In 1628, at the height of Sweden’s military expansion, the Swedish Navy built a new flagship, the Vasa.
At the time it was the most heavily armed ship in the world.
But 2 hours into its maiden voyage, it sank in Stockholm harbour.
The Vasa remained there for more than three hundred years, until its discovery in 1961.
A former Swedish naval officer, Bertil Daggfeldt, remembers the day that the mighty ship was brought up from beneath the water in near perfect condition.
Witness History: The stories of our times told by the people who were there.
The World’s Best Preserved 17th Century Ship
When it set sail from the Bay of Stockholm in 1628, the Vasa was the world’s most high-tech warship! However, 20 minutes into its maiden voyage, the boat sank, killing 30 of its passengers. The story of the Vasa’s quick sinking has gone down as one of the most colossal failures and greatest mysteries in naval architectural history. She sat at the bottom of the bay for around three centuries, until archaeologists unearthed the ship, restoring and displaying it in what has become the most-visited museum in all of Scandinavia. VASA Museum
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