06-01 Vasa Museum - Big Ship

On this great piece of land called Djurgarden Island exists next to each other the Nordisk Museum, the Vasa Museum, the ABBA Museum, an 1883 amusement park called Grona Lund, and an open-air Swedish history museum, Skansen.

We downloaded an app to our iPhone after entering the Vasa Museum through a set of THREE doors, designed to keep the museum’s controlled environment from escaping.

The entire ship lays before you as you enter.

We entered a theater and watched the movie with English subtitles telling us about the building of the ship at the Ship Yard, the sinking, and about life in Stockholm during the 17th century and then the salvage.

It's amazing to me how many ships are out there that do great things and have long histories, but we build a giant museum to THIS ship that only made one voyage. This ship didn't make it out of the harbor before it sank!

This ship, huge by 1628 standards, had four of its ten sails out and was taken down by a gust of wind. With the hull heeling over to the wind, the water poured into the cannon port holes that were open to show those 12 beautiful cannon on the lower level. What a sad fate for such a beautiful ship.

The ship builder had built good ships before this one. The king, Gustavus Adolphus, had ordered this ship, but unbeknownst to the designer, he told his builders to add a second row of cannons above the lower row. He was off at war when the ship made its fateful maiden voyage, so he never saw it sail.

They had an inquiry about who was at fault after it sunk and decided nobody was at fault (to this day, we still aren’t holding “kings” accountable for their decisions).

Through exhibits around the ship we learned how it was found. Anders Franzen, an amateur archaeologist, searched for 3 years using evidence in old documents and his own soundings of the harbor to locate it in 1958.

It took another 3 years before it was actually raised, using a similar ship salvaging process as those documented in the 1700's. Of course, a ship this large and old hadn't been brought up before and the knowledge to be gained from an intact ship from the 1600's made them take their time and use caution.

They did exhibit the Vasa during the 17 years it took to rid the hull of water and replace and preserve it with PEG, Polyethylene glycol. They just keep spraying the PEG in and around the ship and the water dries up and the PEG takes its place. This same chemical was used to preserve the painted colors on the Terra-Cotta Warriors of Xian.

They are still working on it. Still trying to preserve it. Still trying to prevent Time from taking their treasure away.

Vasa's original iron bolts rusted away in the time it was under water. During the salvage they replaced the missing bolts with steel ones. Those bolts were now rusting and causing problems so they are almost finished replacing them with stainless steel bolts. We toured on our own here with only the audio we downloaded.