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| The Vasa was designed to be the flagship of Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus' large and powerful navy. |
Designed and built by experienced Dutch shipbuilder, Henrik Hybertsson, the Vasa was launched Sunday, August 10, 1628. |
All of Stockholm turned out for the grand occasion. |
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| The two rows of cannons on two gun decks were a new innovation at the time and were to give the Vasa awesome firepower. |
When it was launched, the Vasa was not the dingy brown you see here. It was very brightly and colorfully painted. |
The Swedes knew exactly who they intended to kill with the Vasa, the Poles. The ship was covered in figurines of feminized Catholic Cardinals, Priests in drag and other insulting depictions created to taunt the Polish navy. |
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| Alas, insufficient ballast and the extra gun deck made the Vasa top heavy. It listed repeatedly after launch. Within thirty minutes it fell to one side, water rushed into the open gun ports and it sank with sails and flags gently waving as it went down. |
Shipwreck-specialist Anders Franzén found the lost and forgotten Vasa in 1956. It took five years and an enormous undertaking to raise the ship from the bottom of Stockholm harbor. |
Once again, all of Stockholm's eyes were on the Vasa. |
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| Life aboard the Swedish navy at the time would have been hard ... cramped, diseased, brutal and dangerous. |
The Vasa Museet is quite an unusual museum. |
It is an active workshop with a whole team of historians, carpenters and preservationists working constantly to maintain this rare bit of nautical history. |
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| Hammering and the sounds of other labor often ring out in the large space. |
Difficult to photograph, even with wide-angle lenses, it is hard to convey the immense size of the ship. |
So I must insist you visit the Vasa for yourself. |