Cold Open

It’s late afternoon on August 10th, 1628, in Stockholm Harbor, Sweden.

Captain Söfring Hansson strides along the quarterdeck of the warship Vasa.

Shouting to keep time, his crew heaves at thick ropes, and Hansson watches as four of his ship’s enormous white sails rise up the masts.

The sun is shining, the seas are calm, and there’s a light breeze. It's the perfect day for the Vasa to set out on its maiden voyage.

Constructed under orders from the king, the Vasa is heavily armed. 64 guns line its decks. But it’s not just one of the largest and most powerful warships in northern Europe. In the sunshine, it also glitters like a jewel, with painted carvings of emperors, warriors, and mythological creatures from sparkling in gold leaf.

A breeze catches the sails, and more than a thousand tons of oak, iron, and bronze slide forward through the water. Captain Hansson looks across at the nearby shore, where a large crowd has gathered. They’re waving and cheering and lifting small children up on their shoulders for a better view.

On Hansson’s command, the Vasa’s cannons fire a salute, booming echos racing across the harbor as the ship says farewell to its home port.

If the Vasa goes on to see success in battle, the rewards for Hansson could be enormous. Money, fame, and royal favor all await.

But in the back of his mind, Captain Hansson knows there’s a problem.

The Vasa has been built too tall and too narrow. And even now, as it glides through the water, he can feel it through his feet.

The ship is unstable.

With its towering upperworks and two full gun decks, too much of the Vasa’s weight sits high above the waterline. Captain Söfring Hansson, the ship’s master, and the senior admiral all knows this. But none of them have dared to tell the King of Sweden. So now, all Captain Hansson can do is hope their fears are wrong. And that the day won’t end with the sinking of the Vasa on its maiden voyage, on August 10th, 1628.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is August 10th, 1628: The Sinking of the Vasa.

Act One

It’s early July 1628, in Stockholm Harbor, a month before the Vasa’s maiden voyage.

Shipmaster Jöran Matsson stands on the upper deck of the Vasa, watching thirty sailors gather near the port rail.

Behind them rise the towers of the royal palace. The Vasa lies moored at the quay beside the castle walls, its immense hull towering over the small boats around it.

Jöran has spent his life aboard ships, but he has never served on one quite like this. The Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, intends the Vasa to be both a weapon and a symbol—a floating demonstration of his nation’s power. Sweden has been at war with Poland-Lithuania for the past seven years. Storms and enemy action have inflicted heavy losses on the Swedish navy, and Gustavus Adolphus is demanding new warships as quickly as the royal shipyards can produce them.

But to Jöran Matsson, the Vasa looks wrong. It's too tall and too narrow. Too much of its weight sits above the waterline.

The ship’s captain, Söfring Hansson, has noticed this too. That's why he has ordered today’s demonstration.

Standing beside Hansson on the quarterdeck is Vice Admiral Klas Fleming. He’s one of the most powerful officers in the Swedish navy, and has come to see whether the Vasa is stable enough to sail.

Captain Hansson shouts an order, and the thirty sailors run together from port to starboard.

As they cross the deck, their combined weight makes the ship heel beneath them. The masts tilt, the riggings creak, and loose objects slide across the planks.

Then the men turn and run back. The Vasa rolls the other way.

Jöran grips the railing and waits for the ship to settle. Any vessel will heel when weight shifts across its deck. But a well-designed ship should quickly right itself.

The Vasa does not. It hangs at an angle before slowly returning upright. Jöran glances toward Captain Hansson whose face is tense. Beside him, Fleming says nothing.

The sailors run across the deck again, and this time, the ship rolls even farther.

Jöran feels the deck fall away beneath his feet. Beyond the rail, the harbor seems to rise toward him until the ship pauses in it's roll, as though balanced on the edge of a knife. Then it lurches back.

The sailors turn for a third crossing. And as they race across the deck, the Vasa heels so violently that Jöran has to brace himself against the rail. For a moment, he fears the ship may capsize there at the quay, before it ever reaches open water.

But Vice Admiral Fleming has seen enough. He orders Captain Hansson to stop the test.

Hansson shouts to the sailors, and the men halt where they stand. Slowly, the Vasa rocks back upright, its masts swaying above the harbor.

But no one speaks. For a moment, the only sound is the water slapping on the hull. 

Jöran knows what the test has shown. The Vasa cannot safely carry sail in a strong wind. Any sudden gust could push it over faster than the crew could react. And there is little that can be done now to correct it.

The ship was designed by a Dutch-born master shipwright who died before the Vasa was completed. Another Dutchman, Hein Jakobsson, took over the work, and he made some minor alterations. But by then, the Vasa’s basic proportions had already been fixed.

Jöran himself has filled the ship with as much ballast as he can—120 tons of stone. But it’s clearly not enough. Any effective repairs now would require drastic changes—reducing the height of the ship, cutting back its armaments, or rebuilding major sections of the hull. It would take months and cost a fortune.

And no one thinks the king will accept that.

Jöran looks up at the royal castle. Gustavus Adolphus is away in Prussia, campaigning with his army. He has repeatedly pressed his officers to send the Vasa to sea as soon as possible. But Jöran wonders whether the king would be willing to change his mind if he’d been there to witness the test.

No one will tell the king the truth about the Vasa. Vice Admiral Fleming has just watched thirty men bring the navy’s new flagship close to disaster while it was still tied to the quay. But he doesn’t dare inform the king, and he doesn’t postpone the maiden voyage. 

So, in less than a month, the Vasa will set sail as scheduled. King Gustavus Adolphus once imagined his new ship dominating the Baltic Sea. But in reality, it won’t even make it out of the harbor.

Act Two

It's August 10th, 1628, on the quarterdeck of the Vasa, in Stockholm Harbor, a month after the ship nearly capsized during a test.

Captain Söfring Hansson shields his eyes against the summer sun. The Vasa is moving slowly, doing little more than drifting with the current. They are still less than a mile from their anchorage, close enough that Hansson can hear the crowds cheering them on their way. 

He exhales, and it feels like the first  breath he’s taken in months. Maybe his worries were overblown.

His orders are to proceed to a naval base south of the capital. It should be a simple journey through the sheltered waters of the Stockholm archipelago.

But then a sudden gust of wind whistles through the rigging.

Above him, the sails flap, and the ship tilts sharply to one side. Heart pounding, Captain Hansson waits for the Vasa to settle. And slowly, the ship does tilt back upright. It sails on for a few moments, but then there’s a second gust, harder than the first, and the ship heels over even farther.

Hansson grabs the railing. But this time, the Vasa does not right itself. It’s gone so far over that its open gunports have dipped below the waterline. There are screams and shouts of alarm from below deck as the sea rushes in. Hansson yells out an order to close the gunports. But it’s too late. The weight of the water starts dragging the ship down. 

On the tilting deck, men start leaping over the side, desperate to escape the sinking ship. But Hansson doesn't let himself think about the dozens trapped below. There’s nothing he can do for them now. The Vasa is going down too quickly. 

As water surges over the decks and submerges the ship’s carved finery, Hansson also leaps into the sea. 

Thanks to Stockholm’s tangle of islands, land is less than four hundred feet away. But Hansson can feel the water tugging at him. As the Vasa goes down, it wants to take its captain with it. Hansson thrashes his legs, fighting for every inch, until finally, his ship disappears beneath the waves and lets him go. Exhausted, he makes for the shore while small boats race out of the harbor in hopes of saving others.

But Hansson has barely dragged himself onto dry land when a squad of armed guards arrives and places him under arrest. The king’s flagship has sunk, and someone must pay the price.

Three and a half weeks later, Captain Hansson is summoned to a hearing at the royal palace.

Hansson and the Vasa’s other surviving officers have been under formal investigation ever since the ship’s sinking, along with the men responsible for its construction. 

Because when word of the disaster reached the Swedish king, he was furious. He declared that it must have been the result of incompetence or negligence, and that those responsible would answer for it.

Captain Hansson has been grilled about whether the ship was properly rigged, whether its guns were secured, and even whether his crew was sober.

Hansson knows the answer is yes to all three. The real failure was an overly ambitious design, an impatient king, and a court too afraid to tell him the truth. But as the man in command when the ship went down, Hansson fears he will take the blame regardless. Now, he’s about to discover what his punishment might be.

A guard escorts Hansson into a grand hall. He walks past rows of seated officers and shipwrights, every one of them staring at the floor. Through another door comes the shipwright Hein Jacobsson. He perhaps is the only man in the room more likely than Captain Hansson to be punished for this disaster.

The assembly rises as the inquest’s chairman enters. It’s Admiral Karl Karlsson Gyllenhielm, the king's half-brother. 

Captain Hansson holds his breath, waiting for the admiral to deliver a verdict.

But it doesn't come. The hearings have established that the ship was badly designed. In his evidence, Hein Jacobsson insisted that he had merely followed the plans drawn up by his dead predecessor—plans the king himself approved. And this has left the inquest trapped.

Blaming the living shipwrights could deprive the navy of men it needs for the war. Blaming the design risks embarrassing the king. So, in the end, no one is officially held responsible.

Captain Hansson lets out a sigh of relief. He and everyone else in the room know exactly what happened. But he’s content to let the truth lie undisturbed just as the Vasa does itself on the bottom of the harbor. And there, concealed in the depths, Hansson’s ship will remain hidden beneath the waves for the next 333 years, until a daring operation in the 20th century will bring the king of Sweden’s great folly back to the light.

Act Three

It's July 1959, in the waters of Stockholm harbor, more than three centuries after the sinking of the Vasa.

Salvage diver Per Edvin Fälting aims a metal nozzle into total darkness. Above him are more than 100 feet of water and over 1,000 tons of wreckage.

A few years ago, Per was part of a team that first rediscovered the exact position of the Vasa. The ship had lain in Stockholm Harbor for three centuries. Soon after it sank, several efforts were made to raise the ship, but 17th-century technology wasn’t up to the task. More than fifty of the ship’s valuable cannons were saved, but the rest was largely forgotten for centuries.

By the time the ship’s location was rediscovered in 1956, salvage technology had greatly improved. It’s still dangerous work. And today, Per is blasting water at the clay beneath the Vasa’s hull, carving out tunnels using high-pressure jets.

It's difficult work, and he grips the nozzle tight against its recoil, feeling blindly through the freezing water for the edges of the tunnel he’s already cut because electric flashlights are useless down here. The clay stirred up by the jets swallows any light.

And they're approaching a dangerous moment. Somewhere just ahead of him, another team is cutting into the clay from the opposite side. If the tunnel collapses when the two sides break through, Per and the others could be buried alive. Each diver breathes through a single air hose running to the surface, so if a collapse crushes or tears it, he’ll be dead in minutes.

Nonetheless, Per works steadily, cutting the clay inch by inch, until he feels something shift ahead of him. A change in the pressure of the water. Within moments, a patch of the wall gives way.

A communication's cable runs from the surface into his heavy copper diving helmet. He calls up immediately to have his jet shut off, then leans forward into the blackness, reaching out with his hand. And it doesn't take long to find a hole opening into the tunnel on the other side.

Within weeks, steel cables will be threaded through this tunnel and five others. Then, the salvage team will lift the Vasa free of the mud and begin moving it into shallower water. Another eighteen months of preparation will pass before the ship finally breaks the surface. And it will be then the Gustavus Adolphus’ flagship will return to land. There, it will be preserved and eventually put on display in a museum just as magnificent as the ship itself, which sank more than three centuries earlier, on August 10th, 1628.

Outro

Next on History Daily. August 11th, 1965. The arrest of a young Black man for drunk driving sparks riots in Los Angeles.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Ned Carter Miles.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.