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The hushed drawing rooms of Stockholm hummed with palpable tension. In this August of 1669, Marquis João de Carrasca, with measured eloquence, was deep in final negotiations with the Swedish Crown and Council. The aim was to seal the alliance, not on mere promises, but on tangible facts.
The clinching argument had just arrived: one hundred thirty tons of silver from Scottish, English, and Hamburg banks had been discreetly deposited into various Swedish banks. It was a colossal sum for Sweden—and merely a portion of all that the "Sith Company" was capable of deploying, though the Swedes seemed unprepared to learn more—irrefutable proof of the consortium's financial might, a shock to the usually leaner royal coffers.
This unprecedented influx of liquidity instantly validated João's credibility regarding his projects, and not just as a warrior of the seas.
The Swedes, through their espionage and commercial intelligence networks—the Dutch don't keep such secrets—had already gained crucial knowledge: the "Sith Company," which would operate under the Swedish flag, in fact possessed the same fleet as "Horizon Brazil."
They understood that this naval force, equipped with deep-draft vessels, was a major strategic asset, capable of maneuvering and mooring where few others could.
João's proposal was not that of a newcomer, but of an already established maritime power seeking a new home. Their demands for a deep port and a shipyard now made perfect sense.
Driven by the urgency of negotiations and the fresh funds, the coastal reconnaissance mission, conducted with absolute discretion by Dom Luís, Dom Diogo, and Dom Rui, intensified. Their sounding poles, maps, and patient observations were rewarded.
In late July 1669, the announcement arrived: the micro-archipelago of Blekinge (the historical site of Karlskrona) had finally been identified.
A deep bay, a protective micro-archipelago, and ideal topography for establishing a port and shipyard capable of accommodating and repairing the fleet's largest vessels.
The euphoria was contained, for the work had only just begun.
Karl's Harbour: The Impossible Whirlwind
The August sun of 1669, hotter than usual over the Blekinge coast, seemed to mock them. It illuminated not summer calm, but a frantic hive of activity, an organized chaos that would defy the laws of nature and 17th-century engineering. The silence of the coastal pines was shattered by the incessant roar of thousands of voices, the clang of hammers, and the ominous scraping of dredges. Karl's Harbour was being born in pain and sweat.
The first ships of the Sith Company—frigates under newly negotiated Swedish flags, carrying coffers of silver that would make the richest princes blanch—had dropped anchor where the water was still deep enough. Their mission: to disembark the engineers, master shipwrights, and foremen, lured from their Dutch, English, and even French shipyards at exorbitant prices. Contracts sealed with sums that would sustain their families for generations, with a simple clause: "swift, flawless execution, or the consequences will be... unsettling." Among them was a certain Master Jan, a Dutchman from Rotterdam, expert in dredging, whose eyes betrayed a palpable anxiety despite the fortune. The Swedish Crown, for its part, had lent royal engineers, men of rare competence, but their loan was not disinterested. The Sith Company had slipped an advance so colossal to the Riksens Ständers Bank that even Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, accustomed to grand maneuvers, had winced.
Then came the human deluge. By the thousands, laborers disembarked from transports arriving from Stockholm, Stralsund, and even small towns in Brandenburg. Men of all nationalities, attracted by rumors of unprecedented wages—daily pay that surpassed a line soldier's monthly salary. Makeshift tent camps sprung up overnight, sprawling across the shores, while surveying teams, protected by armed guards, marked out the lines of what would become the base.
The immediate goal: to dig. To dig relentlessly. The colossal fleet of 35 ships, these giants of the seas, including the massive deep-draft Indiamen, had to winter here. Master Jan, pale under the sun, pointed to the areas to be dredged. Hundreds, then thousands of men toiled, transforming the coastal area into a muddy battlefield. Primitive dredges, gigantic shovels operated by trebuchets and horses, tore muck from the bottom. Hastily built barges, pulled by small rowboats, carried the mud out to sea. The sounds of construction were deafening, punctuated by the shouts of foremen and incessant whistles.
But time was the fiercest enemy. Ten weeks. Ten weeks to transform shoals into a haven for titans. "We need at least six meters here!" yelled a consortium officer, pointing to a spot where the flagship was to moor. Special teams, improvised divers and pioneers, laid small black powder charges underwater to fracture stubborn rocks, dull explosions that vibrated the air and frayed nerves.
Simultaneously, the second urgent front opened: housing for the 800 essential guards and sailors. These men, including the sharp-eyed Portuguese whose loyalty was bought at a high price, were the living shield of the fleet. Kilometers of pine trees were felled, stripped of bark, and transformed into massive logs. Barracks rose from the ground at astonishing speed, rustic but sturdy structures, insulated with moss and peat, with chimneys already puffing out promising smoke. No luxury, just shelter from the inevitable cold and the promise of regular pay, more gold than they had ever seen. Each day, a new barrack was added, each day the camp grew, resembling a New World colony, launched on the scale of an empire under construction.
The pressure was overwhelming, but the Sith Company's limitless resources turned the impossible into brutal reality. Karl's Harbour was being forged by will and money. And it was just the beginning.
The August sun continued to beat down, but the frenzy at Karl's Harbour did not abate. Each day gained was a step forward against the approaching Swedish winter. While the dredges tirelessly carved the seabed for the giants of the seas, other fronts opened, equally crucial for the survival of this improvised city-shipyard.
Pontoons and Jetties: The Vital Access
As soon as the first basins began to take shape, the carpenters, under the direction of Master Erik, a pragmatic yet effective Swede, set to work on the temporary pontoons and jetties. Gone were the stone quays of Lisbon, too slow, too costly in labor for the urgency of the situation. Here, it was the reign of raw wood: massive logs driven into the mud, topped with thick planks. Floating gangways, secured by sturdy ropes and anchors, were installed along the future mooring points, allowing men and supplies to move between land and ships. It wasn't elegant, but it was functional. Each pontoon became a vital artery, supporting the incessant ballet of men, barrels, and tools.
Emergency Hygiene: Latrines and Saltpeter
With thousands of men concentrated in a small area, waste management became a major concern to prevent epidemics, a common scourge in camps of the era. The Sith Company, aware of the bitter lessons learned from other nations' colonies—such as "Horizon Brazil" which had prepared for a completely different occasion—had a radical approach:
Deep pit latrines were dug, aligned over wide trenches. Light wooden structures surrounded them for a semblance of privacy. Their location was carefully chosen downstream from the camp to avoid contaminating drinking water sources.
And here was the macabre innovation, the most cheerful of the workers assigned to it: teams of manual laborers, assigned to the least enviable task, traversed the rows of latrines with small handcarts equipped with barrels. Regularly, the pits were emptied. The contents, far from being carelessly dumped into the sea or forest, were transported to improvised "saltpeter factories."
These weren't factories in the modern sense, but vast pits where excrement was mixed with ash, calcareous earth, and decaying organic matter. "Saltpeter makers" supervised the decomposition process. The resulting nitre (saltpeter) was a key ingredient for making gunpowder, precious for underwater blasting, and also for arming the fleet. Nothing was to be wasted; everything had to become useful for the consortium's purpose. It was a cynical recovery, according to some, but effective, transforming the vilest waste into a strategic resource.
The Common Kitchen: Feeding the Working Men
The morale and strength of the men depended on their stomachs. The common kitchen was the beating heart of the camp after the work sites.
Enormous iron cauldrons, some salvaged from breweries or supply ships, bubbled incessantly over monumental wood fires.
Meals were simple but high in calories: stews of salted or dried meat (beef, pork), dried fish, cereal porridges (oats, rye, and even wheat), coarse bread, and light beer (for energy and water hygiene—this is little known now, but beer and wine were primarily preferred to water for traditional reasons in the very beginning to avoid diseases). The Sith Company's supply agents, deployed in Stockholm and Baltic ports, bought entire cargoes of Polish grains and North Sea herring, paid for with spices and silver, to anticipate winter.
A brigade of cooks and kitchen assistants, supervised by a rigorous steward, worked tirelessly. They were responsible for feeding the thousands of active workers, from laborers to engineers, ensuring the workforce remained robust and minimizing malnutrition-related diseases.
Karl's Harbour was not a pleasant place to live. It was a voracious war machine, built in urgency, with a single goal: the survival of the fleet and the preparation for the Baltic Trade Company's future commercial offensive. Every detail, even the most insignificant like the latrines, was optimized by the power and efficiency of the Sith Company to achieve its objectives.
The October wind sweeping through Karl's Harbour already carried the promise of frost, but also the acrid smell of fresh tar, wet sawdust, and persistent sweat. By late October 1669, what had been a mere few weeks earlier a wild Blekinge cove had become a feat of forced engineering, an immense scar on the landscape, but a vital one.
The sigh of relief was palpable among the site teams. The insane goal had been achieved, not without a staggering human and material cost, but the result was there: a functional winter base for a fleet of unprecedented scale in the Baltic.
The 35 ships, including the majestic Indiamen, these giants of the seas, were now safe. Not lined up on luxurious quays like in Lisbon, but deeply anchored in the specially dredged basins. Each ship was a wooden fortress, caulked, its decks cleared for winter. Their masts formed a dense, imposing forest, dominating the landscape, an inspiring sight of a determined group of men achieving a goal for anyone who would have dared declare it impossible, while keeping this still fragile shipyard highly defended.
The emergency mooring systems—massive anchors, sturdy chains, and thick moorings connecting ships to each other and to solid anchoring points on the coast—had been put in place under the constant supervision of master mariners and engineers. Improvised "ice-breaking" teams, composed of sailors and laborers, were already training to patrol in small boats around the hulls, armed with grappling hooks and dinghies to prevent any ice entrapment when the frost arrived.
Around the basins, the camp had transformed into a human structure disciplined by both construction and climatic conditions:
Hundreds of log and thick plank barracks, topped with peat-insulated roofs, now housed the 800 essential men—the fleet's guards, carpenters, blacksmiths, cooks, and, of course, the Portuguese whose loyalty was guaranteed and morale maintained by the promise of an unprecedented fortune. Each barrack was rudimentary but heated by a central stove, offering shelter from the elements.
At the center of the camp, the gigantic common kitchen, with its smoking cauldrons, operated at full throttle, distributing generous and caloric rations, essential for maintaining the men's strength and morale in the face of winter's rigors.
The waste management system, as ingenious as it was repulsive, was operational. The pit latrines were regularly emptied by handcarts, their contents transported to the more distant saltpeter production areas. The smell remained perceptible, but strict discipline and hygiene minimized the risk of epidemics, and fostered the emergence of a highly consumed product.
An imposing structure, solidly built of thick wood and under armed guard, served as the main granary and warehouse. It was already filled to the brim with tons of grain, salted meat, dried herring, barrels of beer and spirits, as well as firewood and dried fruits, following the massive and rapid purchases orchestrated by the Sith Company in Stockholm and Baltic ports.
A few rudimentary workshops, sheltered under vast wooden hangars, allowed for emergency repairs and tool manufacturing. The forge spewed its black plume of smoke, a sign of incessant activity.
The biggest logistical challenge, that of winter provisioning for such an isolated population, seemed for now to be under control. The Sith Company's transport ships had made incessant rotations, delivering mountains of supplies before the ice seriously bit into the Baltic. The "non-essential" personnel had been repatriated to Stockholm or Stralsund, relieving pressure on Blekinge, but always under the discreet surveillance of the consortium's agents.
Karl's Harbour was not yet a city, nor a major shipyard, far from it—in fact, much closer than João and crew had anticipated, thanks to Rui's idea. It was a military and commercial operations base, a clenched fist in the heart of the Baltic. The Sith Company had proven its ability to achieve miracles in record time, not by magic, but by relentless planning, brutal execution, and the use of approximately 4 tons of fine silver out of its 300 available.
Winter could arrive; they were ready. Each sailor and their families who followed the new "Sith Company" also had garnished accounts in various banks to get through the winter; in the absence of activities, they would have ample leisure to learn the local language and acclimate to the cold and long winter nights of the north.
October 12, 1669
Council Room of the "Sith Company," Stockholm, on a chilly morning, especially for the Portuguese.
The table is cluttered with sea charts, bills of exchange, and registers of recently acquired companies. Lamps flicker in the cold morning mist; through the frost-patterned windows, the massive silhouettes of ships at anchor, trapped in the ice, can be seen.
João removes his thick gloves, insists:
"Here's our chance: the Baltic Trade Company. The idea is simple: it's a front for the Sith Company, at least at first, and then we'll sell it on an equivalent of the Stockholm stock exchange when we've achieved hegemony in Baltic trade, all centered around Karl's Harbour.
All these dying companies have been brought to their knees by Holland, and their crews with them. We're buying out their debts, their hulls, and at least part of their crews' debts; from there, we'll get a share of their income as 'protectors' of their trading fleets, and this will please you, Diogo: a defense of their commercial interests, always completely legally. Later, when we've finally rebuilt a viable fleet for the Indies, we can simply trigger another war against the VOC and gain easier access to spices... which will give us a huge advantage for trade with the Russians and Poles, as we saw during the bulk grain purchases. We need to strike before the Dutch realize what we're preparing."
A breath of white steam escapes from their mouths; the silence lingers.
Luís, leaning over the map, breaks the tension with a darker tone:
"But if I were Dutch... Stockholm is where I'd target. Listen, João! The fleet, concentrated there, undefended, it's the ideal prey. De Ruyter or Tromp would have struck at sea level: in the dead of winter, when no one expects it. They've done it before during the Medway raid. A single raid, and everything collapses."
A shiver runs through the room. Some nod; a few look towards the window, towards the frozen port.
João, wide-eyed, chest puffed with a deep breath, before temporizing:
"That would be a direct act of war against Sweden, wouldn't it? The Dutch wouldn't declare war on Sweden, would they?... Would they?"
A tense silence. The logs crackle.
Rui, in a somewhat clipped voice, slips in:
"They just need to disguise their ships as local pirates. Different flags, same faces, same results... And everyone washes their hands of it in The Hague or Amsterdam, and Stockholm probably won't do anything. We'd find our hulls burned, their loot falling into their laps, and no one accusing anyone. Oh, by the way, we transferred the silver you wanted to leave in the holds to English, Scottish, and French banks in the Sith Company's name....."
A chilling sigh shakes João. He slams his fist.
"Ha! Damn it! I completely forgot!"
He springs to his feet; his voice regains its determination, tinged with urgency, completely oblivious that 120 tons of silver are deposited in certain banks elsewhere.
"We still have 144 tons at the Bank of Sweden," Luís interjects.
"Ha, he's not listening," Rui says, before continuing, "You can go up to 50 tons but no more!!!"
João tears off his cape, grabs the sealed portfolio, and runs towards the door. Yelling: "Okay!!! No more than 50!!!!" beginning a frantic dash towards the palace.
Frantic Dash Through Winter Stockholm
João rushes down the stairs of the private mansion, descending four steps at a time, crossing the courtyard where the snow crunches under his boots. Carriages, porters, and soldiers with collars raised turn to stare.
He cuts through the icy streets of the Swedish capital, crosses the market district frozen in the mist.
The horses pulling sleighs shy away at his passing; children scatter, old women make the sign of the cross.
Under the pale morning light, he crosses the old town on the slick ice of Stortorget; along the harbor, guards in fur hats wonder.
João bumps into a royal palace footman, announcing, panting:
"URGENT, council audience! Port, security, supreme interest of the Kingdom!"
Dietrichson, the head of the guard, identifies him and lets him in.
Through the carpeted corridors, the sound of his boots is muffled.
The grand council hall is bathed in pale light; royal councilors, sitting beneath faded tapestries, review reports between budget quarrels.
João stops, inhales deeply, feels the cold recede as the warmth of the parquet floor reaches him.
The grand council hall was bathed in a pale, diffuse winter light. Under the gaze of faded tapestries, a few scattered papers remained, survivors of a budget dispute no councilor seemed willing to resolve.
João, his silhouette rumpled from a dash through the city—cape askew, cravat displaced, boots caked with frozen mud but bearing a proud demeanor—stopped before the small circle. He bowed as low as decorum dictated, the steam from his breath rising like an offering in the icy air.
In a breathless voice, he began:
"Your Majesty, I need an armed detachment—the Dutch fleet could strike Karl's Harbour before even the first fortifications are laid! I offer you ten tons of silver, for the Crown to come to our aid swiftly..."
Regent Hedwig Eleonora, her face impassive, fixed him with an amused eye, a slight smile on her lips:
"Of course, dear Count, it would be an honor to help you and all your associates of the 'Sith Company.'"
Surprised by the familiarity, João, attempting to smooth his rumpled attire and adjust his shirt, ventured:
"Your Majesty, forgive my audacity, but I must correct you: I am Marquis de Carrasca... not Count."
The Regent, leaning back slightly in her chair, suddenly adopted a more serious tone, without losing her playful glint:
"Indeed, you are a Marquis in Portugal, but here, the Crown has its own customs... The formalities are underway, and believe me, dear friend, you will soon be a Swedish Count..."
A cloud of steam again rose from João's lips, both speechless and floating in astonishment.
Behind him, the councilors, bewildered, dared not break the silence of the moment.
João finished, his voice still troubled:
"It's just that... I... I did not expect this. But for Karl's Harbour, I only ask for a small contingent, the bare minimum to thwart a disguised sabotage... It's not about an invasion army, simply deterrence."
The Regent, this time, allowed herself a light, crystalline laugh.
"Well, well! Our new Count... and soon our new Swedish Barons... always know how to bargain. As a privateer, you know that military support against a potential Dutch incursion involves real resources. I doubt ten tons will suffice. Fifteen, perhaps?...." letting her tone trail off in doubt and continuity.
"No... you are right, twenty tons of silver—João thought back to the English mercenaries he had hired and remembered that land armies cost much more to maintain even if the investment is less than naval matters—
"In that case, I will send a significant detachment, with artillery, to Karl's Harbour. So, be more relaxed, you are a Swedish Count, after all!"
"Of course, Your Majesty."
In their corner, the councilors remained frozen, caught between surprise and mischievous approval. Some were already contemplating the new map of baronies and the fortune that the northern winter, that night, had placed in the kingdom's balance.