When in Stockholm, go visit the Vasa museum. It's absolutely breathtaking.
Make sure to get a guided tour. You can read all the stuff on the displays and in books, but you probably won't. So you'd lose all those nice stories about how the German ambassador protested the ship, because the figurines on the front symbolized the Roman emperors, with the Swedish king at the very front. Preposterous! The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation is the rightful successor to the Roman emperors, after all!
Pay attention to the fact that the Swedes weren't as stupid as people tend to assume. "Oh, they couldn't even build a ship that's floating!".
Yeah well, it was a design no-one had attempted before (bigger, three masts, two rows of cannons), the math to calculate the behaviour wasn't available, yet. And best of all -- contemporary analysis shows that they almost made it. Had the ship been just a little bit wider (I don't know, something like 20 centimeters or so?), it would have been fine.
Be amazed how the Swedes never just found a scapegoat to punish for the loss of their flagship.
Or just admire the architecture of the museum.
Whenever I'm in Stockholm I go there. It's inevitably a high point of my visits.
Several people working on the design of the ship knew it never would sail. But since voicing their criticism about the king's unrealistic spec carried the risk of getting beheaded they kept their mouths mostly shut. The master shipbuilder who was in charge of the project fled back to Holland when Vasa sank. It was a classic case of hoping someone else would get the blame when the shit hits the fan.
The second row of cannons was added at the insistence of the king, the shipbuilder knew it would doom the ship. Also, I've yet to meet anyone who thought the Vasa sank because "Swedes were stupid."
Make sure to get a guided tour. You can read all the stuff on the displays and in books, but you probably won't. So you'd lose all those nice stories about how the German ambassador protested the ship, because the figurines on the front symbolized the Roman emperors, with the Swedish king at the very front. Preposterous! The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation is the rightful successor to the Roman emperors, after all!
Pay attention to the fact that the Swedes weren't as stupid as people tend to assume. "Oh, they couldn't even build a ship that's floating!".
Yeah well, it was a design no-one had attempted before (bigger, three masts, two rows of cannons), the math to calculate the behaviour wasn't available, yet. And best of all -- contemporary analysis shows that they almost made it. Had the ship been just a little bit wider (I don't know, something like 20 centimeters or so?), it would have been fine.
Be amazed how the Swedes never just found a scapegoat to punish for the loss of their flagship.
Or just admire the architecture of the museum.
Whenever I'm in Stockholm I go there. It's inevitably a high point of my visits.