The Secret Museum

by Molly Oldfield

  We headed towards the stern. I felt quite disorientated as the floor swoops down in the centre, and up at the bow and stern. There is more headroom than on similar warships, such as HMS Victory – that was one of the reasons why Vasa sank: it sat too high above the water – but the ceilings still aren’t that high: as we were walking, I bashed my head on a light. Luckily, it wasn’t a bolt. Most of the curators have scars on their heads as painful souvenirs from walking into these bolts in the ceiling.

  As I bent over holding my head, Fred told me, ‘Vasa used to be a hard hat zone. But when we showed Queen Elizabeth around the ship, she refused to wear a hard hat.’ After that, none of the curators wanted to wear one either, and so the hats were scrapped. Prince Charles and Camilla came aboard in the spring of 2012, and Prince Charles asked why hard hats were not worn. ‘Sounds like my mother,’ he said, on hearing the story.

  We carried on towards the stern, me rubbing my head, until we reached the whipstaff, which sailors used to steer before the ship’s wheel was invented. The helmsman stood holding it, watching a small compass, keeping Vasa on course for its short trip. He died at his post, and his skeleton was found beside his steering staff.

  Behind the whipstaff was the Great Cabin, once richly decorated by the palace carpenters with fancy panelling and sculptures. A bench all around the cabin had fold-out beds. This was the admiral’s bedroom – unless the king should come aboard, in which case the admiral had to move out (though, ultimately, of course, that never happened, as Gustav Adolf was fighting in Poland on the day the ship sank). Few people on board would have known it, but a hidden staircase leads from this cabin to the captain’s cabin on the deck above.

  We checked out the lower gundeck, which is similar to the one above it: a curved floor and highish headroom for a warship of the time. Most of the original crew would have been okay – the average sailor was 5 foot 5½, and the tallest skeleton they’ve found was 5 foot 11. All along the deck were ports cut for guns to poke out of.

  Now we were three storeys down into the boat. Sometimes people don’t want to go any further but I decided to take the plunge and descended a long wooden ladder, passing through another deck – the orlop – into the hold. Here was where the ship’s provisions of ammunition, beer and meat – mostly beef and pork, but also moose, reindeer, chicken and more – were stored. It feels cool down here, as pipes send cold air into the hull, to keep the ship at 18°C (64.4°F) with 53 per cent relative humidity. Ideally, the museum would keep Vasa even colder, just a little above freezing, but that would scare away all the visitors to the museum, who I could hear there now, outside the ship. It felt strange knowing that nobody standing in the museum, level with where I stood, would have known I was there.

  Inside the hull, down in the bottom of the ship, Fred pointed out where the guest captain and another sailor were found when the ship was dredged up. The guest captain was missing a toe and limped, and was unable to escape as the ship sank. Of all the sailors on board, his is the only name that is known: he was a friend of the king, and the king was notified in a letter of his death aboard Vasa. It was a bit creepy down in the hull, so I was happy to climb the ladder and scamper up the stairs to the top deck and then to the ‘dry land’ of the museum gallery to join the crowds marvelling at the ship. The Swedish seem to like the irony that Vasa, which was once a disaster and a bit of an embarrassment, is now a national treasure.

  When I left the Vasa Museum I walked around the harbour of Stockholm to see what was in store at the city’s Modern Art Museum (Moderna Museet). Lars Byström, chief conservator, led me into the light, airy museum stores, which burst with ideas and creations. Everywhere I looked, there were great pieces of art. I saw a hand, sculpted by Picasso, and another oddly shaped figure by de Kooning. Hanging from sliding racks were an early portrait by Edward Munch of the Swedish writer Strindberg, and an early Picasso. Fresh Window – a blue window, with leather instead of glass – by Duchamp, had just been returned to the museum by Tate Britain, London and so was in the stores, propped up against L’Enigme de Guillaume Tell by Salvador Dalí, which was on its way to a show in Malmö.

  In the conservation studio Lars showed me a small painting by Mondrian, called The Rocky Coast of England. It’s a very straightforward painting of the coastline, and is so unlike his later work that the museum has never exhibited it, as it doesn’t fit in with the vibe of the modern art on display in the galleries.

  There are stacks of paintings in the studio, but one in particular stood out. It is called The Acrobat (1925), and it’s a collage by Francis Picabia (1879–1953), a poet and painter born in Paris. It’s of a man doing a handstand, on a wire. On both sides, Picabia has made a shadow out of painted cellophane. In the blue sky fly two white doves, and tiny blue birds, swooping among pencil stars. The curators at the museum love the painting, and I can see why, but they can’t display it, as the cellophane will degrade in the light.

  Exploring the colourful treasure box of ideas that is the backstage area of the Moderna Museet was a lovely contrast to climbing down into the hull of the salvaged, dark warship Vasa. As I left the vibrant storage behind and came out into the dazzling sunshine of Stockholm I could see its mast poking out of its building, a hint of the secrets inside, dredged up from the deep.

  [Vasa]

  Vasa looks majestic, more like a piece of art than a warship.

  [Sculpture of a crouching Pole]

  Vasa was built for the war against Poland, and among the sculptures are several that belittle the enemy, like this one of a Polish nobleman, with the tail of a fish under the table. When the crew used the toilet on the beak-head they had a clear view of the crouching Poles.

  IN ST PAUL’S IT HUNG alongside a French flag also captured at Trafalgar, to symbolize the great victory Nelson had won with his bravery, his superior strategy and, finally, with his life.

  After Nelson’s funeral, it stayed in St Paul’s for a century. Now, it belongs to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. They keep it in storage, because it’s very fragile and they simply don’t have the space to hang it. It is 10 metres long and 14.5 metres high and is the biggest flag in their collection.

  ‘It’s a whopper,’ said Barbara Tomlinson, curator of antiquities since 1979. ‘We haven’t ever displayed it officially, but in the 1960s the museum was very naughty and hung it for one day from the front of the Queen’s House,’ one of the main, large, buildings that make up the National Maritime Museum. ‘It trailed on the floor as it was too big for the building; we wouldn’t get away with that now.’

  ‘We wanted to exhibit the flag during a Nelson and Napoleon exhibition we had at the museum in 2005, but we just didn’t have the space. Instead, we decided to photograph it and put the pictures online, so at least people can find out that it exists.’

  The iconic flag from Trafalgar was slowly unravelled on the floor by a team of curators as a photographer hovered above, snapping away from a cherry picker – a platform on a hydraulic lift.

  Lots of journalists turned up to watch, but then Prince Charles and Camilla announced their engagement on the same day, and the press, as Barbara put it, ‘took off like scalded cats’. Since then, no one has set eyes upon it. It’s unlikely it will ever go on display, and only a handful of people have been lucky enough to see it since it was removed from St Paul’s over a century ago.

  I visited the flag in its current home, inside one of the museum’s storage units in Greenwich. There are lots of flags kept in storage, besides this one. They are kept on rollers – much the best way to store a flag, as you can unroll it when you like, and it doesn’t get creased.

  The museum hasn’t found a roller big enough for Nelson’s trophy flag yet, so it is folded up, wrapped in tissue paper and stored in a long cardboard box on the bottom shelf of a cabinet. We heaved the box out from its shelf and lifted the tissue paper.

  The flag is made of wool and feels very coarse. It is red and yellow striped, with the arms of Castile and Leon in th
e middle. The name of the ship is written on the hoist in ink: SAN ILDEFONSO. It has holes in it from where it was shot at during the Battle of Trafalgar, and it is frayed on the edges from when it flapped in the winds upon the stormy seas.

  It’s amazing to think of the flag being hoisted up from the Spanish ship off Cape Trafalgar as Nelson’s fleet sailed towards it at noon on 21 October 1805.

  That morning, the British fleet of 27 ships had prepared to attack a line of 33 French and Spanish ships in a daring move called ‘crossing the T’.

  As the enemy lined up across the bay from Cape Roche in the north to Cape Trafalgar in the south, Nelson decided the British would form two lines and charge right at the middle of the enemy line.

  If you had been in the air above it, like the photographer in the cherry picker high above the flag, you would have seen the T – the enemy all across the top, the British heading towards it, up into the top of the T. This daring move, he called the ‘Nelson Touch’.

  Nelson, aboard his ship, HMS Victory, led one line, and Cuthbert Collingwood, aboard the Royal Sovereign, led the other. Collingwood had his dog, Bounce, on board. Bounce was tied up in the hold for safety. Collingwood is supposed to have said, on the day of the battle, ‘I wish Nelson would stop signalling. We all know well enough what to do.’

  As they headed towards the Spanish and French ships, the British sailors would have seen this flag flying from San Ildefonso. The ship was positioned near the right side of the top of the T, four from the end. As the British got closer, the French and Spanish opened fire and a bloody battle waged for four hours. This is when the flag got the holes you can see in it today – they were made by musket balls. Much later, perhaps when the flag was hanging in St Paul’s, souvenir hunters armed with a knife or a pair of scissors cut out the larger holes on the left-hand side. Moths probably had a go at it too, before it was brought to the museum and properly conserved.

  Just over an hour into the battle, Nelson was shot down by a sniper hiding on a French ship, Redoutable. A deadly musket ball went through his body, shattering two ribs, puncturing his lung and his pulmonary artery. He fell and was taken below deck, wrapped in a sailcloth and propped up against the side of the Victory.

  The sound of battle raged on as Nelson lay dying, swayed by the ocean swell, murmuring ‘Drink, drink; fan, fan; rub, rub,’ as his stewards fed him lemonade and watery wine, fanned him, and the ship’s captain rubbed his chest to ease the pain. By the time he died, at 4.30 p.m., his fleet had won the greatest victory, destroying or capturing 18 ships without losing a single ship of their own.

  One of those captured ships was the San Ildefonso, and it was taken, with its flag, back to Britain. The ship that had been four down from San Ildefonso was San Juan Nepomuceno, also a Spanish ship. Its ensign flag still exists as well. The British handed it back to Spain, and it is looked after in a museum in Madrid. The two Spanish flags are the only surviving ensign flags from Trafalgar.

  Nelson’s body was brought home in a barrel of brandy on HMS Victory and was laid in state in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, opposite where the National Maritime Museum is today. From there, he was taken down the Thames by boat, to St Paul’s Cathedral, for his funeral.

  Nelson had destroyed the Spanish and French fleet and prevented France from invading his country. As this flag moved in the breeze inside the cathedral, the whole nation was in mourning.

  His wife was at the funeral, but his bereft mistress, Emma Hamilton, was not. Nelson’s requests in his will and on his deathbed to ‘Look after Lady Hamilton’ and to allow her to sing at his funeral were ignored. She wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.

  He and Emma had a daughter, Horatia Nelson. When she was born, they gave her an extra surname, Thompson, the nom de plume Nelson sometimes signed off with when writing in secret to Emma. Some famous writers are connected to Nelson – the Brontës. Their father was born Patrick Brunty but changed his name quietly to Brontë, perhaps in admiration of Lord Nelson, who was given the title Duke of Bronte by the King of Naples. Bronte is an estate in Sicily, and is the Greek goddess of thunder.

  One of the lucky survivors from the Battle of Trafalgar was a man named John Franklin. He later died in the Arctic, while looking for the Northwest Passage. Opposite Nelson’s flag in the storage unit is a message balloon made from paper that was used by a search party looking for Franklin and his team out on the ice. They hoped the men were still alive and would see the balloons in the sky, or find their messages once the balloons fell and realize they were going to be rescued. Sadly, this was not to be.

  On a cheerier note, the tiniest thing in the collection that is not on display is the world’s smallest cannon. It can only be seen with a microscope. I had a look at it, and it’s perfectly formed and tiny, but can’t actually fire cannonballs.

  A Mr Towson made it for a bet in 1828. While he was creating it, his maid opened the door, creating a blast of wind, which blew one of the cannon’s tiny wheels on to the floor. Neither of them ever found it, so he had to make another. The cannon was shown at the Great Exhibition, and then Queen Victoria took it for her collection at Windsor Castle so she could look at it whenever she liked.

  Eventually, it made its way to Greenwich, where it used to be on display. However, being a military cannon, it didn’t fit the naval theme of the museum, so it was finally put into storage.

  Lots of people visiting the museum used to ask Barbara where it was. This hasn’t happened much recently, as people have forgotten about it, but when it first went into storage, Barbara said, ‘It had to be nearby so we could whip it out whenever anyone wanted to see it.’

  Unfortunately, the museum can’t do that with the huge and fragile flag. The iconic treasure from Trafalgar will remain unseen.

  They see where fell the Thunder bolt of war,

  On the storm swollen waves of Trafalgar.

  They see the spot where fell a star of glory,

  The Finis to one page of England’s story.

  They read a tale to wake their pain and pride,

  In that brass plate engraved ‘HERE NELSON DIED’.

  Branwell Brontë

  [Photographing the flag from Trafalgar]

  The Spanish flag, flown at the Battle of Trafalgar is the biggest flag in the National Maritime Museum’s collection. Curators unfurled the flag on the floor of the museum and a photographer hovered above taking snaps from a cherry picker. Look how small the curators at the top are compared to the flag.

  [HMS Victory]

  Nelson led the British fleet into battle at Trafalgar onboard HMS Victory.

  [The Spanish surrender]

  Nelson destroyed the Spanish and French fleet and stopped France from invading his country.

  THESE MAGNIFICENT CREATURES ARE SO big that even as newborns they weigh the same as an elephant.

  This mighty blue whale beached up in Dunbar, on the coast of Scotland, on 5 October 1831. Locals thought it was a shipwreck. Some fishermen went for a good look, realized what it was and towed it to North Berwick harbour where they secured it in place with an anchor. When the tide went out the whale was left dry on the sandy beach.

  A local doctor, Frederick John Knox, bought the whale to study it and learn about blue whales. His older brother, Robert Knox, was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. He got into trouble for buying bodies sold by Burke and Hare because it turned out they were the bodies of people who had been murdered. This scandal was in 1827–28, when Frederick John Knox was curator of his brother’s anatomical museum but nobody was convicted so they carried on with their careers. Eventually Dr Frederick John Knox emigrated to New Zealand. But not before he fell in love with the blue whale.

  The gigantic animal that now belonged to Knox weighed 200 tons. He couldn’t study it on the beach, and he couldn’t move it so what on Earth could he do with it? He began by offering the blubber to locals as manure. People arrived with carts and horses to help themselves to supplies every day for a week u
ntil Knox was left with just the bones (weighing 28 tons), the tongue (the size of half an Asian male elephant), and whalebone, or baleen (whales have no teeth but have evolved baleen to filter out small animals from sea water).

  Knox was amazed by the baleen, having not seen anything like it before. It is quite strange stuff: whales eat by diving down to around 200 metres, then ‘lunge’ several times, dropping their jaw, and swimming at around 11 kilometres per hour. The whales take a gulp of water, including any animals, like small fish, or krill, that are swimming around in the water. Then they partly close their mouth, and push out their tongue, so that the baleen sieves out the small fish, leaving them with clear water to swallow. The krill slips through the baleen though, and blue whales eat three tons of it a day during summer. They eat very little the rest of the year.

  They can swallow nothing larger than a grapefruit. Knox described how disappointed the people on the beach were by the size of the giant creatures ‘gullet’, for it could only admit ‘a man’s closed hand’. This ‘seemed to give universal dissatisfaction, and lowered the whale in the estimation of the mob at least fifty per cent’. The aorta however was over 90 centimetres in circumference, big enough for a toddler to crawl along.