I had never heard of the Vasa
before. This is a model.
She is now the heart of the leading museum among the approximately
eighty of them here in Stockholm, the Swedish capital. I can honestly call it
the heart of the museum because they built the museum around the ship after
raising her from 90 feet of muddy brackish harbor water here in 1961. This was 333 years after she sank, on her maiden voyage on
August 10, 1628. She would have fought in the 30 years war. In fact she only sailed 150 yards on that maiden voyage before she sank. She was top heavy, not enough ballast (the stones shown at the bottom in this cross section) and simply tipped over with great loss of life.
Views of parts of the vast ship:
 |
| The Bowsprit |
 |
| New rigging, only to top of first stage of the masts, the rest were exposed to the air and rotted away |
 |
| Intricately carved stern, it was brightly painted back in the day. |
This is an excellent museum which
tells how she sank, who was blamed (nobody -- because it was probably the emperor's fault for pushing forward with an untested design with two levels of
heavy guns topside), the story of her being found, raised and preserved as well
as demonstrations as to how a square rigger is tacked, how the officers and men
lived, how the timbers were selected and joined and among many other things, including the symbolism of the exquisite wooden carvings that adorned her and the history
of the thirty years war. This was the last stop on our "Hop on - Hop
Off" bus tour, so I had only a little more than an hour to skim all of
this.
We mostly walked around the palace,
the old town,
the new town through urban renewal,
the opera,
 |
| Lene riding a lion, the national symbol, Mike waving in background |
and the Nobel Prize locations.
Stockholm is a beautiful city with a bustling downtown and harbor.
No comments:
Post a Comment