page_title: Kronan (ship)
section_title: Armament
hierarchical_section_title: Kronan (ship) / Design / Armament
caption_attribution_description: English: Handguns of the Swedish ship of the line Kronan at Kalmar museum.
context_page_description: Kronan, also called Stora Kronan, was a Swedish warship that served as the flagship of the Swedish Navy in the Baltic Sea in the 1670s. When built, she was one of the largest seagoing vessels in the world. The construction of Kronan lasted from 1668 to 1672 and was delayed by difficulties with financing and conflicts between the shipwright Francis Sheldon and the Swedish admiralty. After four years of service, the ship foundered in rough weather at the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676: while making a sharp turn under too much sail she capsized, and the gunpowder magazine ignited and blew off most of the bow. Kronan sank quickly, taking about 800 men and more than 100 guns with her, along with valuable military equipment, weapons, personal items, and large quantities of silver and gold coins.
  The loss of Kronan was a hard blow for Sweden during the Scanian War. Besides being the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Swedish Navy, she had been an important status symbol for the monarchy of the young Charles XI.
context_section_description: According to the official armament plan Kronan was to be equipped with 124–126 guns; 34–36 guns on each of the gundecks and an additional 18 shared between forecastle and sterncastle decks. Guns were classed by the weight of the cannonballs they fired, varying between 3 and 36 pounds (1.3–15.3 kg). The guns themselves weighed from a few hundred kg (400–500 lbs) up to four tonnes (4.4 tons) with the heaviest pieces placed in the middle of the lower-most gundeck with successively lighter ones on the decks above. Kronan's most lethal weapons were the 30- and 36-pounders on the lowest gundeck which had a range and firepower that outclassed the armament of almost any other warship. The guns lighter than 18-pounders were primarily intended to inflict damage on the enemy's crew and rigging rather than the hull.
  According to modern research, the number of guns was considerably less than the official armament plan. At the time, armament plans regularly overstated the number of guns available. In reality, they were ideal estimations that seldom reflected actual conditions, either because of a lack of ordnance or because they were impractical when tested. Heavy 30- and 36-pounder guns were particularly difficult to find in sufficient numbers and lighter guns were frequently used instead. Going by the number of guns salvaged from Kronan in the 1680s (see "History as a shipwreck") and during the excavations in the 1980s the total comes to 105–110. The upper figure matches the calculations of the number of gunports on the remains of the wreck and the number of guns that could practically fit on the gun decks. The lower figure is the number of guns found in the 1980s excavations combined with the list of guns brought up during the salvage operations in the 1680s. The table below lists the number of guns, comparing the official 1671 armament plan to the calculations by naval historian Jan Glete.
  Several types of ammunition were available, each for different uses: round shot (cannonballs) against ship hulls, chain shot against masts and rigging, and canister shot (wooden cylinders filled with metal balls or fragments), which had a devastating effect on tightly packed groups of men. For boarding actions Kronan was equipped with 130 muskets and 80 matchlock or flintlock pistols. For close combat there were 250 pikes, 200 boarding axes and 180 swords. During the excavations, large-caliber firearms were found – hakebössor, similar to blunderbusses; they were equipped with a small catch underneath the barrel which allowed them to be hooked over a railing to allow it to absorb the recoil of the charges. One hakebössa was still loaded with a small canister containing 20 lead balls that would have been used to clear enemy decks before boarding.
caption: Firearms, including muskets, on display at Kalmar County Museum
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