HMS Falken - little sister of HMS Wasa

[Nirvana]

The little sister of HMS Wasa, HMS Falken was recently confirmed found. Her state is not in any shape of recovery. 

More diving will commence

[Y.T.]

Well. Wasa had sunk on its own. Design problems. What about Falken? Again problems with design? What was the reason for it to sink?

[Nirvana]

Y.T, at the time I have no idea what brought her down. Considering she was smaller with less mast height and slightly wider beam there are speculations there was other factors that brought her down.
The conditions of her are really bad more torn up makes the researcher to believe she went down in a battle.

The ship Vasa's little sister Falken found - Stockholm University

[Nightdive]

 

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/shipwreck-uunihylky-varmbadan-kirkkonummi-9e3320db5a2c45faa24f414b68799421

 

Before its identification, the Falken was known as the 'Stove Wreck' due to a large brickwork stove found within it. It has been a well-known dive site since its discovery in 1974. 

 

The details of her loss remain unknown, but due to her shallow location (above 9 m/30 ft), it has been speculated that she was intentionally grounded to allow some salvage of her cargo.

 

I planned to dive it and other wrecks in the area last summer, but the weather didn't permit on the days that we had set aside. 

[Matle]

On 6/21/2025 at 12:30 AM, Y.T. said:

Well. Wasa had sunk on its own. Design problems. What about Falken? Again problems with design? What was the reason for it to sink?

She wasn’t a sister ship of Vasa, ”little sister” is a media designation because it would have visually resembled a smaller Vasa. It was a 20-gun pinnace built 3 years after the Vasa, was in service as escort and transport for about twenty years. Haven’t seen any issues with design. It was built by the same builder - Hein Jakobsson - that took over the construction of the Vasa when the original shipwright fell fatally ill. Should be noted that Hein widened the Vasa as much as he could,  so he probably didn’t like the dimensions he was handed over. Falken sank by grounding. 

 

 

By the way, ”HMS” wasn’t used by the Swedish navy at the time. The name Falken -Falcon- is still in service by the navy, and the current HMS Falken has incidently almost the same length overall as the 17th century pinnace:

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Matle

[TheDukeOfWybourne]

Hello there!

 

The Finnish Maritime Archaeological Society (MAS) recently had a celebratory seminar for their 30th anniversary, where Dr. Niklas Eriksson held a short 30 min presentation about Falken, of which a recording can be found here: https://mas.fi/fi/ajankohtaista/tapahtumat/mas-30-years-seminar . In the presentation he goes through the whole identification of Falken (from 3D model to archival research to a short field research), operational history of the ship and his reconstruction of the ship, including even his interpretation of what the ship's figurehead might have looked like. A really good presentation and I do hope the research team will make a publication of it 😃

[Waldemar]

 

1 hour ago, TheDukeOfWybourne said:

A really good presentation and I do hope the research team will make a publication of it 😃

 

Yes, it looks promising in a full-fledged publication. In the past, I might have missed the design concepts for this ship, but recently, out of necessity, I have become self-sufficient in this particular matter .

 

[druxey]

Nice talk, m'Lord! Thank you for posting this.