Today In History

So Today In History is a new thing I'm doing where myself (and others) post a report about what was happening that day in the past.

The first article will be up later today, and it's about the rather embarrassing sinking of the Vasa warship. So stay tuned history lovers.

August 10th - The Sinking Of The Vasa

Today in history, the sinking of the Vasa (the Swedish warship) occurred. So let's talk about it.

Vasa is a retired Swedish warship ship that was built between 1626 and 1628.
On August 10th 1628 the ship sank after sailing only about a pathetic 1400 yards into it's maiden voyage. Tough luck.



Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, ordered it to be built as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania.

It was decorated very richly (show off) symbolizing the king's ambitions for himself and Sweden.
Though Vasa was praised for it's power, she was dangerously unstable with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this she was sent to the end of her sailing career, foundering only a few minutes after facing a mildly strong wind.

Many artifacts and at least 15 (very much dead) people were found in and around the Vasa's hull during its 1961 recovery. Among the many items found were things such as clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, and six of the ten sails.
Vasa and the artifacts with her, have provided people with invaluable insights into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden.

Vasa was an early example of a warship with two full gun decks, and was built when the theoretical principles of shipbuilding were still obviously
poorly understood.
Safety margins then, were far below anything that would be acceptable today. And the additional fact that 17th-century warships were built with high superstructures (to be used as firing platforms), this made Vasa a risky undertaking.

As was custom at that time,
Vasa was decorated with many sculptures to glorify the authority and wisdom of the monarch and also to taunt and intimidate the enemy.
Or just to show off



The sculptures took up a lot of effort, time, and money. Almost compatible with the cost of the ship itself.
The symbolism used in decorating the ship was mostly based on the Renaissance idealization of Roman and Greek antiquity, which had been imported from Italy through German and Dutch artists.

The sculptures are carved out of oak, pine or linden, and many of the larger pieces, like the huge 3-metre (10 ft) long figurehead lion, consist of several parts carved individually and fitted together with bolts. Close to 500 sculptures were on the ship
And along with the showy sculptures, we're walls and other ornaments painted in vivid colors. La de da.


The Details Of The Maiden Voyage


On the 10th of August 1628, Vasa was ordered to depart on her maiden voyage to the naval station at Älvsnabben.
The day was pretty chill, and the only wind was a light breeze from the southwest.

However as Vasa passed under the lee of the bluffs to the south, a gust of wind filled her sails, and she heeled suddenly to port. But the ship slowly righted herself as the gust passed. Then an even stronger gust once again forced the flawed ship onto its port side, and this time they weren't so lucky. The lower gunports under the surface were pushed open, allowing water to rush in onto the lower gundeck. The water building up on the deck quickly exceeded the ship's minimal ability to right itself, and water continued to pour in until it ran down into the hold; the ship quickly sank to a depth of 105 ft and only 390 ft from shore. Like wow what an ever so impressive ship.

Survivors clung to debris or the upper masts, to save themselves, and many nearby boats rushed to help, but despite these efforts and the short distance to land, 30 people unfortunately died with the ship.

Vasa unfortunately picked a bad place to sink for she was then in full view of a crowd of thousands of people who had come to see the "great ship" set sail. Embarrassing it was that she was then stripped of her title.
Oh and of that wasn't bad enough, the crowd also included spies and enemies, who also witnessed the catastrophe.



The Council sent a letter to the king the day after the loss, telling him of the sinking, but it took over two weeks to reach him in Poland. 'Imprudence and negligence must have been the cause' was his angry reply.

Poor Captain Söfring Hansson, who survived the disaster, was immediately taken for questioning. Under interrogation, he swore that the guns had been properly secured and that the crew hadn't a drunk among them.

Surviving crew members were also questioned about the handling of the ship at the time of the disaster but no-one wanted to take any blame. Everyone swore they had done their duty without fault and it was during the inquest that the details of the stability demonstration were revealed and their attention was directed to the shipbuilders who were also interrogated.
But in the end, no guilty party could be found.

About three days after the disaster, they attempted to have the ship raised. However, those efforts were unsuccessful.


More than 30 years later, in 1663–1665, Albreckt von Treileben and Andreas Peckell tried to recover the valuable guns. And with a simple diving bell, the team of divers retrieved more than 50 of them.



In the 333 years that followed, the Vasad and its contents were victims to several destructive forces.
Almost all of the iron on the ship rusted away within a few years of the sinking, and only large objects, such as anchors, or items made of cast iron, such as cannonballs, survived.

Objects which fell off into the mud were well protected, so that many of the sculptures still retain areas of paint.
Eventually the entire sterncastle, the high, aft portion of the ship that held up the transom, finally collapsed into the mud with all the decorative sculptures.




In the early 1950s, amateur archaeologist Anders Franzén considered the possibility of recovering wrecks from the waters of the Baltic, and by 1953 he was actively searching for the Vasa.

On the 25th of August, they found a large object. The navy sent a diving team to the site in September -- Vasa had been found.


The last lift of many previous attempts
began on the 8th of April 1961, and on the morning of April 24th, Vasa was ready to return to the surface world for the first time in 333 years.

Press from all over the world, 400 invited guests on barges and boats, and thousands of spectators on shore, watched as the first timbers broke the surface.

After staying at a few places, the Swedish government decided that a permanent building was to be constructed for the Vasa, and a design competition was organised. The winning design, by the Swedish architects Månsson and Dahlbäck, called for a large hall over the ship in a polygonal, industrial style.
Ground was broken in 1987, and Vasa was towed into the half-finished Vasa Museum in December 1988. The museum was officially opened to the public in 1990.

After the ship itself had been salvaged and excavated, the site of the loss was excavated thoroughly during 1963–1967.

Most of the sculptures that had decorated the exterior of the hull were found in the mud, along with the ship's anchors and the skeletons of at least four people. The last object to be brought up was the nearly 12-metre-long longboat, found lying parallel to the ship and believed to have been towed by Vasa when she sank.

Many of the more recent objects found were disregarded, but some items discovered had their own stories to tell. Among the best known of these was a statue of 20th-century Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, which was placed on the ship as a prank by students of a university the night before the final lift.
Pretty much just a message to all stating what a humorous joke the Vasa really was.

It really is amazing though of what people can learn of history.


That's all for today, hope you guys enjoyed reading about the Vasa.
If any of you would like to contribute an article or article idea to Today In History, just let me know.
Until next time!