The fire began in the galley, where the crew had kept a stove burning while they visited a tavern ashore. As the flames devoured her stern, the Anna Maria sank through the ice in the Stockholm archipelago. Three hundred years later, the Dutch merchant ship rests amid seaweed and algae about 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface. The Anna Maria is part of a vast graveyard of ill-fated ships hidden in the murky waters of the Baltic Sea, protected from the shipworm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans. Some 20,000 shipwrecks have been found - half of them in Swedish waters - dating back to as far as the Viking age. Researchers believe as many as 80,000 more could still be waiting to be discovered. Marine archaeologist Niklas Eriksson and his colleagues plan to offer boat tours where visitors can see some of the most spectacular wrecks through a camera attached to a remotely operated vehicle. The underground cemetery in the Baltic Sea includes everything from medieval wooden ships to ironclad warships sunk during two world wars. “They are like the pyramids of northern Europe, these wrecks, if we can only find a way to make them accessible,” says Andreas Olsson, head of archaeology at the Swedish National Maritime Museums. Not everyone in Dalaro is excited about the plans, and some worry that valuable historical items will be looted from the wrecks. Elise Claeson, a Dalaro resident and columnist at Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, said it would be better to salvage the wrecks and keep them in a museum. Olsson says the biggest problem is not looting, but that divers aren't careful enough. “For us archeologists, we have a ship archaeology treasure in many respects and for the divers it is a wreck diving paradise,” he says. “It is a very strong experience, I would say. I think it is going to be a strong experience also for non
