GGG

Just got back from a trip to the Baltic and stopped in
Stockholm.  Again I got a chance to see the Vasa (look that
up in your Funk and Wagnalls), but this time with a twist.
 The tall ship that I am a volunteer on is a reproduction
of an early 17th c ship from within about 5 years of the
Vasa.  It is the only 17th c ship that sails today - there
are a couple of others that are static displays.  The
curator of the Vasa, Fred Hocker, an American archeologist,
sails on our boat once a year to help him understand what
these boats were like, and he offers that any of us that
show up in Sweden can get on the boat - I did this.

 I was most interested in the hull construction and I was
able to climb down to the very bottom of this magnificent
relic. I crawled from bow to stern along the keel, and saw
the enormous knees that held the frame stable and the tons
and tons of oak that went into this thing.  I was wearing
the Cat's Pajamas sitting in the Cat Bird's Seat while in
Hog Heaven.

The ship sank for a number of reasons, the two big ones
being that the king ordered it to be lengthened while it
was under construction, so it was too narrow, and the king
ordered another gun deck that put a lot of weight up high.
 The ship went about 1000 yards from the dock on its maiden
voyage before it rolled over and sank.

Recently Fred wrote a paper on another contributor to the
disaster - one he discovered and fleshed out.  This is from
a recent article:




"We have, over the last three years, measured every single
piece of the wood in the ship,"? says Hocker. "If we want
to understand how the ship was built, that's what it
takes."?

Hocker's meticulous measurements paid off. They gave him
fresh insight into what made the Vasa unstable.

For one thing, the ship was asymmetrical, more so than most
ships of the day.

"There is more ship structure on the port side of the hull
than on the starboard side,"? explains Hocker.
"Unballasted, the ship would probably heel to port."?

No wonder the ship tipped to the port side when the winds
hit.

But why was the ship so lopsided?

While examining the ship, Hocker discovered four rulers the
workmen had used. Those rulers were based on different
standards of measurement at the time.

Two were in Swedish feet, which were divided into twelve
inches. The other two were in Amsterdam feet, which had
eleven inches in a foot. So each carpenter had used his own
system of measurement.

"When somebody tells him, make that thing four inches
thick, his four inches is not going to be the same as the
next guy's four inches,"? says Hocker. "And you can see
those variations in the timbers, as well."?




How about that!  Have Swedish shipwrights build one side of
the boat while the Dutch shipwrights build the other and
they aren't the same - by a long shot!  Not so bad in a
house, but apparently pretty disastrous in a big ship.

Ed Minch
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