We went on a hop on hop off tourist boat ride (yep, just like the buses - but on a boat!) after we'd done a lap of the sights, we decided to hop off at the Vasa Museet (Vasa Museum) to go check out another boat...
This one is a 17th century man of war boat, it was commissioned by one of Sweden's kings and took years and years to complete the building. Then it toppled over about 20 minutes into it's maiden voyage! Yep, the incredibly clever design of this thing meant that it was too top heavy, with not enough space below for ballast... And apparently if they had used all the ballast they could have (which may have helped) the gun holes would have been sitting in the water - cluey, cluey people...
So we wandered around this huge (dark) ship for a while - and looking at it, it really isn't all that surprising that the thing fell over it just doesn't look quite right! My SO was reading some of the information there - and one of the shipbuilders had 30 men stand on the boat once it was complete, stood them all on one side of the boat and then had them run to the other side. Once they'd got there he made them run back to the other side, then he made them get off - because they were going to sink the ship if they kept that up! So, it's not like no one knew that this was going to happen - they just chose to ignore it... Not so clever!
And so, twenty minutes into her maiden voyage the ship turned a little - and you guessed it, tipped right over! It was something like 333 years before the Vasa was pulled out of the sea, but now it's quite a cool (if very dark) museum... With a ship looking like something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (or so I've been assured!
Here's what it looks like today:
have just worked out what SO stands for !! Can you guess that tiredness has robbed me of my brain.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are having loads of fun.
Andrea
xx