The Cargo of the East Indiaman Götheborg Shipwreck

A Talk by Borje Forssell

Date: Wednesday 2 April 2008

Time: 7.00 pm

Venue: The Discovery Room,
Asian Civilisations Museum, Empress Place

The Swedish East India Company was established in 1731, its purpose to trade in Asia. The company got a 15 year monopoly on the trade and the goods exchanged were Swedish timber, tar, iron and copper against silver, tea, porcelain and silk. The company was situated in Gothenburg, while most of the ships were built in Stockholm.

The East Indiaman Götheborg was a large wooden sailing ship that sank off Gothenburg, Sweden, on 12 September 1745 while approaching its home harbour after returning from her voyage to Canton, China. All 141 crew and passengers survived, but the ship was lost.

The cargo of the East Indiaman Götheborg included silk, tea, ceramics, pepper, galangal, mother of pearl and tuttanego (a metal used for making decorations). In total, 650-700 tons of merchandise was loaded.

After several earlier attempts to recover the cargo, the wreck site has now been researched by marine archaeologists.

Borje Forssell is Chairman of the Oriental Ceramic Society of Sweden and has been diving for wrecks in Southeast Asia for more than 20 years. He will talk about the cargo of the East Indiaman Götheborg and compare it to the cargoes from other wreck sites such as the Geldermalsen (Nanking Cargo) and the Diana.

Organised by the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Southeast Asian Ceramic Society