Vasa (ship)

Vasa's port side bow
Career
Laid down:	1626
Launched:	1627
Status:	Salvaged, currently a museum ship
General Characteristics
Weight:	ca 1,200 t (2,650,000 lb)
Total Length:	69 m (226.3 ft)
Beam:	11.7 m (38.4 ft)
Draft:	4.8 m (15.7 ft)
Height, keel to top of original mainmast:	52.5 m (172.2 ft)
Propulsion:	Sails, 1,275 m²
Armament:	64 guns, including: 24-pounders - 48 3-pounders - 8 1-pounders - 2 Mortars - 6
Crew:	145 sailors, 300 soldiers
Source: The Vasa Museum

Vasa (or Wasa) is a warship, built for Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden 1626-1628. She foundered and sank after sailing only a mile into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. Vasa fell into obscurity after some initial attempts at recovering her in the 17th century, but was relocated in the late 1950s and salvaged with a largely intact hull on 24 April 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Shipyard") until 1987, and was then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has so far attracted over 25 million visitors.

The Vasa was built top-heavy with insufficient ballast and foundered as soon as she encountered a wind stronger than a breeze, just a few minutes after first setting sail on her maiden voyage. Despite clearly lacking stability even in port, she was allowed to set sail. This was caused by a combination of impatience from king Gustavus Adolphus, who was abroad on the date of her maiden voyage, to see her join the Baltic fleet in the Thirty Years' War and the lack of political courage among the king's subordinates to blow the whistle and delay the maiden voyage. An inquiry was organized by the Privy Council to find someone responsible for the disaster, but no sentences were handed out.

During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of 16 people were found inside or near Vasa 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 itself have provided historians with invaluable insight into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th century Sweden. When she was built, Vasa was intended to express the expansionist aspirations of Sweden and its king, Gustavus Adolphus, and no expense was spared in decorating and equipping her. She was one of the largest and most heavily armed warships of her time and was adorned with hundreds of sculptures, all of them painted in vivid colors.

History

Throughout the 17th century, Sweden went from being a small, poor and peripheral northern European kingdom of relatively little influence to one of major players in continental politics, and between 1611 and 1718, one the most powerful states in the Baltic Sea. This rise to prominence in international affairs and increase in military prowess has been called stormaktstiden (translated as the "Age of Greatness" or the "Great Power Period") made possible by a succession of able monarchs and the establishment of a powerful centralized state and a highly efficient military machine. This process has been used by Swedish historians as one of the more extreme examples of a country that used almost all of its available resources to wage war; the small northern kingdom transformed itself into a "fiscal-military state".

File:Bitwa pod Oliwą 1627 3.JPG

A painting of the brutal Battle of Oliwa, where Sweden lost two large ships; the flagship Tigern was captured and Solen was scuttled by her own crew during a Polish boarding attempt. The commanding admirals on both sides were killed during the battle.

Among the ablest and probably the most popular of Swedish rulers was Gustavus Adolphus. In the 1620s he had been king for little more than a decade. The navy was in poor shape and Sweden was deeply embroiled in a war with Poland, and looked apprehensively at the development of the Thirty Years' War in present day Germany. The war had been raging since 1618 and from a Protestant perspective it wasn't going too well. The king's plans for the Polish campaign and for securing Sweden's interests required a strong naval presence in the Baltic.

The navy suffered several severe setbacks during the 1620s. In 1625, a squadron crusing off the Bay of Riga was caught in a storm and ten ships ran aground and were wrecked. In the Battle of Oliwa in 1627 a Swedish squadron was outmaneuvered and defeated by a larger Polish force and two large ships were lost. Tigern ("The Tiger"), which was the Swedish admiral's flagship, was captured by the Poles, and Solen ("The Sun") was blown up by her own crew when she was boarded and almost captured. In 1628, a further three large ships were lost in less than a month; admiral Klas Fleming's flagship Kristina was wrecked in a storm in the Gulf of Danzig, Riksnyckeln ("The Key of the Realm") ran aground at Viksten in the southern archipelago of Stockholm and, perhaps most inopportunely, Vasa foundered and sank on her maiden voyage. To further exacerbate the difficulties of the navy, Gustavus Adolphus was engaged in naval warfare on several fronts. Other than having to counter the Polish navy, Catholic forces had invaded Jutland. While the Swedish king had little sympathy for Danish king Christian IV (Denmark and Sweden had been bitter enemies for well over a century), the Catholics were threatening Copenhagen and all of Zealand. This would grant them control of the strategic passages between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, which would be disastrous for Swedish interests.

The Swedish navy had until the early 17th century been a navy mostly of smaller one decker ships with relatively light guns, which had the advantage of being cheaper, and was well-suited for escorting and patrol duty. However, a fleet of large ships was a bold statement and an effective way to impose authority on enemies and allies alike. For the ambitious Gustavus Adolphus, a navy with a core of powerful capital ships was an opportunity that could not be passed up. Vasa was the first in a series of five ships intended to be among the heaviest and most splendid of their time. The four other ships that were built (successfully) Äpplet, Kronan, Scepter and Göta Ark and formed the backbone of the Swedish navy until the 1660s. These were the so-called regalskepp (usually translated as "royal ships"), the largest of the Swedish warships of which Vasa would be the grandest. The second of the large ships, Äpplet ("The Apple"; the Swedish term for the globus cruciger) was built simultaneously with the Vasa.

Construction

Vasa's port side.

Just before the Vasa was ordered, the work at the Stockholm shipyard was led by Antonius Monier, with Dutch-born Henrik Hybertsson as hired shipbuilder. On 16 January 1625, Henrik and his brother Arendt Hybertsson de Groote took over the shipyard and soon signed a contract to build four ships, two larger with a keel of around 135 feet (41 m) and two smaller of 108 feet (33 m).

After a few years, the shipyard ran into economic problems, delaying the construction of the contracted ships. At the same time, the Swedish navy lost ten ships in a single storm and the king worriedly sent a letter to admiral Klas Fleming, asking him to make sure that Henrik hurried the construction of the two smaller ships. Along with the letter were measurements for the ship the king intended, with a 120-foot (36.5 m) keel. That gave Henrik Hybertsson new problems, because the measurements given by the king were between the planned larger and smaller vessels and the timber had already been cut. In a new letter, on 22 February 1626, the king yet again demanded his measurements for the new ship be followed.

Hybertsson never had the chance to see the Vasa completed; he fell ill in late 1625, one year into construction, and died in the spring of 1627. The supervision of the shipbuilding was handed over to Hybertsson's assistant, Henrik 'Hein' Jacobsson, also a Dutch immigrant.

Vasa's hull was complete enough to be launched in 1627, probably sometime during spring. After this, work most likely began on finishing the upper deck, the stern castle, the beakhead and the rigging. At the time, Sweden had still not developed a sizable sailcloth industry, and so it had to be ordered from abroad, some of it from France, but also from Germany and the Low Countries. The sails were mostly made from hemp and in part out of flax. The rigging was entirely made out of hemp which was imported from Latvia through Riga. The king himself visited the shipyard in January 1628, and was probably the only time the king ever went aboard the ship.

While the ship was being equipped, admiral Fleming ordered that the stability of Vasa be tested. The standard stability test of the day was thirty sailors running from one side of the ship to the other, assessing the tendency of the ship to rock. When this was attempted on Vasa, the ship began to roll significantly after only three runs and the test was aborted. Fleming allegedly said "had they run more times, she would have keeled over". Surprisingly enough, neither Hein Jacobsson nor Johan Isbrandsson, the two ship builders in charge at the time, were present for the stability test. In response to the test, boatswain Matsson is said to have uttered "God hope it will stay on its keel", to which the admiral replied "The master shipbuilder surely has built ships before, so Matsson need have no worries of that kind."

The ship was dangerously unstable, as Captain Hansson, the Admiral and at least parts of the crew had knowledge of after the stability test. Fleming no doubt wished the king were present during the launch, but he was occupied in Poland and a steady stream of dispatches instructing that the ship be launched immediately were arriving in Stockholm.

One can note that there has been much confusion on whether the Vasa was lengthened during construction, and whether an additional gun deck was added late during the build. There is little evidence to suggest that the Vasa was substantially modified after the keel was laid, contemporary ships which were elongated were cut in half and new timbers spliced in between the existing sections, making the addition readily identifiable. No such section can be identified in the Vasa. Any addition of a second gun deck is harder to refute, but there is significant evidence against it. The king ordered 72 twenty-four-pound cannons for the ship on 5 August 1626 - too many to fit on a single gun deck, less than 5 months after construction started, which was early enough that any changes should have been able to have been incorporated in the design. The ship used as a model for the Vasa according to de Groot, the French Galion du Guise also had two gun decks.

Armament

Vasa was built during the transition between naval tactics, where boarding was still one of the primary ways of fighting enemy ships, and the strictly organized ship-of-the-line, where focus lay on victory through superior firepower. She was armed with powerful guns and a high stern which would act as a firing platform in boarding actions for some of the 300 soldiers she was supposed to carry. Vasa was neither the largest ship ever built nor did she have the greatest amount of guns. What made her arguably the most powerful warship of the time was that her broadside, the combined weight of the ammunition that could be fired from the cannon of one side, was 588 pounds (c. 266 kg). This was the most massive broadside yet conceived, and it was not until the 1630s that a ship capable of hurling more ammunition was built. This massive advantage in firepower was fit into a ship that was quite small relative to the armament carried. For comparison, the famous Napoleonic era frigate USS Constitution (built 169 years after the Vasa) had a broadside that was about equivalent to Vasa's, but was over 700 tons heavier.

Naval gunnery in the 17th century was still in its infancy. Guns were very expensive and had a much longer lifespan than any warship (some guns could be in use for almost 100 years before being discarded). In Sweden and in many European countries, a ship would not "own" its guns, but would instead be issued with a specific armament from the armory for every mission. Guns being used for almost a century was not unheard of, and most warships would only be in use for around 15-20 years. Ships were therefore mostly fitted with guns of very diverse age and size. What allowed Vasa to carry so much firepower was not merely an unusually large number of guns crammed into a relatively small ship, but also that 46 of the 48 24-pounders were of a new and standardized lightweight design (the remaining two were heavier 24-pounders of an older design). The cannon on Vasa were still made from individual casts, but had such uniform precision in their design that their primary dimensions varied by only a few millimeters and their bores were almost exactly 146 mm.

The remaining armament of Vasa consisted of eight 3-pounders, six large caliber so-called stormstycken, for use during boarding actions and finally two 1-pound falconets. Also included on board was 894 kg of powder and various shot for the guns.

Ornamentation

Reproductions of some of the sculptures that adorned Vasa on display at the Vasa Museum. The sculptures are painted in what are believed to be the original colors. The two cherubs in the center are holding the coat of arms of the House of Vasa, the sheaf (vasen), the namesake of the ship.

As was the custom with warships at the time, Vasa was decorated with sculptures that were intended to glorify the authority, wisdom and martial prowess of the monarch, and also to deride, taunt and frighten the enemy. The sculptures made up a considerable part of the effort and cost in building the ship and would even have added considerable weight, thereby hampering the maneuverability of the ship. The symbolism used in decorating the ship is mostly based on the Renaissance idealization of Roman and Greek antiquity which had been imported from Italy through German and Dutch artists. The motifs are dominated by imagery borrowed from Mediterranean antiquity, but there are also figures from the Old Testament and even a few from Ancient Egypt. Many of the figures are in a Dutch grotesque style depicting fantastic and frightening creatures, including mermaids, savages, sea monsters and tritons. The decoration inside the ship is much more sparse and is largely confined to the officer's quarters and the admiral's cabin, which are located in the stern.

Residues of paint have been found on many sculptures and on other parts of the ship. The entire ornamentation was once painted in bright, vivid colors and in some cases enhanced with genuine gold leaf. The sides of the beakhead (the protruding structure below the bowsprit), the bulwarks (the protective railing around the weather deck), the roofs of the quarter galleries, and the background of the transom were all painted red while the sculptures were decorated with natural colors, and the dazzling effect of these was in some places reinforced with patches of gold leaf. Previously, it was believed that the background color had been blue and that most of the sculptures had been almost entirely gilded, and this is reflected in many paintings of Vasa from the 1970s to the early 90s, like the lively and dramatic drawings of Björn Landström or the painting by Francis Smitheman. In the late 1990s this was revised and is now properly reflected in more recent reproductions of the ship's decoration by maritime painter Tim Thompson. Vasa is an example not so much of the heavily gilded sculptures of early Baroque art, but rather "the last gasps of the medieval sculpture tradition", with its fondness for gaudy colors, closely resembling what today might be called kitsch.

A color projection display of what the richly ornamented transom looked like when the ship was newly built.

The sculptures are carved out of oak, pine or linden and many of the larger pieces, like the huge, 3-meter, figurehead lion, consist of several parts which have been carved individually and then fitted together with bolts. There are close to 500 sculptures on the ship, most of which are concentrated to the high stern and its galleries, and the beakhead. In addition there are some 200 ornaments and 300 embellished details; railings, panels, fittings, etc. Altogether this meant some 1,000 carvings which comprise an estimated 95% of the original ornamentation. 57% of the sculptures are made of oak, 26% from lime and 17% from pine without any discernible pattern in the use of wood types; sculptures of similar types were carved from different types of wood and individual artists worked with all the materials. The oak and pine pieces, both being tough types of wood, are the ones that are the most intact while many of the linden carvings, which are softer, have sustained more damage and wear.

The figure of Hercules can be found as a pair of pendants on each side of the lower stern galleries, one younger and one older, each representing opposite aspects of the ancient hero, who was extremely popular during antiquity as well as in 17th century European art. On the transom (the flat surface at the stern of the ship) are depictions of king David along with some of the 23 warriors Gideon, all dressed in Roman armor. Flanking the royal coat of arms are six warriors portraying the king's Gothic ancestors, clad in contemporary armor and armed with spears and shields. A particularly popular motif is the lion, which can be found as the mascarons which were originally fitted on the inside of all the gunport doors, as grasping the royal coat of arms on either side, as the 3-meter-long figurehead, and even clinging to the top of the rudder. On each side of the beakhead there were originally 20 figures (though only 19 have actually been found) that represented Roman emperors from Tiberius to Septimius Severus. The imperial figures are placed in chronological order from the front on the starboard side and continuing from the back on the port side. Augustus, the most renowned of the emperors, is missing and it is assumed that this meant to convey the message that he was personified by king Gustavus Adolphus himself. Overall, almost all heroic and positive imagery is directly or indirectly identified with the king and was originally intended to glorify him as an absolute and flawless ruler. The only actual portrait of the king is located at the very top of the transom where he is depicted as a young boy with long, flowing hair, about to be crowned by two griffins who represent the king's father, Charles IX.

A recreation of the color pigments that were used by the naval shipyard where the ship was built; exhibit at the Vasa Museum.

A team of at least six expert sculptors worked for a minimum of two years on the sculptures, most likely with the assistance of an unknown number of apprentices and assistants. No direct credit for any of the sculptures has been provided, but the distinct style of one of the most senior artists, Mårten Redtmer, are clearly identifiable. Other accomplished artists, like Hans Clausink, Johan Didrichson Tijsen (or Thessen in Swedish) and possibly Marcus Ledens, are known to have been employed for extensive work at the naval yards at the time Vasa was built, but their respective styles are not distinct enough to associate them directly with any specific sculptures. The artistic quality of the sculptures varies considerably and around four distinct styles can be identified. The only one that can be directly associated with any one individual is the work of Mårten Redtmer, whose style has been described as "powerful, lively and naturalistic" and can with great certainty be identified in a considerable percentage of the sculptures including some of the most important and prestigious pieces; the figurehead lion, the royal coat of arms and the sculpture of the king at the top of the transom. Two of the other styles are described as "elegant [...] a little stereotyped and manneristic", and "heavy, leisurely but nevertheless rich and lively style" respectively. The fourth and last style is deemed clearly inferior to the other three, "stiff and ungainly" and was done by unidentified carvers of lesser skill, perhaps even apprentices.

Other than the painted sculptures, at least one of the masts was decorated. During the first descents in the late 1950s, divers saw a painting of a bearded and robed man with an open crown on his head on the front-facing part of the foremast, just above the level of the original weather deck. On his chest were the letters "IR" (or "JR"), which has been interpreted as possibly alluding to John III, king of Sweden 1568-92. One theory to explain this is that the mast was used on an older ship and had been transferred to Vasa. The painting was filmed with an early type of underwater camera and Per Edvin Fälting, chief diver of the salvaging project, made a pencil sketch. When the foremast was detached and salvaged, the painting disappeared, probably washed away with the outer layer of wood and all that was left was some paint residue.

Maiden voyage

Central Stockholm and the movements of Vasa from the Skeppsgården shipyards to the anchoring place near the old royal castle where she was fitted and armed (Spring 1628), and finally the location where she foundered and sank.

On 10 August 1628, Captain Söfring Hansson ordered Vasa to set sail on her maiden voyage to the naval station at Älvsnabben. The day was calm, and the only wind was a light breeze from the southwest. The ship was towed along the waterfront to the southern side of the harbour, where three sails were set and the ship made way to the east. The gun ports were open and the guns out to fire a salute as the ship left Stockholm. Finally the great ship had begun her voyage.

After emerging from the lee of the city, a gust of wind filled the sails and Vasa heeled to port suddenly. The sheets were cast off, and the ship slowly righted herself as the gust passed. Soon another gust came which again forced the ship onto her port side, this time causing water to start flowing in through the open lower gun ports. Due to the rush of incoming water, Vasa continued to heel further as she sank lower in the water. She sank to a depth of 32 meters only 120 meters from the shore. The survivors clung on to debris to save themselves and many boats that were nearby rushed to aid the survivors, but despite their efforts and the short distance to the land, reports said that 30 to 50 people perished with the ship. The flags and the tops of the main and fore masts were still visible above the surface, but were leaning heavily to port because the ballast had shifted during the sinking. Vasa sank in the full view of a huge crowd of people that had come to see the great ship set sail. Among them were not just hundreds, if not thousands, of ordinary Stockholmers, but also foreign ambassadors, and in effect spies of Gustavus Adolphus' allies and enemies.

Inquest

The king was notified by letter of Vasa's fate on August 27. 'Imprudence and negligence' must have been the cause, he wrote angrily in his reply, demanding in no uncertain terms that the guilty parties be punished. Captain Söfring Hansson who survived the disaster was immediately put in prison, awaiting trial. Under initial interrogation, he swore that the guns were properly secured and the crew were sober. A full inquest was organized by a committee, many of which were members of the Privy Council, and this took place before a court of admirals and councilors on September 5, 1628. Each of the surviving officers was questioned, as was the supervising shipwright and a number of expert witnesses. Present at the inquest was also the Admiral of the Realm. The objective was as much, if not more, an attempt to single out a scapegoat as it was to determine why the ship had sunk. Whoever they would find guilty for the huge fiasco would be facing a severe penalty.

Surviving crew members were questioned about the handling of the ship at the time of the disaster one by one. Was she rigged properly for the wind? Was the crew sober? Was the ballast properly stowed? Were the guns properly secured? However, no one was prepared to take the blame. Crewmen and contractors formed two camps who tried to blame the other side, and everyone swore they had done their duties without fault. In the end, the answers were deemed satisfactory and no incriminating evidence was found.

Later, the focus was on the ship builders. "Why did you build the ship so narrow, so badly and without enough bottom that it capsized?" the shipwright Jacobsson was asked by the investigators. He fell back on the age old strategy of the civil servants, simply stating "I did what I was told". He stated that he built the ship as directed by Henrik Hybertsson (who was long dead and buried), who in turn had followed the instructions of the king. Jacobsson had in fact widened the ship by 1 ft 5 in (42 cm) after taking over the construction, but the ship's construction was too far along to allow any further widening.

In the end, no guilty party could be found. 'Only God knows', was the answer de Groot gave when asked by the court why the ship sank. Gustavus Adolphus had approved all measurements and armaments, and the ship was built according to the instructions and loaded with the number of guns specified. In the end, no one was punished or found guilty for negligence and the sinking was explained as an act of God. The sinking of the Vasa was also a major economic disaster; the cost of the ship was more than 40 000 dalers, a major expense for the Swedish state.

Early recovery attempts

Illustration from a treatise on salvaging from 1734, showing the traditional method of raising a wreck with the help of anchors and ships or hulks as pontoons, basically the same method that was used to raise Vasa in the 20th century.

Less than 3 days after the disaster, a contract was put out for the ship to be raised. Those efforts were however unsuccessful. The earliest attempts at raising Vasa by English engineer Ian Bulmer resulted in righting the ship somewhat to starboard, but also got her more securely stuck in the mud and was most likely one of the biggest impediments to the earliest attempts at recovery.

Salvaging technology in the early 17th century was much more primitive than today, but the recovery of ships was based on roughly the same principles as was used to raise Vasa over 300 years later. Two ships or hulks were placed parallel to either side of the wreck site and ropes attached to several anchors were sent down and hooked on to the ship. The two hulks were filled with as much water as was safe, the ropes tightened, and the water pumped out. The ship would then rise with the ships on the surface and the sunken ship could be towed out to shallower waters. The process was then repeated until the entire ship had been successfully raised above water level. Even if the underwater weight of the ship was not that great, the mud in which Vasa had settled made her sit more secure on the bottom and require considerable lifting power to overcome.

More than 30 years after the ship's sinking, in 1664, Albreckt von Treileben and Andereas Peckell mounted an effort to recover the valuable guns. With a simple diving bell, the team of a Swede and a German managed to recover over 50 of the Vasa's guns.

Although activity slowed down after it became clear that the ship couldn't be raised by the technology of the time, the Vasa did not fall completely into obscurity after the recovery of the guns until the modern salvage efforts. The ship was mentioned in several histories of Sweden and the Swedish Navy, but the exact location of the ship and the details surrounding it tended to vary. In 1844, the navy officer Anton Ludwig Fahnehjelm turned in a request for salvaging rights to the ship, claiming he had located it. Fahnehjelm was an inventor who designed an early form of light diving suit and had previously been involved in other salvage operations. No record exists of what happened to Fahnehjelm's request after it had been filed, and it must be assumed that no major attempt at recovery was actually made. Recently, a map found in the Stockholm City Museum archives dated to the late 1830s marks the exact location of the ship with the word wrak ("wreck") and a dotted circle, along with detailed depth markings around the wreck site. In 1999, a witness also claimed that his father, a petty officer in the Swedish navy, had partaken in diving exercises down to the Vasa in the 1920s.

Vasa relocated

In the early 1950s amateur archaeologist Anders Franzén thought of the possibility of recovering wrecks from the Baltic waters, because he reasoned that these waters were free from the shipworm Teredo navalis, which usually destroy submerged wood rapidly, due to the cold brackish waters. Franzén had previously been successful in locating other wrecks, such as Riksäpplet and Lybska Svan and after long and tedious research began looking for Vasa as well. He spent many years probing the waters around the many assumed locations of the wreckage without success. It was not until he confined his search based on accounts of an unknown topographical anomaly just south of the Gustav V dock on Beckholmen. In 1956, with a home made, gravity powered coring probe he finally managed to locate a large wooden object almost parallel to the mouth of dock on Beckholmen. The location of the ship received considerable attention, even if the identification of the ship could not be determined without investigating it closer. Soon after the announcement planning began to determine how to excavate and raise Vasa. The Swedish Navy was involved from the start, as were various museums and the National Heritage board, representatives from which eventually formed the Vasa Committee, the predecessor of the later Vasa Board.

A Zetterström nozzle, designed to expel equal amounts of water both forwards and backwards for recoilless operation under water.

The Vasa project

The wreck was lifted in a relatively straightforward way, by digging six tunnels under the hull through which steel cables were attached to a pair of lifting pontoons. The work of digging under the ship was an extremely dangerous task that required the team of divers to dig the tunnels by flushing out mud with water sprayed through a so-called Zetterström nozzle under high pressure. Visibility was most of the time practically zero, and even in the best of conditions only a few meters. There was the very real risk that the wreck could shift or settle deeper into the mud while a diver was working in a tunnel, trapping him underneath the wreckage. The almost vertical sections of the tunnels near the side of the hull could also potentially collapse and bury the man inside. Despite the dangerous conditions, over 1300 dives were performed in the salvage operation, without any serious accidents.

The ship was lifted in a series of 18 lifts in August and September 1959, bringing her from a depth of 32 meters (105 ft) to a more easily managed 16 meters (52 ft) in the more sheltered area of Kastellholmsviken where she was prepared for the final lift for a year and a half. Debris and mud was cleared from the upper decks to lighten and she was made as watertight as possible. The gun ports were closed by means of temporary lids, a temporary replacement of the collapsed stern castle was constructed and all the holes from the iron bolts that had rusted away were plugged. The first lift began on 8 April and on the morning of 24 April 1961 Vasa was ready to break the surface for the first time in 333 years. Press from all over the world, TV cameras, 400 invited guests on barges and boats and thousands of spectators on shore watched as the first timbers broke the surface. The ship was then caulked and plugged up, placed on a floating pontoon and towed to the Gustav V dry dock to await the archaeological excavation of her innards.

Archaeology

Vasa posed an unprecedented challenge for archaeologists. Never before had a four-story structure with most of its original contents largely undisturbed been available for excavation. The conditions under which the team had to work added to the difficulties. The ship had to be kept wet in order that it not dry out and crack before it could be properly conserved. Digging had to be performed under a constant drizzle of water and in a sludge-covered mud that could be more than a meter (ca 3 feet) deep. In order to establish locations, the hull was divided in several sections demarcated by the many structural beams, the decking and by line drawn at the center of the ship from stern to bow. For the most part the decks were excavated individually, though at times work went on on more than one deck level simultaneously.

Initially, many finds were cataloged in groups corresponding to the original object they had been a part of. Later, this method was expanded so that individual objects, like the staves, bottom and hoops of a barrel were all counted as separate objects. This increased the already numerous finds considerably and the current catalog, part of which is available online, comprises well over 26,000 artifacts.

After the ship itself had been salvaged and excavated, the site was searched for artifacts where most of the some 700 sculptures that adorned the outside of the ship were found. The last object to be brought up was the longboat, found lying parallel to the ship and believed to have been lying on the weather deck or being towed by Vasa when she sank.

There were also many more recent objects that had contaminated the site many of which were disregarded from when registering the finds. Among the more (in)famous contaminations was a statue of 20th century Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi which was placed on the ship as a prank by students of Helsinki University of Technology just days before the final lift.

Deterioration

In the 333 years that Vasa lay on the bottom of Stockholms ström she, and her contents, were subjects to several destructive forces, first among which were decomposition and erosion. Among the first thing to decompose were the thousands of iron bolts that held the beakhead and much of the stern castle in place and this included all of the ship's wooden sculptures. Almost all of the iron on the ship rusted away within a few years of the sinking and of the large iron objects, like ammunition and cannon, almost only the carbon content remained, which helped preserve the shape of many metal objects, though the actual metal contents was negligible. Of the human remains, the soft tissue was soon consumed by bacteria, fish and crustaceans, leaving only the bones, which were often only held together by the clothing. Clothing and leather objects, such as pouches and shoes, were badly worn, but many survived until they were recovered in the 20th century.

The entire stern castle, the high, aft portion of the ship that housed the officer's quarters and held up the transom, gradually collapsed into the mud below along with all the decorative sculptures, and all but minute traces of the paint and gold leaf on the sculptures disappeared. The quarter galleries, which were merely nailed on to the sides of the stern castle, collapsed very soon and were found lying almost directly below their original locations. Many of the wooden elements were also worn by the currents and by the flow of mud sediments and many sculptural elements were worn so badly that they were only barely recognizable as carvings when they were recovered.

Other than deterioration by natural forces, there were many instances of mechanical damage to the ship caused by human action. The more or less successful salvage operations from 1629 to the 1680s had a considerable impact on the ship's structure. To recover the cannons, Packell and Treileben had broken up and removed much of the planking of the weather deck above the cannon. Packell also reported that he had recovered 30 cartloads of wood from the ship, which might have included not just planking and structural details, but some of the sculptures which are today missing, like one of the life-size Roman warrior near the bow and the sculpture of Septimus Severus that once adorned the port side of the beakhead. Located right on top of a busy shipping channel, many tons of slag and blasting rubble were dumped on the ship in the 19th century, which caused the further collapse of the stern castle and most of the weather deck. There were also several violent traces of anchors that had caught on to the ship and then wrenched loose.

Causes of sinking

A model showing Vasa's hull profile, illustrating the shallow keel and two gun decks.

In the 17th century, the design requirements and calculations for building a ship only existed in the head of the shipwright. Scientific theories on vessel design or stability had not yet been developed, so important factors like the ship's center of gravity had to be estimated from the builder's experience. The hull of the Vasa was divided into three decks and a bottom compartment containing the ballast, consisting of large, tightly packed stones, was stored. Upon salvaging, the ship was found to have an intact hold full of ballast stones. Vasa carried 120 tons of ballast, but this was not enough to counter the considerable weight above the water line; even a light squall would seriously destabilize the ship. Common practice of the time dictated that heavy guns were to be placed on the lower gundeck to decrease the weight on the upper gun deck and improve stability. The armament plans were changed many times during the build; either 24-pounders on the lower deck along with lighter 12-pounders on the upper deck or 24-pounders on both decks. The gun ports on the upper deck are in fact the correct size for 12-pounders, but in the end the ship was finished with the heavy 24-pounders on both decks, which may have contributed somewhat to the poor stability.

Warships of the period, even when properly armed, were highly unstable. A major reason for this was that they were built with high aftercastles which provided a platform for soldiers to fire upon the enemy with small arms. Also, the Vasa may have had the additional problem that upper hull was built much too heavy with thick wale plants due to inexperience with building two-deckers, or possibly the anticipation of carrying even heavier armaments in the future. There is however nothing inherently wrong with the hull form of the ship, it is within the norms of the period.

Captain Söfring Hansson sailed the brand new ship with open gunports which was not common practice. Brand new ships were most commonly first sailed with closed gunports in order to give the captain and crew an idea of how the new ship would handle. Each and every ship ever built in the 17th century handled a little differently. Vasa was also supposed to head for the naval station Älvsnabben in the outer archipelago to take on all of her stores and personnel which might have provided more stability.

Conservation

The preserved Vasa seen from above the bow.

Although the Vasa was in surprisingly good condition after 333 years at the bottom of the sea, it would quickly deteriorate if the hull was simply allowed to dry. The large bulk of the Vasa, over 900 cubic meters of oak timber, constituted an unprecedented conservation problem. After some debate on how to best preserve the ship, conservation was done using polyethylene glycol (PEG), a method that was also used years later in the conservation process of the 16th century English ship Mary Rose. Vasa was sprayed with this glycol for 17 years, followed by 9 years of slow drying.

The reason that Vasa was so well-preserved was not just the absence of the shipworm that normally devours wooden ships, but also that the water of Stockholms ström was heavily polluted before the pollution was dealt with in the late 20th century. By the early 19th century, the oxygen levels were so low that the salmon disappeared from the waters around the capital and by 1943 the amount of hydrogen sulfide was around 3 to 8 milligrams per liter. This highly toxic and hostile environment meant that even the toughest microorganisms that break down wood had a difficult time surviving. This along with the fact that Vasa had been newly built when she sank contributed to her conservation. Unfortunately, the toxicity of the water also had a negative effect. The sulfur in the water around Vasa had penetrated the wood and when the ship was salvaged, it began reacting with its new, oxygen-rich environment and produced sulphuric acid. In the fall of 2000 spots of white residue from only a few centimeters to half a meter were noticed on Vasa. These turned out to be salts that had formed on the surface of the wood when the sulfates had reacted with oxygen. The stains had a very low pH-level and were the first indications that the ship contained considerable amounts of sulfuric acid. The salts on the surface Vasa and various objects found in and around her are not a threat in of themselves (even if the discoloring may be distracting) but if they form inside the wood, they may expand and crack the planking from inside. This would be especially unfortunate if it happened to objects made by skilled craftsmen, such as household items or some of the hundreds of carved sculptures. Currently, the amount of sulfuric acid in Vasa's hull has been estimated to be in excess of two tons, and more is continually being created. There is enough sulfur in the ship to produce another five tons of acid at a rate of about 100 kg per year, which might eventually destroy the ship almost entirely.

The museum is constantly monitoring the ship for damage caused by decay or warping of the wood. There is ongoing research on how to best preserve the ship for future generations and to analyze the existing material as closely as possible. A current problem is that the old oak that the ship is built of is starting to give way and the braces that supports her are pressed deeper into the hull every year. "The amount of movement in the hull is worrying. If nothing is done, the ship will most likely capsize again", states Magnus Olofson from the Vasa museum. An effort to secure the Vasa for the future is under way, in cooperation with the Royal Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University and other institutions around the globe.

To deal with the problem of the inevitable deterioration of the ship, the main hall of the Vasa Museum is kept at a temperature of 18-20 degrees Celsius and a humidity level of 55%. To slow down the destruction by sulfuric acid, many different methods have been tried. Small objects have been sealed in plastic containers containing nitrogen gas, which create a seal that halts any further reactions between sulfur and oxygen. The ship itself has been treated with cloth saturated in a basic liquid to neutralize the low pH, but this is only a temporary solution as acid is produced continually. The original bolts rusted away after the ship sank, but were replaced with modern ones that were galvanized and covered with epoxy. Despite this, the new bolts have also started to rust and are releasing iron into the wood, which speeds up the deterioration. There are plans to use new bolts from materials that are non-reactive, such as titanium, carbon fiber or fiberglass.

Literature and popular culture

Vasa has been the subject of hundreds of books, articles and papers on topics ranging from marine archaeology to culinary history. Its unique status has drawn considerable attention and captured the imagination of more than two generations of scholars, tourists, model builders and authors. The popular perception of the building of the ship as a botched and disorganized affair (dubbed "the Vasa-syndrome") has been used by many authors of management literature as an educational example of how not to organize a successful business project. Three children's books about Vasa have been written in Swedish and later translated into English, German, Danish and Norwegian; The Vasa Saga by Bertil Almqvist; The Vasa Sets Sail by Mats Wahl (illustrated by Sven Nordqvist); and The Vasa Piglet by Björn Bergenholtz.

The museum has produced two versions of a documentary about the history and recovery of the ship which is screened in the museum and has later been released on VHS and DVD with narration in 16 languages. An educational computer game, now in its second generation, has been made and is used in the museum and on its website to explain the fundamentals of 17th century ship construction and stability. Several mass-produced model kits and countless custom-built models of the ship have been made. In 1991, a 308 ton pastiche reproduction of the ship was built in Tokyo to serve as a 650 passenger sightseeing ship. Vasa has inspired many works of art, including a gilded Disney-themed parody of the pilaster sculptures on the ship's quarter galleries. Being a popular tourist attraction, Vasa is a popular motif for various souvenir products such as t-shirts, mugs, fridge magnets and posters. Commercially produced replicas have been made from many of the objects belonging to the crew or officers found on the ship, like glasses, plates, spoons and even a backgammon game.

References

• Template:Sv icon Borgenstam, Curt and Sandström, Anders (1984), Varför kantrade Wasa?: Wasastudier, nr 12 ISBN 91-85268-21-6
• Cederlund, Carl Olof (2006) Vasa I, The Archaeology of a Swedish Warship of 1628, series editor: Fred Hocker ISBN 91-974659-0-9
• Kvarning, Lars-Åke and Ohrelius, Bengt (1998) The Vasa - The Royal Ship ISBN 91-7486-581-1
• Template:Sv icon Sandström, Anders (1982) Sjöstrid på Wasas tid: Wasastudier, nr 9 ISBN 91-85268-15-1
• Soop, Hans (1986) The Power and the Glory: The Sculptures of The Warship Wasa ISBN 91-7402-168-0
• Template:Sv icon Modellen: Vasamodeller från när och fjärran (1997), ISBN 91-85268-69-0 (Vasa Museum exhibit catalog)
• Vasa Museum homepage

See also

• Maritime archeology
• Kronan
• Mary Rose
• Batavia
• Royal Swedish Navy

External links

• Vasa Museum
  • Vasa Stability A game in Flash format simulating the stability of Vasa (in Swedish)
• Vasa's revival Report on the Vasa from the University of Miami
• Once upon a time : WASA A collection of pictures from the interior and exterior of the Vasa
• SVT Play Video clips of the recovery of Vasa (in Swedish)

59°19′40″N 18°05′28″E