Vasa

1628

The most magnificent warship never to fight Location: Stockholm harbor, Sweden · Coordinates: 59.33°N 18.09°E · Casualties: ~30 · Survivors: ~120 · Depth: 32 m · Cause: design flaw — Top-heavy design with too many cannon above the waterline. A gust of wind 1,300 meters into her maiden voyage heeled her over; water entered through open gun ports; she sank in 32 meters. · Fate: raised 1961 · Type: warship · Tonnage: 1,200 tons · Crew: 145 · Flag: Kingdom of Sweden · Launched: 1627 Gustavus Adolphus's triumph of Swedish naval engineering capsized 1,300 meters into her maiden voyage in Stockholm harbor. Too top-heavy, too many cannon, too much royal ego. The Baltic's low salinity preserved her almost perfectly for 333 years. Now the most-visited museum in Scandinavia. The Vessel The Vasa was built in Stockholm between 1626 and 1628 for King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, then at the height of his military ambition in the Thirty Years' War. Her builder, Henrik Hybertsson, was a Dutch master shipwright working to a specification that changed through the build: the king had expanded her armament from a single to a double gun deck while she was already framed, and had ordered her lengthened to accommodate the extra weight. At launch she was the most heavily armed warship in the world, carrying 64 bronze guns firing a broadside of 267 kilos. She was 69 metres long from beakhead to taffrail, 1,200 tons displacement, and ornamented with more than five hundred carved figures in oak and pine, gilded and painted in the style of the late Dutch Baroque. She was the visible argument for Swedish naval power at the moment Sweden was becoming a European great power. She was also top-heavy. The double gun deck had been added above a hull designed for a single one; her ballast, 121 tons of stone, was insufficient to counter the weight of the upper guns and ornament. The navy's own captain, Söfring Hansson, had conducted a stability test before her voyage in which thirty men ran back and forth across her decks; she had rolled dangerously after three passes. The admiral overseeing the trial had stopped it before she rolled over and had written to the king with his concerns. The king was on campaign in Poland and did not reply. The Disaster She capsized and sank 1,300 metres into her maiden voyage, in front of the city of Stockholm, in front of the foreign diplomatic corps, in front of the families of her crew. The water at her final position was 32 metres deep. Of the perhaps 150 aboard, approximately 30 drowned, most of them civilian family members who had been below decks when she rolled. The inquiry that followed was constrained by the political sensitivity of the king's personal role in the design. The captain, Söfring Hansson, was arrested on the foredeck as the ship settled. His examination before the Riksråd focused on whether the crew had behaved drunkenly at the saluting guns or whether the ballast had shifted. He testified that the ballast had not moved, that the crew had been sober, that the stability had been tested and found wanting, and that the responsibility lay with the specification and not with his handling. The Riksråd accepted this and released him. No one else was ever charged. The admiralty commissioned a salvage expedition within weeks. Fifty of her guns were recovered between 1664 and 1665 by divers working from a bell. The rest of the wreck was considered unrecoverable and forgotten. She lay in the anaerobic Baltic mud for three hundred and thirty-three years, colonised by anaerobic bacteria that do not digest ship timbers; the teredo navalis worm that consumes wooden wrecks in warmer waters cannot survive the Baltic's low salinity.