It's been a while since the last one, but this is my sixth FAC so far. This is a quite natural continuation of my interest in naval history and maritime archaeology which began with
Vasa (ship) and continued with
Mary Rose (both FAs). Kronan is not as well-known and publicized as either Vasa or Mary Rose, but it is in many ways quite similar: an important and prestigious warship that sank tragically, but which has provided valuable historical evidence to scholars today. This article is rather shorter than the ones on the other two ships, but I see that as a natural consequence of lesser notability and that there and less detailed sources.
"Only a few months after the peace of 1658, Swedish King
Charles X declared war against once more in an attempt to end Denmark's position as an independent state." – against who? (Denmark, I assume) Why did he do so? The move seems pretty politically inept. Also, the link goes to a French king.
The image situation is not all that good right now. Two rather important pics had to be removed due to being non-FOP models (see discussion below). If fixed one instance, but the images are generally where they are because it's where they belong.
Detailed drawings of specific 17th century ships are extremely rare. No such plans exist, I'm afraid. An unfortunate downside of writing on pre-modern ships. :-/
I'd like to note that I still think the background section has some misplaced emphasis on Charles X Gustafs Danish wars. It would be more valuable with a paragraph on the state on the Swedish fleet at that time. I'm also not sure if the regency had so much trouble "asserting Swedish power abroad"; the
Triple Alliance (1668) was rather an example of the opposite. The Council was weakened because of a conflict between those who wanted exactly that kind of "peace-keeping" politics, and those who preferred to have a strong ally like France, which could pay subsidies to cover holes in the budget.
I went back to the Rystad and reworked the background (diff in reply above). I tried to put the wars into a wider context (along with the
Torstenson War) and I focused on the foreign policies. I'll work on some more details about the fleet next.
PeterIsotalo05:58, 17 April 2014 (UTC)reply
The new paragraph is good, but I'd like to see a year for which it is valid. The point about naval stores is somewhat surprising, since Sweden controlled a lot of the trade of at least some necessities like tar and hemp. Also, the note about the old Swedish ships seems to contradict the earlier note about the extensive building programme.
Andejons (
talk)
21:11, 17 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Year added, fixed over-reading of source. I kinda assumed it was an issue with stores, but it was really just crappy maintenance. And the building program was in motion, but the Danes were simply better at it.
PeterIsotalo22:42, 18 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Support with minor comments
A well researched article - I enjoyed reading it.
"Golabiewski Lannby, Monica, (1985) The goldtreasure from the royal ship Kronan at the Kalmar County Museum." - if an English work, I believe the MOS would have the title capitalised, e.g. "The Goldtreasure from the Royal Ship Kronan..." Same for "Franzén, Anders, HMS Kronan : the search for a great 17th century Swedish warship "
I've some concerns over the copyright on the pictures of the models in the museum. One of these is
File:Ship of the line.JPG - assuming that the model is in Sweden, I don't think that this is covered by Freedom of Panorama in Sweden, which only covers public art outdoors (according to the Commons website
here), and so would still be under copyright by the original artist/modeller. I think
File:Kalmar museum Vrakplatsen.JPG would have similar issues.
Hchc2009 (
talk)
16:32, 17 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Thank you very much! I enjoyed writing it. :-)
I actually think that this is the way the title is written, but I don't mind standardizing it.
I've actually thought about images of museum models from the perspective, but I've left the issue alone. To me it seems like a very typical "never going to be a problem unless you actually ask for permission"-kinda issue. Do you know of any precedents?
In the UK, it's not normally a problem, since the FoP rules are different (a permanent model of a ship on display inside a museum is covered by our FoP). In Sweden, though, it does appear to be different. I guess you've got two issues here. One is the question of "how likely is the museum to take you to court?"; I'm not a lawyer, so don't treat this as legal advice (!), but my guess is that a typical museum is unlikely to pursue you over such a picture, unless you started to exploit it commercially etc. The second question are the Commons rules on images, which are pretty clear about the image having to be free for use in both the US and (in this case) Sweden - and these don't seem to be free in either, as the US doesn't have FoP for these sorts of models as far as I'm aware.
Hchc2009 (
talk)
18:30, 17 April 2014 (UTC)reply
*whine* Couldn't we just pretend we like everything is alright...? :-/ I know you're perfectly right, though, so I'll just remove the pics for now. I'll leave it to someone else to settle the issue over at Commons.
I know how you feel... the arguments over what to do with UK sourced photographs that are valid FoP in the UK, but not in the US, is still rolling on... :( If you want any help in trying to produce a free diagram of the ship, though, I'm happy to help with Inkscape etc.
Hchc2009 (
talk)
19:47, 17 April 2014 (UTC)reply
A diagram would be... well... awesome sauce! I possess no skills in the graphics department.
I've never seen one, no. Could
this help...? I'll see if I can get a hold of the archaeological reports. There might be something in there, but I doubt it.
Whoa...
Bodacious! That's really nice of you. You even got the
whipstaff in there! One really minor quip: could you shade or somehow differentiate the contours above the open air decks, including the railing?
Right, I've taken a stab at the shading (it's showing up in the thumbnail of the updated version, but you may need to empty the cache) - I've gone for a light grey on the deck levels - see what you think.
Hchc2009 (
talk)
15:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Some disagreement between infobox and cited text - for example, check date construction began. Other details that appear only in the infobox are unsourced
"it took until 31 July 1668 before her hull was launched" - source?
Why do the Kronanprojektet refs appear in the middle of the "E" in the otherwise-alphabetical reflist?
FN2: formatting, and why use a full rather than shortened cite here?
Missing bibliographic info for Soop 2007, Johansson 1993
FN39: which Einarsson 2005?
Isacsson or Isacson? Ericson or Ericsson Wolfe? Gainsford & Jonsson or Johansson? Is Golabiewski Lannby 1985 or 1988? Please check for accuracy and consistency throughout refs.
Nikkimaria (
talk)
20:26, 18 April 2014 (UTC)reply
I think
this should fix the lot. Glete (2002) is full because it's really just further reading. I don't think it really belongs in the reference list. And thanks!
PeterIsotalo22:42, 18 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Comments
At the Treaties of Brömsebro and Roskilde, Denmark had been forced to cede the islands Gotland and Ösel all of its eastern territories on the Scandinavian Peninsula and parts of Norway. Is there a missing word or two here?
In a third war 1658–60) Sweden under Charles X attempted to finish off Denmark for good. Missing opening parenthesis?
Charles' successor, Charles XI was only five when his father died, and a regency council with the queen mother Hedvig Eleonora as interim regent Missing verb, I believe.
Better, but how about "assumed power" instead?
France promised to pay the war subsidies that were in dire need of only on the condition that Sweden move on Brandenburg in force. Awkward. How about rephrasing it to something like "promised to pay the desperately needed war subsidies"?
had enjoyed sin typo
Despite the recent building program, the Swedish fleet was older and of poorer quality than the Danish fleet, which had replaced a larger proportion of its vessels. Awkward. Rephrase to say that the Danish fleet was newer and more modern or somesuch.
The Swedish crews were also less trained than Danish and Norwegian "less well-trained" or poorly trained.
a lack professional naval officers plagued the Swedish admiralty lack "of" professional. And the lack plagued the navy as a whole rather than just the Admiralty, I believe. More later; it's time for dinner.--
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk)
23:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)reply
I'm inclined to disagree. If you write about modern organizations, there's usually an official name. But 17th century armed forces didn't have names in any meaningful modern sense. Here's an example of how Jan Glete uses the term.
[6] There's no proper organizational term in Swedish. Why would there be one in English?
PeterIsotalo21:04, 21 April 2014 (UTC)reply
I understand your point, but it's irrelevant to the simple fact that English grammar dictates that proper nouns be fully capitalized. Henry VIII's Royal Navy wasn't really a navy as we understand it, but, nonetheless, its name is fully capitalized in every English-language source that deals with it. Official name doesn't come into it at all.--
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk)
21:27, 21 April 2014 (UTC)reply
"Royal Navy" is actually a given name, whether it was official or not. "Swedish navy" is not. It's purely descriptive and is inconsistently capitalized in sources.
PeterIsotalo22:02, 21 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Btw, I should add that Henry VIII's navy is what we call the
Tudor navy. If we were talking about anything before, say, 1600, "English navy" would be pretty appropriate. Our own article on the
Royal Navy dates the actual name standardization to 1660s (and includes a "British navy"). And here are various examples of actual usage of "English navy" in print.
[7][8][9][10][11] Same appears to be true for the pre-modern "French navy",
[12][13][14][15][16][17] "Spanish navy"
[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and "Dutch navy".
[32][33][34][35][36][37] You can certainly find sources that capitalize the terms, but they don't appear to be as common. If you look around, you'll even see instances of "French navy" that refers to 20th century history. So I'd say the "proper noun"-argument doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny.
PeterIsotalo14:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)reply
And I'll respond that proper nouns are amazingly misunderstood in academia and popular writing both as I shake my cane at the kids on my lawn. Check any grammar usage guide like the Chicago Manual of Style.
Plenty of of sources don't see this as a proper noun, so grammars or the Chicago MoS wouldn't matter. Were this an article about modern naval history, I wouldn't argue against your complaint.
PeterIsotalo19:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Until after about 1650 European shipwrights had not begun building three-deckers on a large scale, and the designs were by the 1660s still quite experimental. Awkward.
Both English and French three-deckers were known to be unstable since they were built high, narrow and armed with too many guns. When was this known, presumably after Kronan was built.
In effect they were then rendered into over-prices two-deckers Fix this and link two-decker.
In the 18th century, ships with the same weight of guns as Kronan were built much more heavily, usually from 3,000 up to 5,000 tonnes, which made them much more stable. Heavily is not the word you want to use here. The extra displacement didn't make the more recent 1st rates more stable, but rather that they were beamier with a deeper draft. The ships were probably also more heavily built, but I'm not an expert on sailing warships.
124–126 guns; 34–36 guns on each of the gundecks and an additional 18 in the forecastle and sterncastle decks. Clarify that the 18 guns were split between the forecastle and sterncastle, not each. Also link sterncastle.
Convert a few hundred kg and up to four tonnes.
Convert 30 and 18 pounds
I was under the impression that chain shot was a later invention. Did they recover some from the wreck?
Link pike, boarding axe
Fix this: During the excavations large-caliber hakebössor, firearms were found, similar to blunderbusses.
And this: that 7–10 hectares (17–25 acres or 0.03–0.04 sq mi) of oak forest of hundred-year-old trees More later.
Regarding instability: 17th century shipbuilding was not an exact science and safety margins were horrendous by modern standards. It was always a compromise between a degree of instability and, well, crappy warships with too few guns in wrong places.
True enough, but the phrasing of your sentence is unclear. Did the designers of this ship think that, or are you making a post-facto judgement?--
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk)
07:40, 26 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Convert "a few hundred kg" to what? "Few" doesn't divide by 0.453. And tonnes are so close to tons that there really isn't much point in specifying it times 0.9. Both are approximate measurements. And why convert random gun poundage? The general weight span is converted once, but I don't see the benefit of converting it all over the place.
And if the reader doesn't happen to know the conversions off the top of his head, what then? As a matter of courtesy and
WP:MOSNUM, measurements should be converted on first use.--
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk)
07:40, 26 April 2014 (UTC)reply
I added a short ton conversion, but I honestly don't know how to express "a few hundred kgs" as a lbs-conversion. You'll have to help me out on that one. The gun poundage I simply don't agree with. It's not done in similar articles and the approximate span is already given. This is an obvious case of a measurement that is relevant to how powerful the guns are, not the exact weight of its ammunition. If the article was specifically about naval guns and was discussing the ammunition itself, it would be a different matter.
PeterIsotalo12:39, 26 April 2014 (UTC)reply
If you don't convert the weights then the only thing the reader can assume is that a 32-pounder is heavier and more powerful than an 8-pounder. He'll still have not a clue about how much those cannonballs weigh in terms that he is familiar with. I'd translate a few hundred kg as 4-500 lbs as a rough equivalence.--
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk)
14:44, 1 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Oppose on prose. I see quite a few awkward constructions, including "wasn't", "
summer" and the issue Sturmvogel highlights above. Otherwise it looks ok. --
John (
talk)
06:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Fixed the "wasn't", but I don't really understand what the "summer"-comment is about. I'll run through the text again to look for prose problems.
I'd really like some explanation of why it has to be "Swedish Navy", though. Here are further examples of "Swedish navy" in various types of literature, including academic works.
[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Note that most of these books mention "Royal Navy" and capitalize it, but consciously avoid it in other cases. This has not been considered a problem in other promoted articles like
Mary Rose ("English navy", "Tudor navy"),
Vasa (ship),
Dano-Swedish War (1658–60),
Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–73),
Livonian War,
English cannon (though inconsistent) or the recently promoted
Battle of Öland. There's also
Byzantine navy to consider and various other pre-modern naval forces. If it's a formality, what guideline are being invoked?
Oh sure.
WP:SEASON recommends not using "spring", "summer" etc. to denote time unless the season is important to the event. I can see the arguments for both the capitalised and uncapitalised versions; national navies are usually considered as
proper nouns and are therefore capitalised. The fact that the Wikipedia article is at
Swedish Navy and not
Swedish navy is not definitive but it is another little piece of evidence pointing towards using the capitalised version. --
John (
talk)
19:56, 22 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Well, I changed one instance of "autumn". The rest seem fine to me. Could you provide more specific examples?
Yes, I understand that there are arguments either way, both of which are relevant in their own ways. So I'm saying that right now, this is a matter for
WP:MILTERMS, not an FAC.
That's fine with me. This oppose stands. This is one of the poorest FAC candidates I have seen for years. I wonder how it got through GA as it does not even meet the lower criteria for that. --
John (
talk)
05:43, 23 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Please be more specific. Your comments are very critical, but not specific enough to be actionable.
Hmm. Did you see the link I posted (twice) above to WP:SEASON? This is part of our Manual of Style, adherence to which is
criterion 2. That's an easy one to action; that you have not done so makes me think you are not serious about this nomination. There are an awful lot of instances of really poor writing in the article and it would need some major work to meet 1a, in my opinion. What is the past tense of the verb "to lead"? FAC is not an article improvement process but a peer review, and I do not think this article can be made to pass the criteria without some serious work which I do not think you are able or willing to give to it. --
John (
talk)
17:32, 23 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Yes, I read the link and honestly don't see any problems. That's why I asked for a specification. I just haven't encountered that particular complaint before.
So far, I have trouble spotting the issues you're concerned about. Yes, you've found a misspelling of "lead" (
introduced by a passing editor). But I don't see how that's reason enough to talk of "really poor writing".
I took a second look a month later. It was looking much better, though some of the problems I identified a month ago were still there.
Here are my copyedits, and I have struck my oppose. I now support. --
John (
talk)
20:54, 25 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Thank you for the reassessment and the copyediting. Though I still don't understand why statements like "winter of 1664-65" (timber was always cut during winter, which is hardly common knowledge) or "summer of 1980" (diving seasons are specified, but they're
not obvious and seems worth repeating ) are problematic prose-wise.
There's support for that edit at
WP:SEASON, though there's no support for it at MilHist generally. (At least, not if all your sources say is that it was winter. If you know the month, it's preferable to give the month, because "winter" can mean 5 or 6 different things.) The other edits seem fine ... questions about any of those, Peter? John made a lot of edits that professional copyeditors are on board with, though some of those calls don't get a lot of discussion on WP, even at FAC. - Dank (
push to talk)
20:01, 26 May 2014 (UTC)reply
No, it's just the adversity to seasons that baffles me. I've seen the reference to
WP:SEASON, I've read it, asked for clarifications and have gotten no explanation. To me 1664-65 is two full years, "winter of" is roughly 3-4 months. The latter is clearly more specific, and is directly related to logging practices. Same goes for "summer of" which is related to diving seasons. Writing "December-February" or "June-August" is just faux specificity. How can winter in Scandinavia be "5 or 6 different things"? Are you seriously saying that someone is apt to confuse this with southern hemisphere seasons?
1. Dec through Feb 2. winter solstice to spring equinox 3. When I lived in upstate NY, no one used "spring" (when speaking informally) to refer to March; it was a winter month. 4. Other geographical locations do the same thing, adopting the names to whatever their local seasons are. 5. The names of the seasons are also widely adopted for specialized purposes. A "spring [military] offensive" happens whenever offensives tend to happen in whatever part of the world you're talking about. Most of what are called "spring semesters" are actually in the winter. And so forth. 6. The seasons are of course reversed in the southern hemisphere, though few people I copyedit for buy the argument that we can't use the names of seasons in Sweden because it will confuse English-speakers in the southern hemisphere (though I know there are a fair number of readers in the northern hemisphere who get the southern hemisphere seasons wrong). Bottom line: "winter" means whatever the writer thinks it means, which may be dictated by local customs, and we're not mind-readers. It's better to give the month if you know it. Having said that ... everything I just said isn't support for
WP:SEASON in those infrequent cases where all we know is that the sources say something happened in "winter" ... since we don't know what "winter" means, we can't accurately rewrite that as some other period of time, if we don't know. - Dank (
push to talk)
22:14, 26 May 2014 (UTC)reply
It sounds complicated, but I don't think this is the place to argue it at length, so I'll take your word for it. "Winter", however is actually what Lundgren writes as far I recall, and it's more precise, so I'm restoring that one.
Like it or not, WP:SEASON is part of MoS and MoS compliance is criterion 2 for featured articles. If your sources are imprecise that can be a problem. Does the source explain why felling timber is done in winter? If it does, and this is important, it could be worth a footnote. --
John (
talk)
08:21, 27 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Look up the source if you're interested. This is getting too detailed for me.
Good central discussion, good move. Meantime, I would hold out per criterion 2, for full compliance with WP:SEASON. Any instances of seasons should be important and verifiable. --
John (
talk)
22:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)reply
I can't see how that is a neutral conclusion of the #Winter-discussion. There's been several explanations on the relevance of seasons already (diving seasons, logging seasons). One can always disagree on these things, but MoS clearly specify that there is room for exceptions. Holding up an FAC on account of this is somewhat out of proportion.
Question What is wrong with this sentence? in the summer of 1986, during the diving seasons, further experiments were done on Kronan. --
John (
talk)
05:44, 28 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Just to confirm, I am still definitely not happy that a Featured Article should contain a sentence like With the help of diving bells, they were able to raise 60 cannons worth 67,000 daler in the eight short diving seasons during the summers (c. June-August) of 1679–86, beginning as soon as the war with Denmark had ended. --
John (
talk)
21:47, 30 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Just looking at the lead, I find the word "she" used too frequently, in view of the distaste of some readers for the gendered ship pronoun. There are seven "she/her" in the first nine-line para alone, and then one per line. Perhaps these gendered words could be rotated with "the vessel", "the ship", "the Kronan", so it's not hammered at us?
After × 2. Perhaps the second one "Following"?
Failure × 2. Perhaps the second "losses"?
"Yearly diving operations have since been conducted to survey and excavate" -> "Yearly diving operations have since surveyed and excavated"?
Thanks for commenting. Here are the relevant fixes.
[47] I think the "she" for hsips can be bretty handy at times, but I really don't mind either way. In future ship-related articles, I might consider dropping it altogether.
Peter, I know some people feel strongly about keeping it; but just exchanging a few instances of the word at the opening would be good style whatever the line on this be. I'll try to return on Friday.
Tony(talk) 12:28, 23 April 2014 (UTC)reply
Comment minor notesSupport. Overall a great read. The article is similar in structure, though, as Peter notes, somewhat less extensive than
Vasa (ship) (disclosure: which I worked on too) or
Mary Rose articles. I think that is not surprising though, it reflects the difference in notability between the ships.
The prose could use some further tightening, I've edited some - and plan on continuing.
The second paragraph of Design has a sentence with two pairs of parentheses which seems a bit awkward.
The section on osteological analysis of the crews' injuries could perhaps be trimmed a bit, especially since the conclusions are so vague it doesn't enhance the readers understanding of what happened during the sinking.
Are there any further details on the armament; poundage distributions of the guns on each gun deck? The article is not very specific, is that because the sources also ditto?
50 years earlier during the time of the Vasa, it was common practice to issue guns to a ship for each mission - was that still the practice? The reason behind the discrepancy between planned and actual armaments might be worth a sentence or two.
Overall, I think it's comprehensive, well-researched, neutral (although none too kind to the Swedes in places, but they probably deserved it) and obviously stable. If the prose just gets a bit more touch up, I'll happily support it. henrik•
talk17:42, 6 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Long time no collaboration, Henrik. Thanks for the comments! And the copyediting. I've made some adjustments
[50] according to your recommendations here. It includes various tweaks, condensing of osteology findings and a brand new table of gun distribution. Lemme know what you think.
PeterIsotalo18:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Yeah, I unfortunately drifted away from Wikipedia for a bit. :( It's good to see that the place hasn't changed much, and that FAs are still improving; I still hold the
long view - so what is a short absence of a year or two? Anyway, I'm happy with the changes you did per my suggestions, and the recent copyediting has raised the article, so I'm happy to support this now. henrik•
talk12:37, 11 May 2014 (UTC)reply
You have a few duplinks;
this script will highlight them. Some may be justified given the article's length but pls review in any case --
Dutch Republic for instance appears twice in one section.
I saw some discussion of images above but is someone prepared to sign off on the licensing for all images in the article?
John, be interested in having you follow up on your earlier concerns, given the article has had input from Tony, Dan and others in the meantime. Cheers,
Ian Rose (
talk)
01:03, 25 May 2014 (UTC)reply
A few duplinks are still in, but I believe they are justified.
I'm sure you've used images that you believe are correctly licensed, it just needs confirmation by an independent reviewer -- I've listed a request at
WT:FAC. Cheers,
Ian Rose (
talk)
04:38, 31 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Support listing as a Featured Article. Never knew about the MoS issue regarding SEASON that John brought up above. Considering that this and other issues appear to have been addressed I see no reason to object.--
MONGO15:16, 30 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Image review
Several images overlap with section headers, leading to some formatting issues
File:Stora Kronan.jpeg - Needs a US PD tag. Would be nice to know the immediate source of this file too (i.e. was it from an online source or did someone scan it themselves), though that's not strictly necessary
You seem to have misunderstood my concern; it's not the source of the map proper, but the years and clarification included, that is nowhere on the description page. —
Crisco 1492 (
talk)
15:34, 2 June 2014 (UTC)reply
That is exactly what the source explains. It's the entry for stormaktstiden, the period of Swedish history in question, and in the most comprehensive commercial Swedish-language encyclopedia. It happens to have a similar map as well, which makes it a very good source.
PeterIsotalo17:27, 2 June 2014 (UTC)reply