In a snow storm in the middle of December 1898 the Finnish sailing ship "Aimo" failed in a tacking maneuver and sailed straight into the archipelago outside Nämdö and stranded on the skerries "Vitkobbarna". With the two ship's boats, the whole crew got safely to the nearby island of Rågskär. Eighteen soaking wet men doing a surprise visit in the early evening at the crofter's cottage!
The ship could not be saved. It was sold and the wood was used for building houses. Later the left-overs of the ship was used as an artillery target by the Swedish navy.
Tacking, a maneuver by which a sailing boat turns its bow through the wind (Wikipedia)
At Långholmen, an island close to Runmarö (North of Nämdö), tradition says that part of a pier and part of a barn came from the Aimo ship.
This "slice" has been ground to allow for a dendrochronological analysis. Several radii have been measured (Aimo.rwl) and a mean value of that was analysed.
Litterature (in Swedish):
Skärgårdsmuseets tidskrift Skärgård nr 19 Nov 1979, artikeln "Aimo" av Allan Gustafsson.
Om förlisningen, se Maj-Britt Eriksson, Notvarp i Nämdö 1979 eller ovanstående nummer av tidskriften.
The analysis was done with a collection of 37 members, each representing a mean value curve (in .d12 or .wid format) from an area in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Finland. The presumed Aimo sample was selected as the reference in CDendro and the command Test Towards UNDATED reference was run from the collection and "With condensed report" checked:
The best matching results list like this:
T- Over Corr Test lap Year all... 0.31 3.51 121 302 based on 37 members 3EP281AV 0.50 6.24 121 1792 Estonia Est002 (EXTRATERR) BratPIr 0.43 4.92 107 1792 Mälardalen (Bråthen), questionable segments removed NKarelia 0.37 4.29 121 1690 North Karelia, Finland se_005Go 0.35 4.10 121 1792 Gotland, Lunds univ. (EXTRATERR) EXFin002 0.35 4.06 121 1769 Fin002 N.Finland (EXTRATERR) gud14 0.49 4.00 54 2017 Gudbrandsdalen, Norway SE006-La 0.34 3.98 121 1769 Lappland, Lund (EXTRATERR) East Sve 0.34 3.91 121 1792 East Svealand Aneby+Askersu+Bettna+Sissham+Saltsjöba NFinland 0.34 3.91 121 1769 Northern Finland swed304S 0.33 3.88 121 1792 Tyresö, Sisshammar (SE Stockholm 5913 1821) Andreason PISY 1661-1910 ............ Year numbers occurring more than once: 1792 11 1769 3 1824 2 1913 2 1921 2 2010 2
With the presumed Aimo sample provisionally dated to 1792 the matching of each member to that year ("Test towards (dated!) reference") could be analysed. With then only the best eigth members selected, I got: ... with corr >= 0.30 and with overlap >= 107 Results sorted according to decreasing correlation coefficient values.
T- Over Corr Test lap all... 0.45 5.47 121 based on 8 members 3EP281AV 0.50 6.23 121 Estonia Est002 (EXTRATERR) (1516-1998) BratPIr 0.43 4.91 107 Mälardalen (Bråthen), questionable segments removed (1153-1904) se_005Go 0.35 4.10 121 Gotland, Lunds univ. (EXTRATERR) (1125-1987) East Sve 0.34 3.90 121 East Svealand Aneby+Askersu+Bettna+Sissham+Saltsjöba (1662-2005) swed304S 0.33 3.88 121 Tyresö, Sisshammar (SE Stockholm 5913 1821) Andreason PISY 1661-1910 (1661-1910) SödraDal 0.32 3.63 121 SDalar 1 Södra Dalarna PISY (1362-2005) DALARNA 0.30 3.49 121 Dalarna, Lunds universitet (EXTRATERR) (932-1888) NMVKMEAS 0.30 3.44 120 Kaptensudden (ITRDB:swed303), unknown origin in Stockholm area (1672-1870)
I.e. the best T-value is 6.2 towards the reference from Estonia at year 1792. That is a quite certain dating of the outermost ring of the stock.
The "Aimo" was built in Åbo and launched in 1866. If this stock is a part from "Aimo" - which we have good reasons to presume - some 70 rings of sapwood have been cut away as the outermost ring of this "slice" grew in 1792.