[00:03.67]The 'Vasa'
[00:11.34]What happened to the 'Vasa' almost immediately after she was launched?
[00:18.62]From the seventeenth-century empire of Sweden,
[00:21.74]the story of a galleon that sank at the start of her maiden voyage in 1628
[00:27.76]must be one of the strangest tales of the sea.
[00:31.24]For nearly three and a half centuries she lay at the bottom of Stockholm harbour
[00:36.53]until her discovery in 1956.
[00:40.12]This was the Vasa, royal flagship of the great imperial fleet.
[00:46.86]King Gustavus Adolphus 'The Northern Hurricane',
[00:50.94]then at the height of his military success in the 'Thirty Years' War,
[00:55.49]had dictated her measurements and armament.
[00:59.31]Triple gun-decks mounted sixty-four bronze cannon.
[01:03.49]She was intended to play a leading role in the growing might of Sweden.
[01:09.08]As she was prepared for her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628,
[01:14.49]Stockholm was in a ferment.
[01:17.49]From the Skeppsbron and surrounding islands
[01:20.40]the people watched this thing of beauty
[01:22.84]begin to spread her sails and catch the wind.
[01:26.99]They had laboured for three years to produce this floating work of art;
[01:31.89]she was more richly carved and ornamented than any previous ship.
[01:37.17]The high stern castle was a riot of carved gods, demons, knights, kings, warriors,
[01:45.16]mermaids, cherubs; and zoomorphic animal shapes ablaze with red and gold and blue,
[01:52.79]symbols of courage, power, and cruelty,
[01:56.68]were portrayed to stir the imaginations of the superstitious sailors of the day.
[02:03.69]Then the cannons of the anchored warships thundered a salute to which the Vasa fired in reply.
[02:11.45]As she emerged from her drifting cloud of gun smoke
[02:14.94]with the water churned to foam beneath her bow,
[02:18.53]her flags flying, pennants waving, sails filling in the breeze,
[02:24.31]and the red and gold or her superstructure ablaze with colour,
[02:28.59]she presented a more majestic spectacle than Stockholmers had ever seen before.
[02:35.26]All gun-ports were open and the muzzles peeped wickedly from them.
[02:40.98]As the wind freshened there came a sudden squall and the ship made a strange movement, listing to port.
[02:49.42]The Ordnance officer ordered all the port cannon to be heaved to starboard
[02:54.14]to counteract the list but the steepening angle of the decksincreased.
[02:59.67]Then the sound of rumbling thunder reached the watchers on the shore,
[03:04.25]as cargo, ballast, ammunition and 400 people
[03:09.36]went sliding and crashing down to the port side of the steeply listing ship.
[03:14.93]The lower gun-ports were now below water and the inrush sealed the ship's fate.
[03:21.83]In that first glorious hour, the mighty Vasa, which was intended to rule the Baltic,
[03:28.29]sank with all flags flying--in the harbour of her birth.