JJ's on Tour - Sweden 2025, The Vasa Museum, Part Two.

 

Early last month Carolyn and I spent a few days in Stockholm, Sweden, primarily to enjoy celebrating Carolyn's special birthday, but also to enjoy the delights of Sweden, this our first visit to the country, and in the previous and first post in this planned series covering our trip, I covered our first impressions of the Swedish capital together with a focus on the remarkable preservation of the most complete 17th century warship in the world, the Vasa, and in particular what remains of the hull and her astonishing wood carved decorations, link to that post below.

JJ's on Tour - Sweden 2025, Vasa Museum, Part One

In this post, I will look specifically at the items now preserved in the museum that were discovered in her interior and around the wreck site on the seabed after her recovery in 1961.

With a warship of this era resting on the seabed for 333 years perhaps the last things you would have expected to have survived would have been any of the Vasa's sails, and I would have included myself in that probably large group of sceptics, however the picture above reveals the challenging puzzle posed to the preservation team with the discovery of the remains of some of Vasa's spare and unset sails that remained on the orlop deck the day she sank.

This illustration in the museum vividly portrays the sails a ship like Vasa would have carried, together with her flags and pennants, which based on a document from 1626 detailing those carried by the ship Tre Kronor, suggests she would have probably been similarly equipped, with five large flags and three long pennants, none of which survived the sinking.

From the heap of mushed three-hundred-plus year old canvass, restorers managed to piece together several recognisable sails that included the Vasa's mizzen bonnet, mainsail, spritsail topsail and fore topgallant.

The mizzen bonnet was just under 56-feet long and 5-feet 6-inches wide, and probably made of hemp, designed to fasten under the mizzen sail to enlarge its area.

Vasa's mizzen bonnet.

In the section reconstructed above, about three quarters of the one-hundred threading loops seen along the top of the sail piece and used to fasten it to the mizzen sail have been preserved, and the sections of cloth can be seen seamed together with a round seam.

The Vasa's mainsail was stowed in the sail locker on the orlop deck, folded and tied up with pleated gaskets, knotted with square knots.

A small section of Vasa's mighty mainsail.

The mainsail consisted of 34 sections of cloth, probably made of hemp and seamed together with double round seams, and three sections are preserved from the starboard side of the sail.

The spritsail topsail was carried at the end of the bowsprit, and consisted of canvass made of flax, with the bolt rope along the top and used to attach it to the yard, almost completely intact, and with about one quarter of the canvass preserved.

The spritsail topsail.

 

The fore topgallant illustrated below was the smallest of Vasa's sails, and when discovered lay protected between other sails in the sail locker, carefully protected and tied up with rope yarn.

The canvass is probably made of flax, and it is thought that the sail was newly made as its loose seams suggest it had never been used.

Vasa's fore topgallant in tip-top condition, never having been used.

The replica of Vasa's main top vividly illustrates the size of this platform used in the process of furling and unfurling the main topsail.

A replica of Vasa's main top.

Another vital component in the machinery needed aboard an age of sail man of war, reliant on manpower to do the heavy lifting, leading to the sailors common complaint in his latter years, the dreaded hernia, were blocks of various shapes and sizes, with some used to increase mechanical advantage and others used simply to change the direction of a line.

Vasa was originally estimated to require an outfit of about
600 rigging and gun tackle blocks.

The Vasa, like the Mary Rose in Portsmouth, is a time capsule, holding a unique insight into the lives and deaths of the people aboard when the ship sank, entombing them, their remains and their belongings that today reveal more about the story of the respective catastrophes at a very human level.

The catastrophe - A gust of wind has caught the Vasa and caused her to start heeling, with water already pouring in through the open gun ports, and despite the crew's efforts to right her, the Vasa sinks in twenty minutes; with most of the people on board managing to save themselves, but seeing some thirty souls following Vasa into the depths, and for the remains, clothing and belongings of about half of them to be discovered after the ship is salvaged 333 years later, revealing who they were and what they might have been doing aboard the ship.

The man, now named Helge, was 30-40 years old when he died, and was 5' 6" tall, and was referred to by the archaeologists who found him on the lower gun deck as 'the skeleton with the shoes'.

When Helge died, chaos reigned, as one last desperate measure was ordered to attempt to save the ship by dragging the heavy guns from port to starboard in an attempt to right the ship’s list.

A single gun could weigh 1.5 tons, a difficult piece of equipment to move at the best of times, but with the quick severe list made worse by the masses of water rushing in over the gun deck, the task was likely impossible.

Helge may have been one of those who helped Vice Admiral Erik Jönsson in his attempt to move the guns.

Archaeologists found him on the lower gun deck, lying on his side with hist feet under a gun carriage, and there was something peaceful about the body, despite the signs of tumult around him.

Most of Helge's clothing lay protected between his body and the deck and are relatively intact, with both the jacket and knee-length breeches showing signs of having been mended with patches of blue-green wool.

The large wheel from the gun carriage that had trapped Helge, although mercifully, it is likely from the position of the body that he was already unconscious when he ended up there under it, and the remains of his shoes found still on his feet, made of moose hide, with insoles of birch bark, worn and mended, with little decorative incisions on the upper side.

The man named Ivar, was 40-50 years old when he died, and was about 5' 7"tall, and was found deep in the vessel on the orlop deck, and was discovered to have had an injury to his skull and on his right calf bone.

The orlop room is a cramped space with just over three feet of head room, and anyone wanting to get into it had to either crawl or crouch.

There were two access hatches to the orlop, one leading up to the main gun deck and the other down into the hold.

The parts of Ivar's musket were found scattered near his remains, that included the butt, stock and ramrod made of alder wood, also found was his powder horn made from a cow horn with a wooden plug and stopper, and the hood of the lantern which was supported by wooden rods, probably framing thin sheets of horn attached to a wooden base plate. Black soot marks on the inside of this hood suggest that the lantern was burning during the accident.

Ivar had a lantern to light up the narrow and dark space, and near him were found a musket and powder horn, leading to researchers assuming he may have been guarding the powder magazine.

The orlop was a bad place to be if the ship was sinking, and getting up through the hatch required some strength and agility even when the ship was tilting, which may have been too difficult for Ivar or maybe he chose to stay at his post.

The woman called Beata was about 25 years old when she came aboard the Vasa on a sunny Sunday morning, hailing from southern Sweden or Denmark and having experienced disease or starvation during childhood. Her shoes once expensive and beautiful, were now worn, and badly mended, and perhaps they were bought second-hand.

Beata, a sailors wife, who died with her husband.

Beatta was found on the upper gun deck, port side, and it is thought she was probably married to one of the sailors, with her jacket made of the same fabric as that of the man found beside her, with the two bodies intertwined suggesting they died together. Interestingly, she had a notch in her front tooth, possibly caused by repeatedly biting off thread.

The woman recreated below was for a long time after the recovery of her remains referred to as Gustav, but with modern DNA analysis later confirming Gustav to be a woman, was renamed Gertrud, and an osteological examination also showed that she had likely given birth.

Gertrud was 25 - 40 years old when she died, having recently had a tooth pulled and was probably a seaman's wife who travelled on Vasa's maiden voyage, like Beata, with the wear and tear on her back indicating that she had led an active life involving physical labour, but it's not certain she was aware of the damage.

Gertrud's remains were found on the lower gun deck, where perhaps she was looking for her husband, or perhaps her child, as according to written sources, children of seamen died when Vasa sank, but no children's skeletons have been found.

The face recreated below is recreated from the first set of remains recovered by the divers, and was later named Adam, who is estimated to have been between 25-35 years old when he died, with marks on his teeth from sickness or nutritional deficiency during childhood. He was found on the upper gun deck, starboard side.

It seems luck might not have been on Adam's side as he had healed fractures on his forehead, nose and upper jaw, indicating that he might have been in a fight or had had an accident such as one of the heavy blocks in the ships rigging catching him unexpectedly in the face.

Whatever the cause, his luck continued to be an issue up to the day he died, as Adam broke his leg during the sinking, with his shinbone subjected to a violent force, and the injury, shock and pain likely resulting in hindering his escape.

However it seems Adam experienced friendship or perhaps love in his short life, if the sheath of his knife is any sign, carved with the initials of names, perhaps family members or friends.

The sheath has been meticulously carved with hearts and the letters LIS, HMS, MSS and DEN, thought to be initials, with DEN possibly the beginning of a date. The letters indicate the authors familiarity with letters and the heart with a cross was used as a religious symbol.

Finally we have Johan who was aged somewhere between 30-50 years old when he died, and whose remains were found scattered about in the hold, in the lowest part of the ship, and it is thought that he might have fallen through a hatch in one of the decks above and was unable to get out.

Based on the state of his bones Johan was likely a worn-out man with many injuries to his legs, typical of ones that occur when someone jumps and lands heavily on their feet.

He was surrounded by many artefacts when he was found, but they were so scattered that it was difficult to associate them with him with any confidence.

Johan was likely one of the oldest men aboard, and its interesting to speculate if he might be 'old' captain Hans Jonsson, the only one of the dead whose name is known.

The captain had served in the navy for almost twenty years and had commanded in both Russia and France.

When the Vasa sailed in August 1628, eight of the planned armament of 72 guns had still not been delivered, due primarily to the fact that the navy yard could build a ship faster than the royal gun foundry could cast its guns, that required all cannons during this time to be made from individually made moulds that could not be reused, but astonishingly the Vasa's guns had such uniform precision in their manufacturing that their primary dimensions varied by only a few millimetres, and their bores were almost exactly 146 mm (5.7 inches).

The main armament was 48 of these 24-pounders, powerful bronze cannons that fired round shot weighing ten kilograms each, with the upper deck fitted out with smaller cannons: eight 3-pounders (1.25 kg) and six stormstycken, short, thin-walled guns for firing anti-personnel ammunition at short range.

The 24-pounder was a new type of gun developed in 1620 for the army as mobile siege artillery, and it weighed only half of the traditional naval 24-pounder, allowing so many heavy cannon to be fitted into a ship the size of Vasa, and additionally was part of the king's drive to standardize the weaponry of both the army and navy to make it easier to manufacture and supply ammunition.

Only three of Vasa's original 46 main 24-pounder guns were recovered from the Vasa when she was raised and seen here on display in the museum, as most of the guns were recovered by salvagers in the 17th century by Albrecht von Treileben and Andreas Peckell, using a diving bell and a crane to recover most of them in 1663 to 1665.

The Dutch and the English were at war then and they both needed cannons, and a reference in the British Board of Ordnance Archives, records that they had purchased forty 24-pounder cannons from Sweden in the spring of 1665, which was just at the point when Albrecht von Treileben was exporting forty 24-pounder cannons from Sweden; this while at about the same time the Dutch were buying cannons of the same type from Sweden, perhaps indicating that the entrepreneurial von Treileben was tendering to both parties to get the best price.

As well as the guns, several example of the tools required to man such weapons were also recovered.

The sponge tool, consisted of a long wooden handle with wads of absorbent wool wrapped around the tips, which when dipped into a bucket of seawater (kept on deck nearby) was used to carefully swab out the bore of any remaining burning embers that could pre-ignite any new charge.

Sponge and rammer heads.

The ladle has a long wooden handle with a kind of rectangular scoop at the end (sometimes the sponge and the ladle were combined into a single tool). This scoop is made of copper, to reduce the risk of sparks as it was shoved down the bore with the cartridge seated in it, and was cupped by the scoop’s curved blade. The ladle was then thrust into the bore, and when it reached the end, was given a half twist resulting in the blade of the scoop no longer cupping the cartridge but instead resting free above it, after which it was withdrawn, leaving the cartridge behind.

A ladle used for thrusting home the prepared powder cartridge. 

Firing was done with the linstock, a forked stick with a length of smouldering cord wound round it. You needed the stick so you could reach out and fire off the cannon while standing safely out of the way of the recoil. 

The cord on the linstock was known as a slow match, and was impregnated with a flammable substance (usually saltpetre) so that it would burn continuously but slowly (about four or five inches an hour or thereabouts), and was the standard method for firing ships’ guns right up until the end of the eighteenth century.

A wooden linstock that would have had the slow match wrapped around it.

In 2014, the Vasa Museum carried out an extensive field trial of a replica 24-pounder bronze demi-cannon, based on those found on the warship Vasa.

A two-week program of fire revealed not only the ballistic characteristics of this type of artillery, but trials against a replica section of ship structure demonstrated that conventional interpretations of the effect of cannon fire on warships is oversimplified. 

The museum displays a section of the replica hull based on that of the Vasa's construction, used in the 2014 field trial, and bearing the scars of the round shot hits demonstrated in the video above.

The guns could fire several different types of ammunition. Round shot being the most common, and used to damage the enemy ship and create clouds of splinters wounding men over a large area. Crossbar shot (a round shot with a large spike in it) and scissor shot (crossbar shot in two pivoting halves, which opened in mid-air to form a wicked cross) were used at longer range against enemy sails and rigging, to slow down and cripple the enemy so the he could not escape or manoeuvre. 

Chain shot (two half shot connected by a chain) opened in mid-air and were used at short range to destroy rigging and sails. Case shot (a wooden tube filled with musket balls or scrap metal) was used at short range, especially in the stormstycken, to cut bloody swaths through enemy crew massed on the decks just before boarding. 

Men positioned in the tops with muskets could also act as sharpshooters, to eliminate enemy officers.

 

The Vasa opens an amazing window on the life of the men and women who served aboard her, from their personal possessions, clothing, weapons and equipment, to the simple items of storage and cooking utensils that were an every day item that would have been in regular use aboard ship.

 

The crew kept their belongings in chests, casks and bundles, often with several men sharing the same chest or cask.

A rather splendid wool-felt hat would have been an expensive item for most sailors, and in an age when most men would have worn a cap or hat of some sort, both at sea and on land, a hat was very much a status symbol showing who you were in the society.

An expensive hat.

Under the hat in the chest was found a pair of leather mittens, a pair of shoes and a pair of mules, leather for shoe repairs, a shoe last made of birch, a keg, a wooden spoon, a tool handle, probably from an awl, some sealing wax and 66 copper coins worth 65 öre; these large copper öre coins were standard circulation currency at the time, and a total of 65 öre in 1628 would have had some purchasing power (e.g., perhaps enough to buy basic goods like some grain or simple clothing).

The range and variety of finds, together with the state of their condition considering how long they had been lying in the mud of Stockholm harbour is astonishing, that and the detail of various items that has been identified by the conservators, giving yet more insight into the world in which these people lived.

 

A lot of the textiles recovered are only fragments, with leather items surviving in a much more complete state. That said, the dyed woollen trouser fragment, bottom left, still has its silk decoration down the seam.

A woollen doublet with shoulder wings, fastened with a series of hooks and eyes.

The musket seen at the top of the picture below is an interesting weapon, identified as a snaplock musket a precursor to the flintlock, using a spring-loaded hammer to strike steel to ignite powder for faster, more reliable firing than matchlocks, and used by Swedish forces in New Sweden and Europe, known for its robust construction and sometimes ornate design, as seen in artifacts from the period.

Swedish snaplock gun from the early 16th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snaplock#/media/File:Snappl%C3%A5sb%C3%B6ssa,_1500-tal_-_Skoklosters_slott_-_103605.tif

The musket at the top is a Dutch made snaplock hunting musket, a very modern weapon for 1628, whilst below is a more usual wheel-lock German type hunting rifle, dated mid 16th century, and just below it can be seen a shot mould and lead shot.

Having done a walk around of the Vasa's hull in my first post, I thought I would conclude the post with a look at the very lowest tier of the display gallery and the area given over to the support cradle that underpins the whole structure of the ship.

The Vasa has had the same support cradle since the 1960's, and like me, also around since the 1960's, the technology moves on and things can be done better.

The old cradle was damaging the ship by creating deformations in the hull due to the weakening wood, with the ship leaning slightly to her portside and requiring straitening, thus work is planned to commence in 2028, just in time for the ship's 400th anniversary, to provide a whole new external cradle , whilst at the same time providing the Vasa with a new internal skeleton made of steel.

 

As well as getting a good look at the support structure for the Vasa I noticed that in this part of the gallery one can see other pieces of the ships equipment including two of her anchors.

Whilst the other item I was keen to see up close was the longboat, spotted when looking at the stern galleries from the upper landing.

 

The longboat is just over 39 feet long and was rowed or sailed, being mainly used for communication with other ships or the shore, and for towing or warping the ship.

Finally the wargamer in me was immediately drawn to these 25mm figures from the age of Gustav Adolphus, recreating the men of his army and navy and on sale in the museum shop, and I was intrigued to see who manufactured them.

I thought I recognised the look of the castings, being very nice sculpts but very much in the retro style of yesteryear, and then the memories came flooding back of an old shop in London that I visited back in the day, when I turned the label over to discover that these are made by Tradition Miniatures. 

The business grew originally from the Tradition magazine started by Roy Belmont-Maitland in the 1960s, with the name eventually applied to the shop and soldiers, and figure range had sculptors like Charles Stadden and David Scheinmann, who were instrumental in Tradition's classic painted ranges, and were very active in the UK miniature scene around Nottingham.

It now seems that Tradition are now based in new premises in London and jointly promoted there and in Sweden, and for me being a wargamer from an age time forgot, still getting used to 3D prints and plastics, these were a nice reminisce.

So that concludes my look at the Vasa Museum, which was very much a highlight of our stay in Stockholm and a place I would highly recommend visiting if the opportunity presents, particularly if like me you like to see old historic warships, and in this case a very unique one indeed.

In the next post looking at our short break in Sweden I will include our boat trip around the Stockholm harbour area and its many islands, plus our visits to Royal palaces and the Swedish Parliament and our car trip to Gamla Uppsalla, the ancient pre-Viking Age religious and political centre of the kingdom of Svitjod, established at around 550 AD and the forerunner of modern Sweden. 

As always, more anon.

JJ