The Göta Älv and the Gothenburg Harbor Entrance
Mid part of souvenir shop wall mural. The flower bed in front of the painting is made
to interact with the painting and to create a three dimensional effect.

Immediately facing any visitor entering the shipyard from its main entrance was this 2 x 7 meter long mural showing the Gothenburg harbor entrance as it should have looked at the time of the homecoming of the Gotheborg in 1745. It was displayed on the wall of the Shipyard's souvenir shop. This was the natural meeting place and the starting point for all guided tours of the shipyard.

Ship's provision
Reconstruction painting for the book "Jan-Erik Nilsson: Food on-board Swedish East Indiamen (MS)".
Painting in acrylic on canvas, by Lars 'Gillis' Larsson

One of the things that captivated the imaginations of the visitors was to listen to how the crew lived on-board, and how live farm animals in large numbers were kept on-board together with the sailors, to provide fresh eggs, milk and to eventually be eaten along the road. When this picture was painted the keel was just barely laid out and there were no way to really know how the ship would look inside. But Lars Gillis could help. It eventually turned out to be remarkable correct. Lars was personally very proud of this picture that indeed turned out very well, but was also half ashamed that he taken some artistic liberties in that in reality the live stock was kept in the middle of the ships hull as in barnyard style, and not near a canon port like this, however, I still think it communicates the general idea very well.

However, you would in reality be sleeping along the walls in a barnyard with animals doing what animals do when they have eaten - or drinking. It would have been very, very crowded with a crew of 140 persons, all this live stock and as much cargo and luggage that you could possible bring. Also most culinary efforts from the ship's cooks side would probably also have been pretty much wasted, since the entire crew would have been both eating and sleeping in pretty much the same area as the cows and pigs.

The East Indiaman Gotheborg III under sail
This was maybe the most visionary and important paintings that was made for the project. For the first time we had a picture we could call our own that could show what the ship we had actually started to build would look like when she sailed. On the painting she looks lower then she actually turned out to be, which is probaly historically correct. .

This painting was used on the cover of the Gothenburg Post Issue 4, August 1996. The layout and printing costs and distribution of this 16 page newspaper in 360,000 copies along with the regular GP newspaper, was a sponsorship effort from GP, at that time one of the most important sponsors of the project. In practice we had unlimited access to as many and as large ads that we wanted, in GP.

Project conceptualization as it appeared here in full, editor and author of most of the texts was me, Jan-Erik Nilsson. The photographer Sten Zachrisson, whom I traveled around with for a week, took take all pictures we needed for this magazine.

With this, the popularity of the project and the support from the common population in Gothenburg now reached the proportions of a 'ship craze'. If you said you worked for the 'project' and needed to go to the shipyard area, a taxi driver would send you there for free. (I experienced this myself from a driver who had no idea about who I was.) The commitment and the volunteers free work towards something as impossible as this, had captured the hearts of the people and everybody wanted to give a hand. Still the large sponsors were biding their time and only a few had committed to some support, mostly in the form of products.

At this time Eriksbergs Förvaltnings AB have supplied the land on which the shipyard stands, most of the labor force concerned with the actual ships building was paid for by us or the Länsarbetsnämnden as a unemployment relief project. All cash money was made from or donated by the 'Friends' organization or small hands in the community. All project management was volunteered. Material gifts and small donations poured in.

Cooking on board
Painting based on a reconstruction drawing for "Jan-Erik Nilsson: Food on-board Swedish East Indiamen (MS)".

The ship's pantry was located near the fore of the ship so that the smoke that came out from the fire would sweep out forward from the ship. Actually, since there are not one single original Swedish East Indiaman preserved anywhere it was a bit hard to know how it actually would have looked. This reconstruction painting with two fires, one for the common crew and one for the officers appears reasonable believable. This area on board is in general not much noticed and if the fireplaces ever appear in any excavations, it is usually in the form of a pile of bricks.

Table setting around 1745
Painting based on a reconstruction drawing for "Jan-Erik Nilsson: Food on-board Swedish East Indiamen (MS)".

"Osbeck's Pounche" served on Board
Painting based on a reconstruction drawing for "Jan-Erik Nilsson: Food on-board Swedish East Indiamen (MS)".

Dining at the "First Table" on board
Reconstruction painting and intended book cover for "Jan-Erik Nilsson: Food on-board Swedish East Indiamen (MS)".

When looking at this painting it is hard to remember that at the time of Lars' painting this picture, there were barely a keel stretched at the shipyard area and that there were nothing like a ship to look at. Still this painting came out very close to reality as it turned out to look like.

Cross-section of the Gotheborg III (preliminary plan)
Acrylic on canvas. Painted for the Gotheborg III magazine as a basis for a sponsoring effort 'component sale' that aimed at asking sponsors to pay for one item at a time from one single ship's iron nail and upwards.

At the time of this painting not much was settled on how the interior eventually would look. The most solid document we had at this time was a paper by Eric Lincoln, (Maskinsystem ombord Ostindiefararen Götheborg III. Examensarbete omfattande 4 p. Inst. för maskinteknik, Ing. o Sjöbefälsskolan vid Chalmers Tekniska Högskola 1994) a maritime engineer at that time studying at CTH and one of the participants in the original project Managing Committee. That paper outlined his thoughts on how to carefully modernize an old ship construction towards something that could actually be sailed. I belive that it was Eric that finally killed my dream of having live cattle onboard, something that later generations of people who have actually sailed with our ship has all reasons to be grateful for.