Vasa or Wasa or Vasen is actually the name of the ruling dynasty in Sweden 1523-1654, and NOT the hard tack bread! The Vasa was built by Arendt Hybertszoon de Groote and his brother, Master shipwright Hendrik Hybertszoon, at the Royal Shipyard beneath Tre Kronor palace in Stockholm betwix 1626-28. She was armed with 64 bronze cannon on two complete deck. Displaced approx 1,200-1,300 tons and, thus was on par size-wise with the earlier English three-decker Prince Royal or the Danish Sancte Sophia of slightly smaller dimensions. Being too narrow in beam, without proper floor to sustain her ballast and weight of cannons etc, she sank in the Stockholm Channel on Aug. 10 1628. She was misconstructed, not due to any incompetence shown by the shipwrights, but by Royal Decree, in order for the Vasa to outshine and outgun the Danish rival. (At this date, the Royal Danish-Norwegian fleet was considered the mightiest and most well-drilled in the whole of Northern Europe, including England and Scotland!)
The only thing sofar I can see, having seen the real thing at the Vasamuseet in Stockholm, would be to darken the hull color. Usually seasoned (oak-)timber did darken quite a lot, and it wasn't common to paint the very hull, as we do today, but rather restrict such excercises to superstructure, side galleries, stern, and head. The white boot topping, is not paint but rather an anti-Teredos navalis, measure consisting (if my recollection serves me here) of turpentine, white lead (pulverized) and other ingredients. Also, to be noted, there's still controversy, whether the three-tunged (or spliced) naval ensign really did exist at the time of her loss. The noted Fenno-Swedish author, artist and naval historian Björn Landström did produce convincing evidence to propose that the Vasa's flag-display looked radically different from what we are used to believe. (The ensign and pennants are otherwise neatly drawn!)
_________________ My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen
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