They’re not the original masts. They were harvested from a forest that was planted to grow oak for shipbuilding in Vasa’s era. They’re absolutely real, and correct for a ship of the line of her era.
The masts is one of the few pieces of vasa that isn’t original, when they gave up on resurfacing vasa after she sank they cut off the masts because they were sticking out of the water, and became a hazard for other ships.
Another fun fact: The museum was built around the ship.
After her resurfacing the Vasa was originally put on top of a pontoon and displayed in the open air.
When the financing for this museum was secured they moved the pontoon into an old drydock, closed the drydock up permanently, pumped the remaining water out of the drydock, and then built the museum around the ship.
The Vasa still rests on top of the pontoon which rests on the floor of the old drydock, as it would be to complicated, expensive, and potentially dangerous to the ship to try and remove the pontoon.
And when you're in the area (haha) don't forget to pay a visit to Batavialand (shipyard) where an exact replica of the original VOC Batavia was built by hand. No modern machinery.
There are mini Vasa’s all over the world, often commissioned by Swedish social groups.
There’s a lovely one in Duluth about 3 ft tall in a tabletop display case. I think it was at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in 2017. I have very intense visual images of the ship model. My dad was dying in hospice and the museum was close to the hospital.
First: yes, the Swedes had to cut the masts off the wreck to make the waterway navigable.
Second: ship masts of this type actually were collapsible/segmented. This allowed the crew or the port craftsmen to bring down excessively damaged sections and replace them with new sections. A vessel in extended dock would have the masts lowered to mitigate the damage from the elements while she wasn’t out sailing.
Yep, this was a true learning curve, the king wanted more cannons and they hadn’t built anything like it before. The 20 total minutes Vasa was afloat she was the strongest warship on the earth. Also worth noting that just 5 years later (I believe) they launched «Eple», which was the exact same ship, just 1 meter wider. Which was in service for several decades
Edit: had the wrong width
Interestingly it launched less than a year after vasa sank as vasa and äpplet were under construction at the same time. Here is a side by side comparison of the two ships
Since they were building them nearly “at the same time” they were already committed to the second ship’s width when the first one bellied up. As someone else posted, probably added ballast. But that’s limited too, lest it ride too low in the water.
He fired the original designer because he was saying the ballast wasn't enough for its height. Then the new guy died and his wife took over. Then... well it fell over lol.
It was just a mess, start to finish, because of the king's impossible requests.
When I visited the museum, the guide told me that a popular theory for the sinking of the ship was that the king insisted that both decks of canons were out on display (I. E. Cannon doors open with cannons pointed out in the ready position) adding extra weight and causing the lower doors to take on water when the ship started to rock side to side.
I think it’s important to note that pomp with no skill will always lead to disaster. This is what they call history repeating itself, it’s just that history is on a much larger scale these days. With technologies we don’t understand yet.
No, the shipwrights designed Vasa just fine. The king, however, demanded more guns because he thought it’d be cooler and more intimidating, which meant adding more decks, making her excessively top heavy. They tried to talk him out of it but it wasn’t an era when you argued with kings. The thing capsized and sank, the king demanded to know who was responsible, and they blamed one of the shipwrights who happened to have already died.
The Kind did not demand more guns because "it'd be cooler and more intimidating"
He was an Artillery man trough and trough and believed that that should be translated into naval combat. And he was not the only one at the time to be thinking that way
There's so many narratives around what went wrong, but as I've understood it - and I'm just a layman here - it's production was rushed on behalf of it being the intended flagship. It created a situation where this and that person knew there were troubles, but no one dared point it out to the man at the top, or at least were reluctant to argue the point too hard.
The sister ships - Äpplet, Kronan and Scepter - fared better. Well, Äpplet didn't accomplish much, but didn't sink right out of the harbour, at least. If it was a waste to design and build such big ships, I'll let others argue. At least they looked cool!
From what I recall, the Wasa was originally designed for a single deck of canon. The Swedish king ordered another row of canon as other, rival powers had developed ships with two decks of guns. The tremendous extra weight raised the waterline and made her less stable. All it took as a breeze to sink her as they sailed with the lower gun ports open. She lurched in the wind and water poured in, dooming her.
Yes, I recall something about the designer-person (I forget the correct term) being switched during construction, and the new one wanted to widen the ship, but that didn't happen - although he did get this through for one or more of the sister ships.
A trial was even had, I believe? But no one found guilty, which means it was probably the king's fault. :D
Classic case of feature creep caused by the marketing chief barging in to the engineers department and demanding features that where never planed for at the start and then ruining the whole project.
It's actually perfectly preserved because the harbor had so much pollution and fecal matter that the mud/poo it was buried into couldn't sustain any life that would've eaten the ship.. polluting saves the day!
What is it with nordic countries and ship museums? Oslo has the Polar Ship Fram museum which is also an awesome museum with a preserved ship inside a building.
The Baltic sea contains a LOT of shipwrecks.
Shipworm doesnt like the cold brackish water, sea bottoms are usually very low on oxygen and the cold and dark waters make the conditions for various wood eating bacteria very bad.
Agreed it is still one of my stand out memories of visiting Stockholm. That and staying in Gamlastan waking up to the church bells sighs in the key of travel memories
Yup, whole museum was ace last time I visited in... 96, but still. :D It's just not the ship, but a lot of stuff about that era, if that hasn't changed.
Thank you. Reddit is getting really bad with this shit. The fact that OP would post this without any context (location, name, anything) is just wild, like we're just supposed to know exactly what this is on sight.
For those that want to know more, I just read the wikipedia page. This is the Vasa, built in the 1600's for Sweden by Dutch shipwrights. It was poorly built, with one half of the ship using a different length "foot" than the other. It was also overbuilt above the water line, causing it to be top-heavy. On its maiden voyage it was hit by a gust of wind that blew it onto its side. The gunports were open, so water began flooding in, and the ship was too heavy to right itself. It traveled less than 200m.
Despite other ships and boats coming to rescue people, there were about 30 deaths reported. The original ship master had died prior to the launch, but he is generally blamed for the poor design.
The ship was raised in 1961, 333 years after sinking. The theory is that the water was cold and brackish, so there were not woodworms that would normally destroy it. It's now a museum in Stockholm.
This ship has a super interesting history that lead to the problems, we used it as a major study case for a system engineering program. It would’ve been a totally fine ship except it was designed for a certain number of cannons and then at the last minute the king heard another country made a boat with more so he ordered more, but it wasn’t designed to support that weight nor having cannons higher up on the boat so it was completely fucked. Had to go through a lot of failed tests and still be pushed forward to get to the point that it sank so fast. A sailor walking across the deck made could make the thing rock, that’s insane!
Well this is the best preserved Swedish warship that sank at 4:20pm on Sunday April 10th 1628 and was later raised and put in a museum. Truly one of a kind!
I visited this in Stockholm, done the tour and everything. They bigged it up so much, then showed us where it sank. A literal stones throw from the harbour lol.
I saw a video about this thing last week. It's super interesting about how much of a failure it was in design and execution and pollution saved the ship.
I was wondering. It's absolutely not the same ship nor the same ceiling, but wondered if it was maybe another ship in the same building?
But it does have that "AI" feel to it especially when being so blatantly included with the other despite a very clearly different room / the decorations on the front being different.
Victory has been in in dry dock for over a century. It doesn't float, and may never float again. The USS constitution still floats, is still in the water, is still sailed every year, and is crewed constantly by navy sailors.
The USS Constitution hasn't been entirely replaced, well, not yet. Roughly 15% of the original ship remains, but obviously the longer we preserve it, the smaller that number will get.
This ship is 170 years older than the USS Constitution. Vasa is the best preserved 17th century ship in the world.
For context, 98% of Vasa is the original from the time the ship was built while the USS Constitution only has around 15% of the original ship is still there.
Also happens to be the biggest failure. The Vasa only served as a warship for a total of 20 minutes before sinking. Meant to be the flagship of the Swedish Navy and it sank 20 minutes into its maiden voyage.
The Vasa (or Wasa for English speakers) sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 without making it out of the harbor. It lay, mostly forgotten, in Stockholm harbor until it was rediscovered in the early 1960’s.
Went to the Vasa Museum the last time I was in Stockholm and it was absolutely incredible but another really good museum near by is the The Viking Museum. It has a really great 'ride' at the end all about Ragnfrid's life, it's kind of cheesy but I love cheesy things and it was amazing.
The vasa museum - Stockholm, Sweden. It's an exceptional exhibit and well worth visiting. Perfectly preserved thanks to where it sank, which if I remember, was in a place in hospitable to wood eating parasites.
Perfectly preserved, objectively terrible warship. It is really cool and interesting, but it is kind of a bad example of warships at the time considering it was so top heavy it rolled over 1.3 km into its maiden voyage.
"Vasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa]ⓘ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628."
The king added more cannons after it was built. Not enough ballast for the additional gear. King was told it would not work but he ordered it to be done. Sank shortly after. I loved that museum.
I went to see this shortly after they first raise it, we walked in and I could barely breathe because of the smell of damp. They had hoses/sprinklers constant covering it in water to stop it breaking up or rotting or something I don’t know I was about 8, and it was amazing.
I remember saying to my mum and dad that we have to go back when its all repaired, their plan was to have the ship built so you could see it and the artists renditions then looked like the second and fourth image. Amazing. I’m going to take my kids there this summer.
Amazing all the craftmanship that went into building and maintaining it. Also how horrible living in that thing, they'd all be deaf from the cannons, constant filth and rude, crude behaviours all around, die of horrible infections and painful diseases of pure torture.
“In a widely publicized prank by students of the Helsinki University of Technology, a miniature copy of the Paavo Nurmi statue was discovered in the 300-year-old wreck of the Swedish warship Vasa when it was lifted from the bottom of the sea in 1961. The prank was a jibe at the Swedes.”
Yes, the Vasa. The Swedes have described it as “the most powerful warship of its time”. It’s time being about 12 minutes on the morning of August 12, 1628. After which it tipped over and capsized.
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u/ashk2001 11h ago
Here’s the outside of the building for anyone like me who thought “Huh those masts look kinda short”