History Daily - The Sinking of the Vasa

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

August 10, 1628. The magnificent Swedish warship Vasa sets sail from Stockholm, only to sink less than a mile into its maiden voyage. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

It's late afternoon on August 10th, 1628, in Stockholm Harbor, Sweden. Captain Suffering Hansen strides along the quarterdeck of the warship Vasa. Shouting to keep time, his crew heaves at thick ropes, and Hanson watches as four of his ship's enormous white sails rise up the masts. The sun is shining, the seas are calm and there's a light breeze. It's the perfect day for the Vasa to set out on its maiden voyage. constructed under orders from the king, the Vasa is heavily armed. 64 guns line its decks,

but it's not just one of the largest and most powerful warships in northern Europe. In the sunshine, it also glitters like a jewel, with painted carvings of emperors, warriors, and mythological creatures sparkling in gold leaf. A breeze catches the sails, and more than a thousand tons of oak, iron, and bronze slide forward through the water. Captain Hansen looks across at the nearby shore where a large crowd is gathered. They're waving and cheering and lifting small children up on their shoulders for a better view. On Hansen's command, the Vasa's cannons fire a salute, booming echoes racing across the harbor as the ship says farewell to its home port.

If the Vaza goes on to see success in battle, the rewards for Hansen could be enormous. Money, fame, and royal favor all await. But in the back of his mind, Captain Hansen knows there's a problem. The Vasa has been built too tall and too narrow, and even now, as it glides through the water, he can feel it through his feet.

The ship is unstable. With its towering upper works and two-fold gun decks, too much of the Vasa's weight sits high above the waterline. Captain suffering Hansen, the ship's master, and the senior admiral all know this, but none of them have dared to tell the king of Sweden. So now all Captain Hansen can do is hope they're fears are wrong and that the day won't end with the sinking of the Vasa on its maiden voyage

on August 10th, 1628. Hello, History Daily listeners. The live show I've been telling you about for a few weeks has a new date, October 23rd at the Plaza Theater in Garland, Texas. This is my Days That Made America Tour, a thrilling evening of history, storytelling, and music with me and a band live on stage. So if you're in the North Texas area or anywhere close, be sure to come out and see you. me live. More shows will be announced soon, too. So for information on tickets and upcoming dates,

go to historydailylive.com. That's historydailylive.com. Come see my Days at Made America Tour live on stage. Go to historydaily.com. From Noisor and Airship, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily. History is made every day. On this podcast, every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world. Today is August 10, 1628, the sinking of the Vaza. It's early July 1628 in Stockholm Harbor, a month before the Vasa's maiden voyage. Shipmaster Yerun Matson stands on the upper deck of the Vaza watching 30 sailors gather near the port rail.

Behind them rise the towers of the royal palace. The Vaza lies moored at the key beside the castle walls, its immense hull towering over the small boats around it. Uren has spent his life aboard ships, but he's never served on one quite like this. The Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, intends the Vaza to be both a weapon and a symbol, a floating demonstration of his nation's power. Sweden has been at war with Poland-Lithuania for the past seven years. Storms and enemy action have inflicted heavy losses on the Swedish Navy,

and Gustavus Adolphus is demanding new warships as quickly as the war. royal shipyards can produce them. But to Yerun Mattsin, the Vasa looks wrong. It's too tall and too narrow. Too much of its weight sits above the waterline. The ship's captain, suffering Hansen, has noticed this too. That's why he's ordered today's demonstration. Standing beside Hansen on the quarterdeck is Vice Admiral Claus Fleming. He's one of the most powerful officers in the Swedish Navy and has come to see whether the Vasa is stable enough to sail. Captain Hansen, shouts in order, and the 30 sailors run together from port to starboard. As they cross the deck, their combined weight makes the ship rock beneath them. The masts, tilt, the riggings,

creak, and loose objects slide across the planks. Then the men turn and run back. The vaza rolls the other way. Urine grips the railing and waits for the ship to settle. Any vessel will heal when weight shifts across its deck, but a well-designed ship should quickly right itself. The Vaza does not. It hangs at an angle before slowly returning upright. Muran glances toward Captain Hansen, whose face is tense. Beside him, Fleming says nothing. The sailors run across the deck again, and this time the ship rolls even farther. Muran feels the deck fall away beneath his feet.

Beyond the rail, the harbor seems to rise toward him until the ship finally pauses in its roll, as though balanced on the edge of a knife. then it lurches back. The sailors turn for a third crossing, and as they race across the deck, the Vaza heals so violently that urine has to brace himself against the rail. For a moment, he fears the ship may capsize

right there at the key before it ever reaches open water. But Vice Admiral Fleming has seen enough. He orders Captain Henson to stop the test. Hansen shouts to the sailors and the men halt where they stand. Slowly, the Vaza rocks back upright, its mass swaying above the harbor.

But no one speaks. For a moment, the only sound is the water slapping on the hull. Urine knows what this test has shown. The Vaza cannot safely carry sail in a strong wind. Any sudden gust could push it over faster than the crew could react, and there is little that can be done now to correct it. The ship was designed by a Dutch-born master shipwright, who died before the Vaza was completed.

Another Dutchman, Hein Jakobsen, took over the water, work, and he made some minor alterations, but by then the vase's basic proportions had already been fixed. Euron himself has filled the ship with as much ballast as he can, 120 tons of stone, but it's clearly not enough. Any effective repairs would now require drastic changes, reducing the height of the ship, cutting back its armaments or rebuilding major sections of the hull. It could take months and cost of fortune, and no one thinks the king will accept that. Yurin looks up at the royal castle. Gustavus Adolphus is away in Prussia, campaigning with his army.

He has repeatedly pressed his officers to send the Vaza to sea as soon as possible, but Yurin wonders whether the king would be willing to change his mind if he'd been there to witness the test. No one will tell the king the truth about the Vasa. Vice Admiral Fleming has just watched 30 men bring the Navy's new flagship close to disaster while it was still tied to the key, but he doesn't dare inform the king. and he doesn't postpone the maiden voyage. So in less than a month, the Vaza will set sail as scheduled. King Gustavus Adolphus once imagined his new ship dominating the Baltic Sea,

but in reality, it won't even make it out of the harbor. It's August 10th, 1628, on the quarter-deck of the Vaza in Stockholm Harbor, a month after the ship nearly capsized during a test. Captain Surfering Hansen shield his eyes against the summer sun. The Vaza is moving. slowly, doing little more than drifting with the current. They are still less than a mile from their anchorage, close enough that Hanson can hear the crowds cheering them on their way. He exhales, and it feels like the first breath he's taken in months. Maybe his worries were overblown.

His orders are to proceed to a naval bay south of the capital. It should be a simple journey through the sheltered waters of the Stockholm Archipelago. But then a sudden gust of wind whistles through the rigging. Above him, the sails flap, and the ship tilts sharply to one side. Heart pounding, Captain Hansen waits for the Vaza to settle, and slowly the ship does tilt back upright. It sails on for a few moments, but then there's a second gust, harder than the first, and the ship heals over even farther. Hanson grabs the railing, but this time the Vaza does not write itself. It's gone so far over that its open gun ports have dipped below the waterline. There are screams and shouts of alarm from below deck as the sea rushes in. Hansen yells out

in order to close the gun ports, but it's too late. The weight of the water starts dragging the ship down. On the tilting deck, men start leaping over the side, desperate to escape the sinking ship, but Hansen doesn't let himself think about the dozens trap below. There's nothing he can do for them now. The vaza is going down too quickly. As water surges over the decks and submerges the ship's carved finery, Hanson also leaps into the sea. Thanks to Stockholm's tangle of islands, land is less than 400 feet away. But Hansen can feel the water tugging at him. As the vaza goes down, it wants to take its captain with it. Hansen thrashes his legs, fighting for every inch, until finally his ship disappears beneath the waves and lets him go.

Exhausted, he makes for the shore while small boats race out of the harbor in hopes of saving others. But Hansen has barely dragged himself onto dry land when a squad of armed guards arrives and places him under arrest. The king's flagship has sunk and someone must pay the price. Three and a half weeks later, Captain Hansen is summoned to a hearing at the royal palace. Hansen and the Vazza's other surviving officers have been under formal investigation ever since the ship sinking, along with the men responsible for his construction. Because when word of the disaster reached the Swedish king, was furious. He declared that it must have been the result of incompetence or negligence and that

those responsible would answer for it. Captain Hansen has been grilled about whether the ship was properly rigged, whether its guns were secured, and even whether his crew was sober. Hansen knows that the answer is yes to all three. The real failure was an overly ambitious design, an impatient king, and a court too afraid to tell him the truth. But as the man in command when the ship went down, Hansen fears he will take the blame regardless, and now he's about to discover what his punishment might be. A guard escorts Hansen into a grand hall. He walks past rows of seated officers and shipwrights,

every one of them staring at the floor. Through another door comes the shipwright Hein Jakobson. He perhaps is the only man in the room more likely than Captain Hansen to be punished for this disaster. The assembly rises as the inquest chairman enters. It's Admiral Carl Carlson Yiluniel, the king's half-brother. Captain Hanson holds his breath, waiting for the admiral to deliver a verdict. But it doesn't come.

The hearings have established that the ship was badly designed. In his evidence, Hayne Jakobson insisted that he had merely followed the plans drawn up by his dead predecessor, plans the king himself approved, and this has left the inquest trapped. Blaming the living shipwrights could deprive the Navy of men at night. needs for the war. Blaming the design risks embarrassing the king. So in the end, no one is officially held responsible. Captain Hansen lets out a sigh of relief. He and everyone else in the room knows exactly what happened, but he's content to let the truth lie undisturbed, just as the Vaza does itself on the bottom of the harbor. And there, concealed in the depths, Hanson's ship will

remain hidden beneath the waves for the next 333 years, until a daring operation in the 20th will bring the King of Sweden's great folly back to the light. It's July 1959 in the waters of Stockholm Harbor, more than three centuries after the sinking of the vasa. Salvage diver Per Edvin Felting aims a metal nozzle into total darkness. Above him are more than 100 feet of water and over 1,000 tons of wreckage. A few years ago, Perr was part of a team that first rediscovered the exact position of the Baza. The ship had lain in Stockholm Harbor for three centuries. Soon after it sank,

several efforts were made to raise the ship, but 17th century technology wasn't up to the task. More than 50 of the ship's valuable cannons were saved, but the rest was largely forgotten for centuries. By the time the ship's location was rediscovered in 1956, salvage technology had greatly improved. It's still dangerous work, and today, Pair is blasting water at the clay beneath Vaz's hull, carving out tunnels using high-pressure jets. It's difficult work, and he grips the nozzle tight against its recoil, feeling blindly through the freezing water for the edges of the tunnel he's already cut because electric lights are useless down here. The clay stirred up by the jets swallows any light. And they're approaching

a dangerous moment. Somewhere just ahead of him, another team is cutting into the clay from the opposite side. If the tunnel collapses, when the two sides break through, Pear and the others could be buried alive. Each diver breathes through a single air hose running to the surface, so if a collapse crushes or tears it, he'll be dead in minutes. Nonetheless, Pear works steadily, cutting the clay inch by inch, until he feels something shift ahead of him, a change in the pressure of the water.

Within moments, a patch of the wall gives way. A communications cable runs from the surface into his heavy copper diving helmet. He calls up immediately to have his jet shut off, then leans forward into the blackness, reaching out with his hand, and it doesn't take long to find a hole opening into the tunnel on the other side. Within weeks, steel cables will be threaded through this tunnel and five others. Then the salvage team will lift the vaza free of the mud and begin moving it into shallower water.

Another 18 months of preparation will pass before the ship finally breaks the surface, and it will be then that Gustavio, Adolphus's flagship will return to land. There it will be preserved and eventually put on display in a museum, just as magnificent as the ship itself, which sank more than three centuries earlier on August 10th, 1628. Next on History Daily, August 11, 1965.

The arrest of a young black man for drunk driving sparked riots in Los Angeles. From Noisor and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham, audio editing by Mohamed Shazi, sound designed by Molly Bog, music by throng. This episode is written and research by Ned Carter Miles, edited by William Simpson, managing producer Emily Burr. Executive producers are William Simpson for airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.