The History Room
The Quest to Find—and Save—the World’s Most Famous Shipwreck
The Quest to Find—and Save—the World’s Most Famous Shipwreck -- In 1628, the ‘Vasa’ sank on its maiden voyage. For the next 300 years, it sat in a watery grave—until one man sparked a monumental effort to salvage it.
But on August 25, 1956, Franzén's grappling iron hooked something 100 feet below. And whatever it was, it was big. Franzén gently lowered a core sampler—a tool used by oceanographers to get soil samples from the bottom of bodies of water—and retrieved a dark and soggy chunk of black oak. The following month, Franzén's friend Per Edvin Fälting dived into the ström and see what was down there. Fälting had to work blind. Just 30 yards below the surface, the brackish waters were pitch black. The diver ran his hands over the mysterious object and tried to get a feel for what it might be.
“I can feel something big,” Fälting said to Franzén over a diver’s telephone, “the side of a ship. Here’s one gun port and here’s another.” There was a pause. “There are two rows,” Fälting said. “It must be the Vasa.”
The Vasa was the greatest warship to never go to war. Named after the Swedish royal family—the House of Vasa—the vessel was commissioned by King Gustavus II Adolphus in 1625 and was earmarked to become his navy’s flagship. Gustavus had big dreams for the Vasa: He wanted the most lethal warship in the Baltic Sea, one that was as beautiful as it was deadly.
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Originally Posted by DGUtley
