ever carried out is that of the Vasa. In 1956 Anders Franzen located 

 the wreck of this seventeenth-century warship in Stockholm Fiord, 

 beneath 1 10 feet of dark, ice-cold water. The Vasa was constructed 

 by order of King Gustav Adolf II in January 1625, and on Sunday 

 afternoon, August 10,1628, she was towed downstream against a Ught 

 breeze to start her maiden voyage. After passing close to the rocks 

 of Sodermalm, with her mizzen, topsails, and foresail set, a sudden 

 squall struck the ship and she heeled violently to port. With all 

 flags flying she went down only a hundred yards from shore. It 

 was a national disaster. 



Three years later, Ian Bulmer, engineer to the King of England, 

 tried to raise the wreck. Although he managed only to put the 

 vessel on an even keel, this helped engineers who made subsequent 

 attempts. In 1629 the Royal Swedish Navy began to work on the 

 wreck, and from then until 1663 many Swedish and foreign experts 

 tried to salvage it. On April i, 1664, under the supervision of 

 Andreas Peckel, the first cannon broke the surface after thirty-six 

 years of submersion. By the time most of the guns from the upper 

 deck had been recovered, Peckel had worked out a way of extract- 

 ing the lower deck cannon through the gun ports, but how he 

 achieved this fantastic operation is a mystery. During 1664 and the 

 following year fifty-three of the sixty-four cannon were recovered. 

 Considering the conditions in which the men worked — the black- 

 ness of the water, no artificial light, and the cold — this was a stu- 

 pendous feat of endurance and skill. 



Soon after Franzen had rediscovered the Vasa, a committee was 

 formed with Commodore Edward Classon as chairman, and in 

 February 1958 the committee produced a report recommending 

 complete salvage of the wreck. The plan was to move the ship 

 into shallow water where she could be more carefully investigated; 

 meanwhile preparations could be made for raising her, if this seemed 



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