Maritime record ADB 320 - Wreck of the Vanskapen

1893 wreck of Russian barque VANSKAPEN which stranded near the Coastguard Station at Aldeburgh, while en route from Kotka to London with firewood. She belonged to the Swedish-speaking Aland Islands in Finland, at the time a Grand Duchy of Russia. Built in 1869, she was a wooden sailing vessel.
Status: Casualty

Name spelt as VANSKAPEN. Vessel stranded and lost in wind conditions ENE force 10. (1)

The barque VENSCAPEN drove onto the Sizewell Bank. The crew were saved by the Aldeburgh lifeboat just before the vessel hit the bank; £96 awarded to the crew of the lifeboat by the RNLI. The Imperial Senate of Finland awarded a silver cup to coxswain Cable and 75 marks to 17 sailors. (2)

'The Russian barque VENSCAPEN, Kotka to London, went ashore at Sizewell Bank and is a total loss. Crew saved.' (3)

Paraphrased and translated from the original article in Finnish:

The VANSKAPEN belonged to the Aland Islands and drifted ashore at 6 o'clock in the morning during a severe storm at Aldeburgh near Harwich. (4)

Other Finnish newspapers also spell the name of the vessel as the VANSKAPEN, properly VÄNSKAPEN (for example, (5)). Thus VANSKAPEN has been indexed as the primary name of the vessel (with the English form, probably a phonetic transcription, as VENSCAPEN, as an alternative version). The former is the correct Swedish spelling of the name "Friendship", and is consistent with the vessel's origin in the Swedish-speaking Aland Islands. The nationality of the vessel has been expressed as both Russian and Finnish, since at the time of loss Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia. (6)

Built: 1869 (1)
Master: Johnson (1) [Jonsson?] ; Johannes Johansson (4)
Crew: 14 (1)

Date of Loss Qualifier: Actual date of loss

Additional sources cited in Shipwreck Index of the British Isles:
BOT Wk Rtn 1892 Appendix C Table 1 p132(492)

Additional sources cited in The Salvagers:
Harwich and Dovercourt Free Press 25.11 & 09.12.1893, 26.10.1895