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HISTORY
Vasa (or Wasa)
is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship foundered
and sank after sailing about 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden
voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her
valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century until she
was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just
outside the Stockholm harbor. Salvaged with a largely intact hull in
1961, she was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The
Wasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved to the Vasa Museum in
Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist
attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since
1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognized symbol
of the Swedish "great power period" and is today a de facto standard
in the media and among Swedes for evaluating the historical
importance of shipwrecks.
The ship was built on the orders of the King of Sweden Gustavus
Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war
with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). She was constructed at the navy
yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in
1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm
specifically for the ship. Richly decorated as a symbol of the
king's ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion she was one
of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. However, Vasa was
dangerously unstable and top-heavy with too much weight in the upper
structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability she was
ordered to sea and foundered only a few minutes after encountering a
wind stronger than a breeze.
The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The
king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden
voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of
the reserve squadron at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm Archipelago. At
the same time the king's subordinates lacked the political courage
to openly discuss the ship's structural problems or to have the
maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish
Privy Council to find those responsible for the disaster, but in the
end no one was punished for the fiasco.
During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of
at least 15 people were found in and around the Vasa's hull by
marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing,
weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the
ten sails. The artifacts and the ship herself have provided scholars
with invaluable insights into details of naval warfare, ship
building techniques and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden. |
