A 17th century Swedish warship sinks less than a mile into its maiden voyage and is lost for over three hundred years.

When two of my friends returned from a late-summer vacation in Stockholm with an idea for a blog post about a 17th century Swedish shipwreck I jumped at the idea. It’s a story, spanning four centuries, that has everything: tragedy, underwater archaeology, perseverance, cultural heritage, 17th century Swedish politics.

Our past relationship with copper was dramatically brought to light, quite literally, on a bright autumn day twenty years ago when two tourists hiking in the Tyrolean Alps stumbled upon a desiccated corpse protruding from a receding glacier.