Stockholm - The Vasa and Its Incredible Story

The Vasa sank in 1628 and spent the next 300 +  years at the bottom of the sea. Since it was raised from the bottom, preserved under 350 feet of mud, more than 25 million visitors have visited the museum built to house the ill-fated ship.

The ship looks like it was built yesterday. The renovation was superb. The story of the Vasa is phenomenal.  It is one of the most remarkable sights I have seen in my travels.

Medi is standing in front of a model of the Vasa. This is how it looked for the few minutes it sailed the sea on its maiden voyage.  Stockholm harbor was filled with many boats holding thousands of onlookers ready for the occasion.  The Vasa sailed less than one nautical mile before sinking.

The Swedish king was fighting Poland in the 1600's and the battles were not going well. In addition, fortune was not smiling on his navy.  In one storm, ten Swedish battleships were lost in a storm. The king demanded that five new ships be built that had more fire power than ever seen before.  The ships would have not one but two decks with cannons. That was something not seen before.

He demanded the ship be built in record time.  Instead of the 5 years it usually took to build a ship, the Vasa was built  in two and a half years, the first of the five ships.

This model shows the Vasa listing dangerously after being hit by winds.  The weight of the cannons caused the ship to sink faster than normal. Ironically, the captain worried about the stability of the ship and, the day before the voyage, he had 30 sailors run side to side on the top deck but he had to stop for fear the ship would roll over there and then.  But as happened many times in history, no one wanted to give bad news to the leader so the ship sailed as scheduled.


Wikipedia Report

"She was built top-heavy and had insufficient ballast. Despite an obvious lack of stability in port, she was allowed to set sail and foundered a few minutes later when she first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. The impulsive move to set sail resulted from a combination of factors. Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who was abroad on the date of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her join the Baltic fleet in the Thirty Years' War. At the same time, the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to discuss the ship's structural problems frankly or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the privy council to find someone responsible for the disaster, but no sentences were handed out.

Ironically, the Vesa is now one of the most famous ships ever to sail but precisely because it did not sail .  The four other ships in the series were built with keels one and half feet wider and successfully sailed the seas.

The raising of the Vasa is almost as fascinating as the sinking of the Vasa.  Learn more at the site below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)