SerpApi.Org
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
- Known as the greatest Baltic warship built at the time, Vasa survived for just 20 minutes after its 1628 launching.
- The mighty ship sank within sight of the Stockholm shipyard where it was built, killing 30.
- After 300 years, the sunken vessel was found again and raised from the harbor, and it became the main attraction in Scandinavia’s most-visited museum.
Anders Franzen dragged a grappling hook behind his boat through the waters of Stockholm’s harbor, searching for something no one had seen in over three centuries. The fuel engineer in the Swedish navy and amateur archaeologist had spent years pulling up “rusty iron stoves and ladies’ bicycles, Christmas trees, dead cats, and much else about which to keep silent,” according to his own account. But somewhere beneath the mud lay his holy grail: a ship that had consumed Sweden’s imagination since the moment it vanished.
The story of what Franzen was looking for begins in 1625, when King Gustav II Adolf commissioned Dutch master shipwright Henrik Hybertsson to craft a true powerhouse of war. Construction started in 1626, but Hybertsson died that same year, and problems arose before the 226-foot-long, 164-foot-tall ship ever set sail.
Sofring Hansson, the captain supervising the construction, had concerns. He proffered a demonstration where 30 men ran back and forth across the deck, showing the ship’s alarming tendency to roll. An admiral halted the demonstration for fear the ship would sink right then, while it was still docked at the castle’s quay. But the king insisted on pushing ahead to launch the Vasa, which was named after the word vase, a symbol used by the Swedish royal family.
With music playing from the Stockholm shore, the Vasa set out on its maiden voyage on August 10, 1628. Laden with 64 cannons—because the navy couldn’t get all 72 built in time—and with four of its 10 masts unfurled, the most powerful warship the Baltic had ever seen was launched after a celebration that began with a church service in the morning and continued with festivities on the quay.
Within minutes, the wind shoved the ship around. Thousands lining the shore watched a heavy gust push the Vasa onto its port side. Water poured through the open gunports on the lower gundeck, and within minutes the ship sank 105 feet into the harbor, just 4,000 feet from where it began its voyage. The disaster killed 30 crewmen who were trapped below deck.
The Vasa had lasted 20 minutes.
Blame spread as quickly as the ship had sunk. Ultimately it landed on the deceased Hybertsson and the ship’s improper proportions. In the 1600s, shipwrights based designs on experience and the size and armament of the project. The Vasa was unlike any other ship of its day, with the ability to fire 551 pounds of ammunition across multiple decks. In the race to send the Vasa to war, it was rushed to sail, even as it was later determined the upperworks of the hull were too tall and heavy for the relatively small amount of hull below the waterline. This imbalance made the Vasa fast but put the center of gravity high above the water, so even a slight breeze could topple the ship.
Had the gun ports not been open, the ship might not have sunk immediately after capsizing, and it could have been brought back to dock for repairs.
Crews tried to salvage the Vasa, but it was so embedded in the mud they couldn’t lift it out. Thirty-five years after the fateful launch, a team of divers retrieved most of the cannons, which were then sold. After that, waning interest led to the Vasa’s location being lost entirely.
Which is how, in 1954, Anders Franzen found himself dragging that grappling hook behind a boat. Historical records had marked the location of the Vasa on the south side of the main shipping channel at Tegelviken, across from the island of Beckhomen. Whenever Franzen found something, he lowered a coring device he’d designed into the water, using a blade to cut a sample. For two years, he came up empty. Then in 1956, after changing locations to the north side thanks to newly discovered archival accounts, he pulled up a small piece of black oak.
That changed everything.
Franzen’s find intrigued navy divers, and in 1958 they raised a cannon, confirming the location of the Vasa 331 years after it sank. Divers spent two years digging tunnels beneath the ship to place cables that were connected to floating pontoons. On October 20, 1959, crews pumped up the pontoons, freeing the Vasa from the mud. While keeping it underwater, crews moved the ship near the island of Kastelholmen and then spent another year preparing for a final lift out of the water.
On April 24, 1961, after 333 years, the ship was raised.
A new museum at the Stockholm Shipyard opened in early 1962 to display the Vasa to the public. But bringing the ship to the surface was only the beginning of a new challenge. Crews spent 17 years continuously pumping polyethylene glycol into the wood with 500 nozzles to replace drying water. Timber ships swollen with water must be carefully cared for as soon as they reach the surface. When the wood starts to dry, it can ruin the timber. Sunken wooden vessels have crumbled the very day they were removed from an underwater home. Even after 17 years of constant spraying, the Vasa’s wood continued to dry under the careful eye of preservationists monitoring humidity levels.
A summer 2000 storm swung humidity levels wildly inside the Vasa Museum and the climate plant couldn’t keep up. Yellow and white spots appeared on the ship as the humidity combined with the wood’s sulphur, creating acid. By 2004, a more robust climate system was operational, and more recently, the acidifying original iron and metal nails seeping in the wood were replaced with stainless steel.
The Vasa, a ship that couldn’t survive 20 minutes at sea, has now endured more than six decades on dry land—the centerpiece of the most-visited museum in all of Scandinavia. Franzen’s holy grail, it turns out, was worth the search.
