The Vasa surfaces after 300+ years

A 1:10 model of the Vasa as she looked when first built

You might not have noticed, but we slipped away from France to visit Finland and Sweden for 12 days. It’s been a great detour and I have lots of stories to share, especially about Finland where we spent most of the time.

But first a couple of posts about Sweden and some highlights of its capital, Stockholm, in particular.

Poor John had the Vasa Museum at the top of his must-see list. It’s home to the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank in the Stockholm Harbour in August 1628 on her maiden voyage. It’s the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged.

The museum opened in 1990, and according to its website, it is the most visited museum in all of Scandinavia. It’s easy to see why.

The Vasa sank in 1628 on her maiden voyage

We paid our admission and walked into the main hall to be instantly overwhelmed by an entire ship that was lifted from the sea after being under water for 300+ years.

How she came to be in the museum is a wonderful story.

In the 1920s, a group of divers applied for a permit to find the wreck and blow it up so they could salvage the valuable black oak timbers. That didn’t happen and in the 1950s, a private researcher, Anders Franzén, began to search for the Vasa. He was confident that she had survived in the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea. In salty water, wood is rapidly destroyed by shipworms.

Franzén found her by chance in 1956. For a couple of years, he had avoided searching an underwater mound because he’d been told that’s where great piles of stones had been dumped years earlier. When he learned the stones had been dumped elsewhere, he and Navy diver, Per Edvin Fälting, immediately rowed out to the mound. A sampler brought up pieces of black oak. Fälting then dived down and found the ship’s hulk and cannon ports.

The Vasa’s stern

The Vasa’s bow

It took almost two years and amazing engineering feats to raise the 700-ton ship, but she was brought up in one piece in 1959. This was done by digging six tunnels under her and then threading through six-inch cables that were used to gently lift her from the mud and sludge. After another two years, she was shifted into dry dock, having been put afloat after 333 years. In all, the Vasa was allowed to dry for nine years, with about 500 tonnes of water evaporating away.

A cross-section model shows how little ballast was at the bottom of the Vasa

So why did she sink in the harbour on her maiden voyage?

To make a very long story short, she quite simply was built with the wrong proportions. Too long, tall and skinny to carry enough ballast to keep her upright. She need a deeper and wider hull. It took only a light squall to send her over and down.

When she sank, the Vasa had a crew of 445—with 145 mariners and 300 soldiers. It’s estimated that 30–50 died when the ship went down. It was interesting to see displays of how they might have dressed and see possessions that have been retrieved from the deep.

Crew man

Dishes

Spoons

The museum has excellent descriptions—in Finnish, Swedish and English—of the ship’s history, including how she was built, decorated and, ultimately, renovated and repaired.

Her hull is comprised of thousands of timbers, held together by about 30,000 original treenails and 5500 steel bolts inserted after she was salvaged. Some these bolts are 2 meters long and go through the massive hull. These bolts are rusting and are being replaced by stainless steel equivalents.

A quick comment about the ship’s sculptures and carved ornaments. There are 500 of them and historians did their best to match the original colour schemes. Research on colours was conducted over 12 years and involved more than 1000 pigment samples (see the pic of the final colours used).

The sculptures were a tribute to the king, Gustav II Adolf. They were also a reminder to the people to live up to the king’s virtues of piety, courage and wisdom. One of the largest is the shield with three crowns, which has been part of the Swedish coat-of-arms since the 14th century.

Also, there is a 1:10 model of the ship, which depicts the Vasa when newly built and with all 10 sails set. The model measures 6.93 metres long and 4.75 metres tall.

Shield with three crowns

Sculptures including shield with three crowns

Pigments used on the Vasa

Colour guide

Cross-section of Vasa