A second-hand shipwreck market: Salvage auctions in mid-eighteenth-century Helsinki

Abstract

When a merchant ship was wrecked in the Gulf of Finland in the eighteenth century it was salvaged (mainly its running rigging), together with its cargo. In eighteenth-century Sweden, salvage was the monopoly of the Northern Diving and Salvage Company (1729–1802). In Helsinki, several salvage auctions were held each year. Salvage documents are useful sources not only for investigating the demand for ship parts, but also for identifying ships and explaining past marine accidents. The detailed technical knowledge provided by auction protocols offers insight into ships and their equipment in the early modern Baltic. Many ships were on their way to St Petersburg (established in 1703), the home port of European naval stores, but many of them were wrecked on the rocky coasts of Helsinki. This gave rise to a strange kind of shipping based on random imports and the use of recycled cordage, sails and anchors from the shores blessed by unfortunate ships.