Vinayak Hegde

Back of the IETF 75 T-shirt featuring the Vasa (Parody of the ISO Model)

The Vasamuseet (“Vasa Museum”) is a maritime museum located on the island of Djurgården which displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged. The Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, just like the Titanic. The difference was that Vasa sank even before it could leave the Stockholm harbour.

Political decision leads to Engineering failure

The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus ordered the construction of the Vasa and was impatient to see the completion of the ship so that it could join the Thirty years war with Poland. In doing so, several poor engineering decisions were made to satisfy the king as no one wanted to incur his ire by pointing out the several design blunders. The 64-gun upper deck of the Vasa was not offset by the ballast and it made the ship unstable as it was top-heavy. The Vasa was initially designed to have only one gundeck but it ended up with two adding to further instability of the ship (feature creep existed in the middle ages ). Also there was no way to estimate scientifically the stability of the ship and it all depended on the experience of the shipbuilder leading to the sinking of many ships and wasted effort (Software estimation still isn’t good enough – We are stuck in the middle ages of software development ).

The Catastrophic Maiden Voyage

On 10 August 1628, the Vasa to set sail on her maiden voyage to the naval station at Älvsnabben. It was a bright calm sunny day. There was only a light breeze blowing across the sea. At the first hint of the gust the Vasa swerved but was stabilized by the sailors aboard. Soon another gust of wind followed but this was fatal as the tilting of the ship caused the water to rush through the open lower gun ports which added to the instability of the ship and the eventual sinking of the Vasa. As the Vasa was an extraordinary ship, there were thousands of people who were present to witness the maiden voyage including ambassadors of different countries. The Vasa sank ingloriously in front of the gathered crowd.

The bronze cannons of the ship were salvaged in the 17th Century but the Vasa was forgotten till the 1960s when the ship was salvaged from the bottom of the sea in a major operation.