to the Hanko peninsula, where the crew stopped to refuel and sleep for a few hours. To the south they could see the great beacon of Bengtskär, tallest lighthouse in Scandinavia. Standing at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, Bengtskär’s gasoline-fueled spotlight and twenty-two-foot foghorn warned vessels as far away as twenty miles of the deadly danger in the waters nearby. This was the Teredo’s destination, the Archipelago Sea.
On Monday, June 28, at 4:00 A.M., the Teredo arrived at the island of Jurmo. Astern, the sun was rising, after lurking just below the horizon during the night. The island was a level and sparse heathland, except for one lonely tree, bent by the wind. Local lore has it that Jurmo was once covered in pine woods, like most of the archipelago, until its inhabitants incurred the wrath of the Swedish king with their false signal fires and wreck looting. In retribution, King Gustav Vasa, in the 16th century, sent his troops to incinerate the island’s dwellings, farmland, and forest. Only a couple of islanders and a single tree, it is said, survived the royal reckoning. Jurmo was eventually resettled, as an incestuously self-contained fishing village. When the Vrouw Maria foundered on the rocks nearby, in 1771, the island’s population was at an all-time peak of sixty residents.
On Monday morning, Rauno strode upon the same eroded granite slope that Captain Reynoud Lourens had alighted on more than two centuries before. Just beyond, the island moor was a knee-high palette of heather, juniper, and crowberry. On a bluff overlooking the leeside jetty, a freshly decorated forty-foot midsummer maypole jingled in the breeze. The island seemed frozen in time. In reality, Jurmo was much changed from the time of the Vrouw Maria. The onset of large-scale commercial trawling in the 1970s hastened the demise of the archipelago’s quaint fishing villages. The signature red cabins were either abandoned or turned over to tourists. Jurmo survived, but barely, with a dozen full-time residents, eking out a living from subsistence fishing and farming.
The crew had a leisurely late start on the first morning, with coffee, black bread, and sausage, the same thing they would eat for every meal for the rest of the week. Mid-afternoon, Rauno called a team meeting on the main deck. In dress uniform, the crew made a semicircle in front of the wheelhouse. Rauno read off a list of rules for the expedition: no smoking anywhere onboard, as the boat carried 500 gallons of gas; no drinking beer during the day, and no getting crocked at night; uniforms must be worn at all times while on duty or whenever the press is aboard; no mobile phones around the side-scan equipment, when in use; and, whatever else you do, no stepping on the side-scan sonar cable, as it is very sensitive and costs 5,000 euros. Rauno then spoke of the rare opportunity the team had to make history. Based on his calculations, they had a 90 percent chance to find the Vrouw Maria in the first two days. Otherwise, he cautioned, they had a 10 percent chance at best thereafter.
With clipboard in hand, Rauno barked out the roster and assigned tasks. The captain went up to the bridge, as the crew assumed their roles. Belching a dusky trail of exhaust fumes on the breeze, the Teredo chugged out past the harbor’s manmade breakers. Even now, only Rauno and Petri knew their destination. Rauno pushed on the throttle and the converted trawler thrashed forward at fifteen knots toward the open water of the outer archipelago. Jurmo’s midsummer maypole dwindled in the west above the frothy wake. A half hour later, the Teredo was idling over a shipwreck.
Rauno scanned the horizon for approaching vessels. Waves lapped against the hull. The Teredo was alone. A black inflatable was unhooked from a side davit and lowered to the water. John Liljelund and Kenka Lindström loaded scuba gear. To keep the team occupied, Rauno dropped the divers over the same sunken ship that the Archipelago Maritime Society had found the year before, now referred to as the Donald Duck wreck. At thirty meters down, it was a good spot to test the equipment and acclimate to the chilling depths. The water temperature was in the upper-50s Fahrenheit on the surface, but dropped to the mid-30s on the seafloor. Mikael opted to join the divers in the black inflatable with his video camera. It was only a practice dive, but the Donald Duck exploration was likely to be more interesting than trawling the open sea in a grid pattern.
Rauno steered the Teredo a mile southward into the search zone. Still wary of being followed, he swept the horizon again with binoculars for other ships. In the gulf to the south, he spied a twelve-story passenger ferry bound for Stockholm. Rauno checked his coordinates and eased into an idling position. He ordered the crew to ready the side-scan sonar.
The side-scanner was contained in a sleek yellow torpedo case, called the towfish, and ran freely in the water behind the boat, connected to a long cable line. It was crucial that the boat driver, sonar reader, and towfish operator coordinate their movements. The boat had to maintain a steady pace, not too slow, not too fast. The sonar technician had to identify vaguely shaped subaquatic objects, while anticipating potential hazards, especially rocks, which might appear suddenly on the screen. The side-scanner was sophisticated, expensive, and unlikely to survive an underwater wallop. It was the responsibility of the cable operator to maintain the proper depth for the desired scan range. Rauno preferred that the crew work the towfish by hand, instead of with a reel and crank, but it took practice to develop a feel for it.
It was now late afternoon, though the team still had six hours of daylight. On board, first mate Antero Kuhalampi took over the ship’s wheel. Stationed at the sonar screen, Rauno fiddled with the calibrations on the instrument panel. Meanwhile, crewmen Arto Parkkanen and Tommi Lipponen rehearsed with the cable line. The primary search zone was a compact area of deep water, sheltered behind a barricade of submerged rocks. Rauno signaled to Antero to begin the first test run, and Arto lowered the towfish into the sea at a depth of twenty-five meters.
Rauno adjusted the emission frequency and an image of the seafloor fanned out on the screen. Suddenly, a massive object appeared, Rauno gauged its depth: “Pull up!” Tommi and Arto lifted the towfish in a rapid hand-over-hand motion, the cable line tangling at their feet. Rauno watched the screen and braced, as the side-scanner passed a few feet above a huge underwater boulder. Rauno exhaled a slow whistling breath. The search was almost over before it began.
Arto rearranged the cable line and lowered the towfish back down, this time to twenty meters. Rauno waved to the wheelhouse, and the Teredo moved forward. In a few minutes they were all in sync. Rauno studied a furrowed image of the seafloor slowly moving across the screen. Again, the sonar detected a dense mass, Rauno checked the depth reading: it was safely on the bottom, forty meters down. “Steady ahead,” he called to Antero, and then, thwack! The towfish struck something solid. The screen became a scrambled mess. Another rock. “From where?” Rauno objected.
He manipulated the controls, and an image of the seafloor returned on the screen. The side-scanner was still working. Rauno stared at the readout. “I am not sure what that was, guys,” he said, “but it was not a rock.” Resetting the towfish at fifteen meters, the boat cautiously tracked over the unidentified object again, and then again. A sonar image began to take shape. It was a shipwreck. The side-scanner had struck her protruding mast.
Rauno tried to gauge the dimensions and shape. It was big enough to be the Vrouw Maria. And the muted lines on the screen indicated that it was wooden, not metal. Rauno studied the abstract sketch, and could readily envision an old sailing ship. He then double-checked the coordinates of the Teredo’s location. They were right in the middle of the primary search zone. Rauno bit down on a knuckle, consciously suppressing emotion. They needed to do another pass, he said, and lower the depth of the side-scanner. The crew could sense what Rauno was not saying.
The Teredo conducted several more tracking runs, producing a more resolute image of the mysterious sunken object. There was no doubt. It was a twin-mast wooden ship, in one piece, sitting upright on the seafloor at forty-one meters deep, with physical dimensions similar to the Vrouw Maria’s. That evening, Rauno displayed the side-scan images for all to see on the mess table. A collective whoop went up. Petri abandoned a skillet of sizzling sausages in the galley and walked back to where the crew was huddled over the readouts. He leaned into the scrum and scrutinized the unmistakable contours of a sunken ship, then turning to Rauno said: “Well, it took you all afternoon to find it.”
The crew was in high spirits, but Rauno did not allow any celebrating that night. There was much work to perform the next day. And, until the divers went down to investigate, they still did not know if it was the right ship. Rauno instructed John Liljelund and Kenka Lindström that they would be the first dive tandem to explore the wreck.
Next morning the Teredo was back on the water over the wreck site. The sea was dead calm, shimmering bronze in the morning light. The dive conditions were ideal. John and Kenka purposefully put on their dry suits, body weights, and air tanks. The first task was to attach a buoy line to the vessel, marking the site on the surface for the Teredo’s crew and implanting a direct artery to the wreck for the other divers. It was a simple task, provided that they could see. John and Kenka plunged into the cold.
John Liljelund was a few feet ahead on the descent. After just two minutes his depth gauge read forty meters. He promptly halted his descent and kicked his feet out behind him, so he was parallel to the sea floor. The divers had to take care not to overshoot and touch bottom, kicking up clouds of silt and spoiling the mission. John swung his flashlight around in a half circle, but saw only blackness before him. He pivoted backward. There against the dimly greenish glow from the sunlight above was the looming silhouette of a large ship. He felt a chill from the silent specter. A hand reached out of the darkness, and touched his shoulder. It was Kenka. The divers fixed a cable line to the hull on the starboard side near the stern. After ten minutes, they began the deliberately halting ascent back to the surface.
The next pair of divers, Petri Pulkkinen and Timo Puomio, waited nervously for their turn. With Petri working the camera and Timo on lights, their task was to take the first video of the slumbering hulk. Petri led the way down, following the buoy line until the ship appeared before him. He froze in place. It was fantastic. He later told reporters: “As I went down for the first time, the view was simply amazing. The visibility was ten meters and the sunlight was filtering through the calm surface of the sea. The ship lay there intact and beautiful like a treasure ship straight from the fairy tales.”
Timo moved past Petri toward the stern. He signaled to Petri to follow, and aimed his powerful flashlight—there was no rudder. They moved together around the aft end, recording the taffrail and damaged sternpost. Petri was exhilarated; he started to swim forward to circle the entire wreck, but Timo pointed at his watch and gestured upward, their ten minutes had expired.
The divers worked in groups of two and four, methodically moving around the hull. They measured the ship, examined the wooden frame, and noted bottles, dishware, and debris strewn around the main deck. The hatch to the cargo bay was open and crammed with crates. The evidence accumulated: it was the size of the Vrouw Maria, a merchant vessel, at least one hundred and fifty years old, and with a lost rudder.
The divers finally made their way to the bow, a wide blunt prow, typical of an 18th century trader. A forty-foot bowsprit projected from the frame into the deep sea’s gloom. Swimming under the bowsprit to portside, John Liljelund pointed his light above and noticed the kedge anchor still dangling from the bow. With a dolphin kick, he propelled upward for closer inspection: the kedge was broken, it was missing a fluke.
Rauno gathered Petri and Mikael for an impromptu meeting below deck. They systematically compared the divers’ observations and video footage with their research notes. The dismembered kedge was the Vrouw Maria’s unique identifying mark. Rauno tried to remain composed and focused on the survey work. He was reluctant to make the final call that this was the lost treasure ship of Catherine the Great.
That evening, Rauno went up to the Teredo’s bridge and telephoned Christian Ahlström, who was relaxing at his summer cottage on the Kirkkonummi moor, overlooking the gulf. In a calm voice, Rauno spoke: “I think we found it.”
Ahlström’s reliable veneer of upper-class reserve shattered on the spot. The diminutive doyen dropped the phone and danced wildly around the room. “I will join you as soon as possible,” he gushed. The next day, Christian, in floppy sun hat, pranced down the main dock at Jurmo, where he joined the Teredo’s crew. “I still have no idea how he got there so quickly,” Rauno said. Christian squinted at the sonar image of the wreck, and listened to Rauno’s recitation of the evidence. Rauno concluded his presentation: “It might be the Vrouw Maria.”
“Might be?” retorted Ahlström. “It might be that you have all lost your minds! Of course, it is the Vrouw Maria.”
Rauno laughed, “Okay guys, if Christian says it is so, then it is so. We have found the Vrouw Maria.”
“On the small island of Jurmo, people are still recovering from the celebration on Tuesday. After discovering the treasure ship the Vrouw Maria, the twelve divers were in high spirits,” an obliging press reported to a Finnish nation eager for more details of the breaking story.
The Teredo’s divers were the first persons to look upon and touch the sturdy oak frame of the Vrouw Maria in more than two and a quarter centuries. After Ahlström’s confirmation, Rauno finally relaxed, trying to absorb the immensity of the discovery. Somewhere inside the wreck were Catherine’s masterpiece paintings, including Gerrit Dou’s triptych. Could they possibly have survived?
That night the Teredo crew celebrated with champagne, vodka, beer, and sausages. Christian Ahlström had been consumed with finding the Vrouw Maria for more than twenty-five years. He described the moment as “the happiest day of my life,” and he assured the crew that “the whole world is going to be crazy over this ship.”
Rauno recalled only that “after Christian said it was the Vrouw Maria, we got drunk.” The merrymaking on the Teredo’s deck continued for two more nights, serenading the island’s staid residents until the wee hours. On Friday, Petri was working on the dock when a solemn-faced fisherman approached: “I understand that if you find a wreck, then you have a party. But you have found only one wreck, and you have had three parties.”
Rauno, Petri, and Mikael discussed how to deal with the press. On Wednesday, the team revealed its secret. Within hours, the headline blared in the Helsingen Sanomat: “Wreck of Treasure Ship Vrouw Maria Discovered.” By chance, the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation had a television crew nearby, filming a nature documentary. That evening, the story broke on Finland’s most watched television news broadcast. A media storm hit Jurmo. For the next several days, the sedate island was abuzz with the chopping whir of helicopters, ferrying journalists to interrogate the crew and photograph the Teredo. On Thursday, the Vrouw Maria was the lead story in Ilta Sanomat, the popular evening tabloid and Finland’s second largest newspaper. On June 30, the Associated Press picked up the story, which quickly spread to hundreds of media outlets around the world. The Vrouw Maria was an international sensation.
The incessant messages of congratulations and interview requests forced Rauno to make a new rule—shut off all mobile phones during work hours. The skipper, however, was not very good about following his own rule. “I’ve had to recharge my new phone up to three times a day,” Rauno joked. He even received a call from Russia, though he did not understand the name. In a foreshadowing of events to come, the caller inquired when the raising of the ship would take place. Rauno replied that his team would only photograph the wreck, which now belonged to the Finnish government. “Says who?” came the mysterious reply.
It was not just the media that was interested in the Vrouw Maria. The Finnish Coast Guard began tracking the Teredo’s movements with a Super Puma helicopter. Rauno was on friendly terms with the Coast Guard pilots, so when pressed, he reluctantly divulged the coordinates of the wreck site. Meanwhile, random boaters and sport divers converged on Jurmo. The crew stopped taking the Teredo out to sea, because she was too easy to spot on the water. Instead, the divers commuted to and from the wreck in the speedy, low-lying black inflatable. They used a green plastic bottle as a discreet buoy marker, to maintain the secrecy of the site.
News of the discovery gutted the plans of the Archipelago Maritime Society, which at that moment was making final preparations for their own search expedition. Refusing to accept total defeat, team leader Erkki Talvela tried to go around Rauno to finagle access to the wreck site. Two days after the discovery went public, Erkki phoned Rauno with chummy congratulations, then dropped a hammer on him. He said that the Maritime Museum had given permission to the Archipelago Maritime Society to dive on the Vrouw Maria, and that his boat would soon join the Teredo on the water. “No, we are too busy. You can’t come,” Rauno blustered. “I’ll revoke your permission. If it is up to me, no one dives here except our crew.” Erkki persisted, “I have done so much work, why can’t I see it too?” Rauno ferociously guarded his prize. He contacted museum officials and reasserted his team’s proprietary claim over the project. The museum conceded; Rauno was appeased. Erkki eventually satisfied his desire, when he participated in a later museum-sponsored dive trip on the legendary wreck. Still the wound from his confrontation with Rauno never healed. “He knew about all the work we had done,” Erkki said. “In some ways Rauno can be a very small person.”
It was true, however, that Rauno’s team was busy. He was forced to create a buffer against the barrage of attention, so that the divers could continue to work. They had little more than a week to complete a preliminary archeological survey of the ship and wreck site. Meanwhile, in the second week, intemperate winds blew up from the southwest, threatening to cancel the scheduled dives. Also, during the second week, the Teredo lost its cook, as Petri had to give up his post over the frying pan and return to his office desk. Within hours of Petri’s departure, Rauno approached one of the island fishermen and proposed a trade—a freezer full of sausage for a small portion of the catch of the day. The Teredo’s crew was most grateful when the swap was accepted.
Discovering the wreck turned out to be easy, while the work at hand was considerable. The depth of the Vrouw Maria meant that the divers had limited time underwater. A standard dive was thirty minutes in total, including a five-minute descent to the seafloor and a much slower fifteen-minute ascent back to the surface. The divers had to take care, rising from the seafloor in sequenced stop-and-start stages, acclimating to the changing pressure levels. The amount of time left was only about ten minutes. Working at this depth was physically demanding and required long rest periods in between dives. Water pressure is considerably stronger than air pressure; already at ten meters deep the level of ambient water pressure on the body is twice greater than at the surface. At forty meters, the Vrouw Maria lay at the outer limit for amateur divers, where the ambient pressure on the body was five times greater than at the surface. Individuals performed two or, at most, three dives per day, with required days off in between, to reduce the risk of nitrogen narcosis.
The divers were assigned only one manageable task per dive. Whenever a team resurfaced, the designated interviewer, Tommi Lipponenn, debriefed them for details of the wreck, while memories were still fresh. Later, in the evening, Mikael set up a monitor and the crew crowded around to gawk at the newest video images of the phantom wreck. “It was spectacular,” Mikael said. The divers provided running commentary about what they had seen. Because of the darkness, it was impossible to capture a sweeping overview of the ship, rather the wreck scene had to be reconstructed like a jigsaw puzzle. Following each dive, the expedition’s illustrator, Kalle Salonen, was able to fill in more of the details of the wreck’s physical appearance. Section by section, a full portrait of the Vrouw Maria emerged on the pages of Kalle’s sketchbook.
The vessel was eighty-five feet long and twenty-three feet at its widest point across the deck. The sturdy oak hull was well preserved in the chilled water. On the main deck, a strong-looking oak barrel windlass sat in the bow. Still upright, two broken pine masts stood in the fore and mid-ship areas, fifty feet and forty-five feet high. But the upper sections, the topmasts and gallant masts, were toppled over and lay across the deck. In the rear, a raised deck and captain’s cabin were destroyed by a fallen topmast, probably from the jolt the ship took when it crashed on the bottom. It was a handsome ship, with decorative carvings along the rail. The wreck sat upright on the seabed, with a slight starboard tilt. With a few repairs, it was probably still seaworthy.
The Vrouw Maria’s great prize remained elusive. There was no sign of Empress Catherine’s priceless masterpiece paintings. Two cargo hatches on the main deck were found open, just as Lourens’s crew had left them the last night the ship was afloat. The cargo hatch at mid-ship was crammed with crates and barrels. On top of the heap was a broken box containing dozens of disc-like objects, which turned out to be eyeglass lenses, an 18th-century Dutch specialty. A second upturned crate spilled across the pile hundreds of long-stemmed clay pipes, a relic of the tobacco craze then igniting the Russian court. But the divers could not get in deeper without disturbing the precariously stacked cargo and risking entrapment inside.
In the second week, Maija Fast-Mattika of the Maritime Museum arrived on Jurmo. She was the only NBA employee to visit the expedition, but she was not an official representative. Rather, Maija just happened to be in the neighborhood, leading a tour of Australian marine archeologists. The Aussies heard the news of the discovery, and wanted to see the Vrouw Maria first hand. The Coast Guard transported Maija and company via helicopter to the island.
As it turned out, the Aussie archeologists were neither experienced with the depth nor familiar with dry suit diving. Wishing to accommodate the museum, Rauno ordered John Liljelund and Petri Pulkkinen to take the visitors to a nearby islet, and practice with the team’s diving equipment at ten meters down. The Australians could not get the knack of it, and Rauno was forced to reject their request. Maija protested, but Rauno explained that “playing around in ten meters is totally different than diving to forty meters. Someone could get killed.” There was goodwill, nonetheless, during Maija’s brief visit. She expressed excitement and support for Pro Vrouw Maria Association’s historic discovery. Significantly, she also gave approval to bring up a small sample of artifacts from the wreck.
The divers lifted six items. First was a ceramic bottle, lying on the main deck near the main mast. The bottle was still unopened, with a seal indicating that it was mineral water from Triers. Second was a corroded metal ingot. Rauno hoped it might be part of Dutch merchant Hovy’s cache of silver. The divers next recovered an engraved medallion, later determined to be a packing seal from a crate of fine linen produced in Gerrit Dou’s hometown of Leiden. Finally, the divers brought up three long-stemmed clay pipes, manufactured in Gouda, Holland. At the time, raising the artifacts seemed the obvious thing to do. However, this ad-libbed authorization of a wee excavation would become a major controversy in the legal battle still to come.
The Vrouw Maria was a Baltic legend. For 228 years her broken body lay at rest, cloistered in the cold dark depths of the Archipelago Sea. No longer. The fabled wreck had come back to the living, ready at last to give up her secret cargo. For those who would soon take possession of her, it was a terrifying responsibility.
By the third day, there were no longer any doubts that this was the Vrouw Maria. The Maritime Museum needed to be informed. Despite the cool reception Rauno received on Hylkysaari, there was never a question that the underwater work of Pro Vrouw Maria Association was being conducted for the benefit of the museum. That evening, Petri called the museum staff and left them a message: “Your Nightmare on Elm Street, we have found it.”