Vasa is a warship that was built for Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden from 1626 to 1628. The ship foundered and sank on her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628 after sailing only about twenty minutes. Vasa fell into obscurity after some initial attempts at recovering her in the 17th century but was relocated in the late 1950s and salvaged with a largely intact hull on April 24, 1961. Thousands of artifacts and the remains of 16 people were found inside or near Vasa by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, 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 housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Shipyard") until 1987, and was then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has as of 2008 attracted more than 25 million visitors.

Vasa was built top-heavy with insufficient ballast; despite an obvious lack of stability in port, she was allowed to set sail and foundered a few minutes later when she first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. The impulsive move to set sail resulted from a combination of factors. King Gustavus Adolphus, who was abroad on the date of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see Vasa 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 privy council to find someone responsible for the disaster, but no sentences were handed out.

During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found inside or near Vasa by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, 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. When she was built, Vasa was intended to express the expansionist aspirations of Sweden and its king, Gustavus Adolphus, and no expense was spared in decorating and equipping her. She was one of the largest and most heavily armed warships of her time and was adorned with hundreds of sculptures, all of them painted in vivid colors.

History

During the 17th century, Sweden went from being a small, poor, and peripheral northern European kingdom of little influence to one of the major players in continental politics and, between 1611 and 1718, one of the most powerful states in the Baltic Sea. This rise to prominence in international affairs and increase in military prowess, called stormaktstiden (translated as the "age of greatness" or the "great power period"), was made possible by a succession of able monarchs and the establishment of a powerful centralized state with a highly efficient military machine. Swedish historians have often described this as one of the more extreme examples of a country using almost all of its available resources to wage war; the small northern kingdom transformed itself into a fiscal-military state.

Among the ablest and most militarily successful of Swedish rulers was Gustavus Adolphus. When Vasa was built, he had been king for more than a decade. The navy was in poor shape and Sweden was deeply embroiled in a war with Poland, and looked apprehensively at the development of the Thirty Years' War in present day Germany. The war had been raging since 1618 and from a Protestant perspective it was not going well. The king's plans for the Polish campaign and for securing Sweden's interests required a strong naval presence in the Baltic.

The navy suffered several severe setbacks during the 1620s. In 1625, a squadron cruising off the Bay of Riga was caught in a storm and 10 ships ran aground and were wrecked. In the Battle of Oliwa in 1627, a Swedish squadron was outmaneuvered and defeated by a larger Polish force and two large ships were lost. Tigern ("The Tiger"), which was the Swedish admiral's flagship, was captured by the Poles, and Solen ("The Sun") was blown up by her own crew when she was boarded and almost captured. In 1628, three more large ships were lost in less than a month; admiral Klas Fleming's flagship Kristina was wrecked in a storm in the Gulf of Danzig, Riksnyckeln ("Key of the Realm") ran aground at Viksten in the southern archipelago of Stockholm and, perhaps most inopportunely for the Swedish crown, Vasa foundered and sank on her maiden voyage. Gustavus Adolphus was engaged in naval warfare on several fronts, which further exacerbated the difficulties of the navy. In addition to battling the Polish navy, the Swedes were threatened by Catholic forces that had invaded Jutland. While the Swedish king had little sympathy for the Danish king, Christian IV (Denmark and Sweden had been bitter enemies for well over a century), Sweden feared a Catholic conquest of Copenhagen and Zealand. This would have granted the Catholic powers control over the strategic passages between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, which would be disastrous for Swedish interests.

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