3/24/2024 0 Comments Melty quest save for downloadThe shipbuilders had to basically eyeball it. A new design was usually partially modeled on its predecessors-but the Vasa had none. (And according to Matz, there was a lot of error: In the 1620s, of the 15 naval ships Sweden lost, only two sank in the heat of battle.) There were no calculations to do or construction drawings to make. In the early 17th century, constructing a functional ship was a matter of trial and error. “By thus excluding the czar from the Baltic, he had nearly made sea into a Swedish lake.” He was also juggling multiple wars and was anxious to get his hands on a new warship that would help preserve his dominance. At the time, he controlled “Finland, Estonia, and, and he had just won the small part of Russia that touches the Gulf of Finland,” Kvarning writes. King Gustavus, famous for his military prowess, demanded it. The design was unprecedented in its size and complexity. ![]() The ship itself was constructed from 1000 oak trees and had three decks, including a stack of two gundecks, which would hold 64 cannons. As Lars-Åke Kvarning writes in Scientific American, these ornaments had many purposes: “To encourage friends, intimidate enemies, assert claims, and impress the world with this picture of power and glory.” “The hundreds of sculptures clinging and clambering about the Vasa were an orgy of pink naked flesh, of steel-blue armor, of sanguine reds, poisonous greens, and marine blues,” writes Erling Matz in The Vasa Catalog. The boat’s exterior would be a palpable rainbow (gilded in gold leaf for extra measure). The Vasa would be a floridly crafted masterpiece with at least 700 delicately carved sculptures, figurines, and ornaments: Angels, devils, lions, emperors, warriors, musicians, mermaids, ghastly faces, heavenly facades-all painstakingly crafted from oak, pine, and lime wood. Gustavus had big dreams for the Vasa: He wanted the most lethal warship in the Baltic Sea, one that was as beautiful as it was deadly.įor three years carpenters, sailmakers, painters, woodcarvers, ropemakers, and hundreds of other artisans and craftsmen rushed to build the king’s vessel. Named after the Swedish royal family-the House of Vasa-the vessel was commissioned by King Gustavus II Adolphus in 1625 and was earmarked to become his navy’s flagship. The Vasa was the greatest warship to never go to war. “I can feel something big,” Fälting said to Franzén over a diver’s telephone, “the side of a ship. The diver ran his hands over the mysterious object and tried to get a feel for what it might be. Just 30 yards below the surface, the brackish waters were pitch black. ![]() Photo from the Archives of the Swedish National Maritime Museums.įälting had to work blind. The following month, Franzén's friend Per Edvin Fälting dived into the ström and see what was down there. And whatever it was, it was big.įranzén gently lowered a core sampler-a tool used by oceanographers to get soil samples from the bottom of bodies of water-and retrieved a dark and soggy chunk of black oak. Trawling the waterways around Stockholm-what locals call the ström-with a grappling hook, Franzén's “booty consisted mainly of rusty iron cookers, ladies’ bicycles, Christmas trees, and dead cats,” he’d later recall.īut on August 25, 1956, Franzén's grappling iron hooked something 100 feet below. And when he learned that one wreck might still be trapped, undiscovered, not far from his home in Stockholm, he was hungry to find it.įor five years, Franzén spent his spare time searching for the shipwreck. When he wasn’t busy at his day job with the Swedish Naval Administration, he’d spend hours combing through archives in search of maps and documents, hoping they might reveal the location of Sweden’s great sunken warships. An engineer and expert on the naval warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries, he was especially obsessed with the old Swedish men-of-war that had once menaced the Baltic Sea. Photo credit: Karolina Kristensson, the Swedish National Maritime Museums.Īnders Franzén lived for shipwrecks.
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