ed, that's fascinating.  thanks for sharing.

bill
felton, ca

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 5:30 AM,  wrote:

>
>
>
> 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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