Explore nautical.im
vasa.nautical.im
Every fact

139 facts, every one sourced

Every fact on this site in one list, each linked to its source. Our build stores the source text and checks that the key words and figures in each fact really appear in it; see the sources page.

  1. 1 The name comes from ‘vase’, an old word for a sheaf of grain or a bundle of twigs, which was the Swedish royal family’s symbol. Vasa Museum FAQ
  2. 2 Like the rest of the royal navy, Vasa belonged to the king: Gustav II Adolf, who ordered the ship in 1625. Vasa Museum FAQ
  3. 3 Building began in 1626 and was finished in 1628. Vasa Museum FAQ
  4. 4 Vasa sailed for only about 20 minutes before water started coming in through the lower gunports. Vasa Museum FAQ
  5. 5 The museum’s short answer: Vasa was top-heavy, a little too tall and a little too narrow, with too little hull under water for what stood above it, and the gunports were open when a sudden gust made her heel. Vasa Museum FAQ
  6. 6 Nobody knows exactly what the ship weighs today: the museum’s estimate is between 800 and 1,200 tonnes, worked out from the density and volume of the timbers. Vasa Museum FAQ
  7. 7 Finished, Vasa was 69 metres long and more than 50 metres tall from the keel to the top of the mainmast. Vasa Museum timeline
  8. 8 Vrak’s fact box gives Vasa’s length as 47 metres and her width as 11.5 metres. Vrak museum
  9. 9 Fitted out with ten sails, 64 cannon, 120 tonnes of ballast and hundreds of sculptures, she weighed over 1,200 tonnes, according to the museum’s timeline. Vasa Museum timeline
  10. 10 She sank 1,300 metres from where she set off, still within sight of the shipyard where she was built, and settled on the bottom 32 metres down. Vasa Museum timeline
  11. 11 Vasa came back to the surface on Monday 24 April 1961, after 333 years under water. Vasa Museum timeline
  12. 12 More than 98 per cent of the original structure survives, including masts and sails. Vasa Museum timeline
  13. 13 Over 40,000 objects were found in and around the ship. Vasa Museum
  14. 14 Gustav II Adolf (1594–1632) was the grandson of Gustav Vasa, the first king of the Vasa dynasty. Vasa Museum
  15. 15 He inherited three wars when he became king in 1611, with Russia, Denmark and Poland-Lithuania, and was at war for 18 of the 21 years of his reign. Vasa Museum
  16. 16 The stern carries a gilded sheaf between two cherubs as the ship’s name board, and the king’s initials GARS, for Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sveciae. Vasa Museum
  17. 17 In January 1625 the king signed a contract with the Dutch master shipwright Henrik Hybertsson and his business partner Arendt de Groote to build four new ships. Vasa was to be the most powerful warship in the Baltic. Vasa Museum timeline
  18. 18 A 1969 US Naval Institute article says the king ordered Vasa ‘and two other ships’ in January 1625. USNI Proceedings, 1969
  19. 19 Vasa’s keel was laid in late winter 1626 at Skeppsgården, the navy yard in Stockholm. Vasa Museum timeline
  20. 20 Vrak, the Museum of Wrecks, gives the keel-laying as 1625. Vrak museum
  21. 21 Hybertsson was already ill when work started. By the summer of 1626 he could no longer supervise, and his assistant Hein Jakobsson took over the ship; Hybertsson died barely a year later. Vasa Museum timeline
  22. 22 The museum’s exhibition says Margareta Nilsdotter, Hybertsson’s widow, led the building of Vasa after he died in the spring of 1627. Vasa Museum
  23. 23 The navy yard was on Skeppsholmen, today the peninsula called Blasieholmen, then an island reached by a guarded wooden bridge. Vasa Museum
  24. 24 In the warm months over 400 people worked at the yard. About half were year-round staff recruited in Sweden; the rest were seasonal workers, mostly from the Netherlands and Germany, paid about twice as much. Vasa Museum
  25. 25 The two groups spoke different languages, trained in different traditions and used different systems of measurement. Vasa Museum
  26. 26 Timber came from estates south and west of Stockholm, sawn planks from Riga and Amsterdam, tar from southern Sweden and Finland, hemp from Latvia, coal from England and sailcloth from the Netherlands and France. Vasa Museum
  27. 27 Vasa was launched in the spring of 1627, and hundreds of craftsmen spent the summer finishing the hull and rigging. Vasa Museum timeline
  28. 28 She carried 64 cannon on her maiden voyage, but eight gunports were empty: the yard could build a ship faster than the royal foundry could cast guns. Vasa Museum
  29. 29 The main armament was 48 bronze 24-pounders, each firing a ten-kilogram ball, with eight 3-pounders and six short guns for close-range work on the upper deck. Vasa Museum
  30. 30 One side’s guns could fire 250 kilograms of shot at once: about four times a typical Swedish warship of the 1620s, and twice the largest ships of other northern European navies. Vasa Museum
  31. 31 Vrak says the 48 big guns weighed about 1,200 kilograms each. Vrak museum
  32. 32 The king, a keen artillerist, wanted big, heavily gunned ships for artillery duels; most similar orders were cancelled after he died, because the navy did not want such ships. Vasa Museum
  33. 33 There were over 700 sculptures and decorations on the ship, meant to show that Gustav II Adolf was the rightful king with God on his side. Vasa Museum
  34. 34 The figurehead is a three-metre lion holding the Vasa coat of arms, with twenty Roman emperors along the beakhead behind it. Vasa Museum
  35. 35 From the toilets in the beakhead, the crew looked at two carved Polish noblemen: Sweden’s enemy, shown humbled. Vasa Museum
  36. 36 From 1990 to 2002 Peter Tångeberg analysed about 1,200 paint samples. Vasa was bright: strong colours and gold leaf on the sculptures, much of the ship painted red, the rest tarred red-brown. Vasa Museum
  37. 37 Mårten Redtmer, a German master sculptor, carved several of the most important figures, with the Dutchman Johan Thesson and the German Hans Clausink. Vasa Museum
  38. 38 The navy’s plan for 1628 was 133 sailors and 300 soldiers; the soldiers would only board for battle service and were not aboard when she sank. Vasa Museum
  39. 39 With soldiers aboard, about 450 men would have shared less than 600 square metres of living space. Vasa Museum
  40. 40 Before she sailed, captain Söfring Hansson had 30 men run back and forth across the deck while Vice Admiral Klas Fleming watched. The ship rolled so much that the test was stopped for fear she would capsize at the quay. Vasa Museum
  41. 41 Fleming was overheard to say ‘If only His Majesty were at home!’, but he did not report it, and the king was pressing for the ship to go to sea. Vasa Museum
  42. 42 10 August 1628 was a Sunday. Crew families were allowed aboard for the first leg; guests, including women and children, were to get off at the Vaxholm fortress. Vasa Museum
  43. 43 She was bound for the fleet base at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm archipelago, to be flagship of the reserve squadron. Two companies of soldiers, 300 men, were to board there. Vasa Museum
  44. 44 She cast off from below the palace between four and five in the afternoon. With the wind from the south she was warped along the waterfront to what is now Slussen, then four of her ten sails were set and a salute was fired. Vasa Museum
  45. 45 Under the cliffs of Södermalm there was little wind. A small gust made her heel and slowly recover; at the gap in the cliffs at Tegelviken a stronger gust pushed her so far over that water poured in through the open lower gunports. Vasa Museum
  46. 46 Within minutes she was on the bottom, 32 metres down, with her masts sticking out of the water. Some people held on to the masts, some were picked up by small boats, and some swam the 120 metres to Beckholmen. Vasa Museum
  47. 47 All but 30 of the crew and guests survived, the Vasa Museum says. Most of the dead were trapped inside the ship. Vasa Museum
  48. 48 Among the dead was Captain Hans Jonsson, the ship’s first-named captain, still aboard because a second experienced captain often sailed on a new ship’s first trip. Vasa Museum
  49. 49 Vrak says between 150 and 250 men and women were aboard, and about 30 people died. Vrak museum
  50. 50 The 1969 US Naval Institute article estimated 134 sailors aboard and guessed that 50 drowned. USNI Proceedings, 1969
  51. 51 Skeletons from at least 17 people were found during the excavation of the 1960s, and more remains were found by divers in 1966. Vasa Museum
  52. 52 Of the roughly thirty who died, only one is named in the historical sources: Captain Hans Jonsson. Vasa Museum
  53. 53 New DNA work in 2023 showed that one skeleton thought to be a man was a woman. Vasa Museum
  54. 54 Thousands of Stockholm’s people watched, along with several foreign ambassadors. Vasa Museum timeline
  55. 55 Captain Söfring Hansson was imprisoned and questioned ‘before his clothes were even dry’. He swore the crew had been sober and the guns properly lashed. Vasa Museum
  56. 56 The king was not in Stockholm: he was with the army in Prussia, at war with Poland-Lithuania. The council’s first report went to him on 12 August, and his reply demanded that the guilty be punished. Vasa Museum
  57. 57 An inquest of 17 councillors and naval officers, chaired by the king’s older half-brother Admiral Karl Karlsson Gyllenhielm, met on 5 September 1628 at the Tre Kronor palace. Vasa Museum
  58. 58 The ship’s master, Jöran Matsson, had stowed the ballast, 120 tons of stone, and said the ship was ballasted as deep as it should be. Vasa Museum
  59. 59 The builders said Vasa was built to Hybertsson’s design, which the king had approved. Hein Jakobsson added that he had widened the ship by around 40 centimetres. Vasa Museum
  60. 60 In the end nobody was officially blamed or punished, and everyone questioned was eventually promoted. Vasa Museum
  61. 61 An appendix records the opinion of expert captains and shipwrights: the ship did not have enough ‘belly’ to carry its high, heavy upperworks. Vasa Museum
  62. 62 The museum calls the hearing, to a degree, ‘a piece of political theatre’: blame had to fall somewhere without embarrassing the king. Vasa Museum
  63. 63 The 1969 article says no plans or models were used in building the ship, and the king had personally approved its main dimensions. USNI Proceedings, 1969
  64. 64 Within three days an English engineer, Ian Bulmer, was allowed to try to raise Vasa. He got her upright on her keel but could not lift her. USNI Proceedings, 1969
  65. 65 In 1663–1665, 35 years after the sinking, divers led by Albrecht von Treileben and Andreas Peckell used a diving bell to bring up almost all of the cannon, which were sold abroad. Vasa Museum timeline
  66. 66 In 1920 two brothers asked permission to blow up wrecks in the harbour, including Vasa, for black oak to make Art Deco furniture. The authorities said no. Vasa Museum timeline
  67. 67 Hybertsson was an experienced, respected shipwright, but Vasa was new to him in size and armament, and there was no way to calculate a ship’s performance in advance: the mathematics was more than a century away. Vasa Museum
  68. 68 New warships were often unstable at first (‘tender’ or ‘crank’) and there were accepted fixes: change the guns, add planking at the waterline, or take off a deck. Vasa was so crank that she did not survive long enough to be fixed. Vasa Museum
  69. 69 The upperworks were too tall and heavy for the small amount of hull below the waterline. That might have made her fast, but it put the centre of gravity too high, so even a light breeze could heel her alarmingly. Vasa Museum
  70. 70 The museum calls leaving the gunports open ‘a fateful decision’: closed, they would have kept the water out, and the ship might have survived long enough to be rebuilt. Vasa Museum
  71. 71 Fred Hocker, an archaeologist at the Vasa Museum, measured every piece of wood in the ship and found it lopsided, more so than most ships of the time: there is more structure on the port side than the starboard. PRI, 2016
  72. 72 Hocker says that without ballast the ship would probably heel to port, the side she went over on. PRI, 2016
  73. 73 Four of the workmen’s rulers were found: two in Swedish feet of twelve inches and two in Amsterdam feet of eleven inches. PRI, 2016
  74. 74 A broken fragment of a rule, lost during building in 1626–1627, was found behind a hull plank removed in 2010. Both kinds of rule are found on Vasa, ‘but no two are the same length’. Vasa Museum
  75. 75 Radio Sweden, citing the news agency TT, put a Dutch foot at 281 mm and a Swedish foot at 297 mm. Radio Sweden
  76. 76 Radio Sweden reported that the researchers do not think the uneven shape made Vasa sink, though it could have made her slightly less stable; the gunports, for example, are not in matching places on the two sides. Radio Sweden
  77. 77 The museum’s 2012 survey measured the whole ship digitally at more than 80,000 points, and found it leans more than had been thought. There were no drawings to build from. Vasa Museum, 2012
  78. 78 Hocker found the deck structure heavier than it needed to be for Vasa’s guns, probably because Hybertsson, who had never built a two-gundeck ship, erred on the side of caution. PRI, 2016
  79. 79 Some historians blamed the king for changing the ship’s dimensions after building began, but Hocker’s measurements found no evidence for that. PRI, 2016
  80. 80 In Hocker’s words, ‘the design was simply flawed from the beginning.’ PRI, 2016
  81. 81 PRI’s 2016 report says two strong gusts hit the ship about twenty minutes into the voyage. PRI, 2016
  82. 82 Hein Jakobsson worked at the yard until 1638, building a string of large, successful ships; Söfring Hansson became supervising officer of the navy yard. Vasa Museum
  83. 83 In the early 1950s Anders Franzén, a fuel engineer in the navy and an amateur archaeologist, started searching for the navy’s lost ships, with Vasa near the top of his list. Vasa Museum
  84. 84 The 1969 article says the most important reason the wreck survived was the absence of the wood-eating shipworm, Teredo navalis, in the Baltic’s low-salt water. USNI Proceedings, 1969
  85. 85 The museum says the wood survived well because the ship was new and sank in cold, dark, almost oxygen-free water; only the outer few centimetres were degraded by bacteria. Vasa Museum preservation timeline
  86. 86 Dragging the south side of the channel, he found ‘rusty iron stoves and ladies’ bicycles, Christmas trees, dead cats’, and realised he was looking in the wrong place. Vasa Museum
  87. 87 A 1955 survey for a planned bridge showed a lump 50 metres long and six metres high off the Gustav V dry dock on Beckholmen. The navy diver Per Edvin Fälting knew it was not blasting rubble. Vasa Museum
  88. 88 On 25 August 1956 Franzén’s home-made coring device brought up black oak; 20 metres further on, it did it again. Vasa Museum
  89. 89 In early September Fälting went down and felt his way along a wooden wall with two rows of square openings: an old warship with two gundecks. Vasa Museum
  90. 90 The museum says it is ‘a little misleading’ to call the wreck lost: it was on a 19th-century chart, divers visited it in the 1840s and 1860s, and the navy dive school trained on it. Vasa Museum
  91. 91 Franzén’s big contribution was the idea that the ship could be raised and made the centrepiece of a museum, and the skill to persuade people to do it. Vasa Museum
  92. 92 The Neptune Company, part of Broströms, Scandinavia’s biggest salvage firm, did the lift and agreed not to charge for it. Vasa Museum
  93. 93 Ideas such as filling the hull with ping-pong balls, or freezing it in a giant ice cube, were quickly dropped; the salvors would only use a proven method. Vasa Museum
  94. 94 From 1957 to 1959 navy divers dug six tunnels under the ship and pulled steel cables through them to two pontoons, Oden and Frigg. Vasa Museum
  95. 95 The pontoons were flooded almost full, the cables tightened, then the water pumped out, so the ship rose with them. Vasa Museum
  96. 96 When a cannon was raised on 5 September 1958, Swedish Radio covered it live. Vasa Museum
  97. 97 The first lift was on 20 August 1959. Each lift gained a little under a metre, and in 18 stages the ship was moved to 17 metres deep near Kastellholmen. Vasa Museum
  98. 98 For more than 18 months divers plugged bolt holes, covered the gunports and rebuilt the bow and stern to make the hull watertight. Vasa Museum
  99. 99 At 09.03 on 24 April 1961 the first eroded frames broke the surface, then four carved warriors’ heads. Swedish Television broadcast it live to all of Europe. Vasa Museum
  100. 100 The 1969 article gives the cable as some 4,500 feet of 6-inch steel wire, and says the first move took 28 days. USNI Proceedings, 1969
  101. 101 On 4 May 1961 Vasa was towed to the Gustav V dry dock on Beckholmen and floated on her own keel onto a concrete pontoon. Vasa Museum
  102. 102 Archaeologists led by Per Lundström worked aboard for five months in a constant muddy drizzle, because the ship was sprayed with water day and night. Vasa Museum
  103. 103 Finds went into water tanks to wait for conservation. There were not enough, so the project bought up old bathtubs from Stockholm’s scrap merchants. Vasa Museum
  104. 104 In those five months the team recovered more than 30,000 objects. Vasa Museum
  105. 105 Over 4,000 coins were found, all small change, in chests and in the pockets of clothes worn by eleven skeletons on the decks. Vasa Museum
  106. 106 Six of Vasa’s sails were found folded in a locker, still tied up as they had come from the sailmaker in 1627. Vasa Museum
  107. 107 From 1963 to 1967 divers searched ‘the Pit’ where she had lain, recovering many sculptures, the beakhead, upper sterncastle, anchors and the longboat, nearly 12 metres long with a smaller boat inside. Vasa Museum
  108. 108 To stop the waterlogged wood shrinking and cracking as it dried, the hull was sprayed with polyethylene glycol (PEG), a water-soluble wax, from April 1962 to January 1979. Vasa Museum
  109. 109 At first spraying was done by hand: five men took five hours to cover the ship. An automatic system with 500 nozzles followed in 1965. Vasa Museum
  110. 110 After 17 years of spraying came another nine years of slow air-drying. Vasa Museum
  111. 111 PEG is also found in cosmetics such as lipsticks and face creams. Vasa Museum
  112. 112 The sails were so fragile they could not carry their own weight. Conservators backed them with fibreglass fabric, a job that took over a decade; the museum holds the remains of 650 square metres of sail. Vasa Museum
  113. 113 Almost all the 5,000 iron fastenings corroded on the seabed, and sulphur from the polluted harbour water got into the wood. Vasa Museum preservation timeline
  114. 114 In the rainy summer of 2000, crowds of wet visitors sent the humidity swinging, and yellow and white acidic spots appeared on the ship. Vasa Museum timeline
  115. 115 A new climate system in 2004 keeps the hall at 53 ± 2 per cent humidity and 18.5 ± 1.5 °C. Vasa Museum preservation timeline
  116. 116 Replacing the rusty 1960s bolts took seven years and was finished in 2018: more than 5,000 bolts, saving about 8 tonnes. The museum expects the new ones to last at least 150 years. Vasa Museum preservation timeline
  117. 117 The museum’s main timeline puts it at 4,000 bolts and says the ship is ‘now eight tons lighter’. Vasa Museum timeline
  118. 118 In 2014 researchers test-fired an exact copy of one of Vasa’s guns over 50 times. Its range was over 1,000 metres, but real fighting range was probably under 500, and every shot went through up to 80 cm of oak. Vasa Museum timeline
  119. 119 From 1961 until 1988 Vasa lived in a temporary home, the Wasavarvet museum. Vasa Museum
  120. 120 The temporary museum opened on 16 February 1962 with a salute from two of Vasa’s cannon; 439,300 people bought tickets that year. Vasa Museum timeline
  121. 121 A Nordic architecture competition in 1981 drew 384 designs. The museum’s page on the building names the winners as Marianne Dahlbäck and Göran Månsson, with their design ‘Ask’. Vasa Museum
  122. 122 The museum’s timeline names the winning firm as Hidemark Månsson Arkitektkontor AB. Vasa Museum timeline
  123. 123 Building began on 2 November 1987, in a dry dock from 1878. Vasa Museum
  124. 124 In December 1988 Vasa made her last voyage, on a pontoon inside a protective shell, into the water-filled dry dock inside the new museum. Vasa Museum
  125. 125 King Carl XVI Gustaf opened the museum on 15 June 1990. Vasa Museum
  126. 126 2019 was the busiest year in the museum’s history, with over 1.5 million visitors. Vasa Museum
  127. 127 Vrak says the museum has 1.5 million visitors a year, and more than 40 million people have seen Vasa since she was raised. Vrak museum
  128. 128 The museum’s preservation timeline gives the ship’s weight in 2000 as around 900 tonnes, too heavy for its support. Vasa Museum preservation timeline
  129. 129 The cradle that has held Vasa since the 1960s is damaging the hull. Its 17 pairs of supports are being replaced with 27 steel cradles plus an internal steel skeleton; the work began in April 2024. Vasa Museum
  130. 130 Vasa leans slightly to port, and the lean is getting worse. The new support is designed so the ship can be straightened once it is all in place. Vasa Museum
  131. 131 The aim is to finish the new support by 2028, in time for the ship’s 400th anniversary, with the museum open as usual throughout. Vasa Museum
  132. 132 Twice-yearly measurements of 400 points since 2000 show the ship settling about 1 mm a year. Vasa Museum
  133. 133 In weakened parts of the hull the wood carries on average 40 per cent less load than fresh wood, and in places 80 per cent less. Vasa Museum
  134. 134 The museum says that without the new support, the ship is at risk of ‘sinking under its own weight’. Vasa Museum
  135. 135 When we checked (page updated 8 October 2026), the museum opened daily 10:00–17:00 from September to May, with late opening to 20:00 on Wednesdays, and 08:30–18:00 from June to August. It is closed on 24 and 25 December. Vasa Museum
  136. 136 Adult tickets were 240 SEK from May to September and 195 SEK the rest of the year; visitors 18 and under go free, and the museum takes cards only. Vasa Museum
  137. 137 A ticket includes a guided tour of about 25 minutes, a 17-minute film about the ship, and free audio guides on your own phone. Vasa Museum
  138. 138 Twelve exhibitions around the ship cover life on board, ships in battle, the sculptures, sailing ships, preservation, the salvage, the sinking and the people who died. Vasa Museum
  139. 139 The exhibition ‘In Life and Death’ presents some of the people who died, using DNA, bone and isotope research. Vasa Museum