Vasa museum in Stockholm,Sweden is one of the coolest museums in Swede.It is a must when visiting Stockholm.
Vasa is a Swedish warship built 1626-1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing less than a nautical mile (ca 2 km) into its maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. It fell into obscurity after most of its valuable bronze cannon were salvaged in the 17th century. After it was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor, it was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. It was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Shipyard") until 1987 and then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961.
Vasa was built top-heavy and had insufficient ballast. Despite an obvious lack of stability in port, it was allowed to set sail and foundered only a few minutes after it first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. The impulsive move to set sail was the result of a combination of factors: Swedish king Gustavou Adolphus, who was leading the army on the continent on the date of its maiden voyage, was impatient to see it join the Baltic fleet in the Thirty Years´ War; at the same time, the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to discuss the ship's structural problems frankly or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish privy concil to find personal responsibility for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished for the fiasco.
During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around the hull of the Vasa by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannon, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship itself have provided historians with invaluable insight into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden. Vasa was intended to express the expansionist aspiratsions of Sweden and to glorify king Gustavus Adolphus. No expense was spared in decorating and equipping the Vasa, which was also one of the largest and most heavily armed warships of its time.
And everyone who likes "Pirates of Carribean " knows The Flying Dutchman ,I guess. The look of the fictional ship was inspired by the seventeenth century Dutch "fluyt" vessels and the Vasa.
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