Preserving the ship was a process that took almost three decades, Laursen writes. “Perhaps 95 percent of Vasa’s wood was intact when Sweden finally raised the wreck in 1961.”Īlthough keeping the wooden structures stable while raising the ship proved to be a huge engineering feat, it was managed. “The cold, oxygen-poor water of the Baltic Sea protected Vasa from the bacteria and worms that usually digest wooden wrecks,” writes Laursen. It didn’t help that the king rushed the building process.Īlthough Vasa didn’t work out well for Gustav II Adolf, it’s become a boon for archaeologists. “But the reasons behind the instability have remained a point of debate over the centuries.”Īn archaeologist who has studied the remains of the ship in great detail thinks it sank because the gun deck was far too heavy–the result of its having been designed and built by someone with no experience building such a well-armed ship, Chatterjee writes. “Soon after, there was an inquest that concluded that the ship had been unstable,” Chatterjee writes. It was the king who ordered the ship, which carried an unprecedented 64 bronze cannons, to be built–and who watched in horror as it sunk. It was covered in wooden carvings that told stories about the Swedish royal family, and most importantly the king, Gustav II Adolf, writes Rhitu Chatterjee for Public Radio International. Vasa was a vast, beautifully decorated ship. Here’s how it happened and how Vasa's influence is felt today. In fact, it sank in full view of a horrified public, assembled to see off their navy’s–and Europe’s–most ambitious warship to date.” Engineering problems sank the ship–but this PR disaster for the Swedish navy has become a boon for archaeologists. The sinking of Vasa took place nowhere near an enemy. “The warship survived the first blast of wind it encountered on its maiden voyage in Stockholm Harbor,” writes Lucas Laursen for Archaeology. Bierly III and Shanthi Gopalakrishnan in The Academy of Management Executive, Vasa sank within twenty minutes of setting sail, on this day in 1628. The story of what happened to the ship has gone down in history: despite being one of the Swedish navy’s biggest achievements and among “the most spectacular warships ever built,” according to Eric H. Today, it’s a resource for naval historians and archaeologists–and a cautionary tale for those who seek to design technology. Vasa was the world’s most high-tech warship when it set sail.

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