I remember as a kid watching the Tudor warship Mary Rose being rescued from the depths of the Solent on TV, and several years later visiting Portsmouth to see her skeletal remains. Hers was a remarkable story of survival beneath the seabed, but she’s not a patch on the Vasa.
On show in her own museum in Stockholm, Sweden’s handsome capital, this remarkable wooden vessel sank after sailing just a mile or so from the dockyards in which she’d been built. And even more embarrassingly for all involved, it was her maiden voyage. The disaster happened on August 10, 1628, but experts say it was a sinking that could’ve been avoided. The impatient Swedish king insisted on her joining his battle fleet even though the admirals knew she was top heavy. Sure enough, over she rolled and up to 50 sailors died. I’ve no idea how the king reacted, but I’m sure he went to bed that night feeling ever so slightly vexed.
The Vasa was raised, surprisingly intact, in 1961. And while it’s hard to imagine what the Mary Rose looked like from the jumble of timbers that survive, there are no such problems with her historic Swedish sister.
Walking into the ship’s museum in Stockholm – ironically one of the ugliest buildings in the city – is one of those moments you don’t experience too often. I really wasn’t expecting to see the ship so complete, so powerful, so extraordinarily beautiful.
Set over several floors, the story of the Vasa is told along with the stories of many of the folk who designed and sailed her. We were able to get up close to her intricately carved timbers, see the reconstructed faces of some who died on board and compare the Vasa story with that of the Mary Rose. OK, not everyone will agree with me that the Vasa is Stockholm’s highlight but as far as museums go, I’d happily argue the case.
It’s situated on the island of Djurgården, about a 30-minute walk from Stockholm Central Station. We were staying in the old town – Gamla Stan – and travelled there on one of the numerous ferries across the water but fortunately for us ours didn’t share the Vasa’s fate…