Umeå

Umeå’s journey northwards past Öregrund took a frigid turn as she battled a snowstorm and fog in plummeting temperatures of 18 degrees below zero. At the same level as Gnarp, the ship ran aground several times on Lillgrundet and the incoming water extinguished the boiler. The crew quickly realised that the ship was lost.

As they were about to launch the lifeboats, one of them capsized and several people drowned. Only a severely injured stoker managed to climb into the water-filled boat, but he soon realised that the oars had vanished. In the other lifeboat, 15 people – 9 men and 6 women – managed to get in. The lifeboat succeeded in reaching the uninhabited island of Gran, where the survivors managed to build a fire. After enduring three days of blizzard and cold, they were rescued by people from the mainland. The lifeboat with the badly injured stoker later floated ashore, but by then the stoker had frozen to death.

In 1858, shipwright Willehard Sandström began a salvage attempt. He was known as a skillful shipwreck discoverer. Sandström built a kind of submarine-like vessel that he planned to use to salvage Umeå.

The egg-like craft held two people and was equipped with windows and tools with which Sandström planned to attach iron rods with long chains to the windows and under propellers on the wreck. The problem for Sandström was that he failed to locate the wreck, so the entire salvage operation ended in much disappointment for him.

Sandström suffered from mental illness. And his health did not improve either when his feet froze, forcing him to have both legs amputated.