A giant puzzle
When Vasa was raised, a giant puzzle remained to be reassembled. There were no plans or contemporary pictures of the ship, so the restorers had to work directly from the remains. Thousands of loose pieces from the collapsed upper parts of the hull were raised and conserved, and then the right places for them had to be found on the ship.
The wood of Vasa is more than 95% original timber. In addition to the ship and the longboat (esping in Swedish), the Vasa Museum’s collections include over 45 000 loose finds. An internet database provides access to the collection for the general public, as each object is recorded, photographed and registered.
Sail and Rig
Vasa is exhibited today with the three lower masts stepped and rigged, as she would be stored in the winter. In service, there would be two more masts, topmasts and topgallant masts, above the fore and main lower masts and a topmast at the mizzen, but little of the upper rig survives. It may have been salvaged shortly after the catastrophe and used on another ship.
Fully rigged, Vasa would measure 52 meters from the keel to the top of the mainmast. The stylized metal “masts” on the museum’s roof give an idea of the ship’s full height.
Work on the reconstruction of Vasa’s rig began in the late 1960s, when curator Eva Marie Stolt began to determine how the ship’s complicated rig looked in 1628. With this research as a foundation, Vasa’s rig could be built up again in 1992-1995 under the direction of Olof Pipping, a professional captain and rigger. TV, radio and the newspapers described how Vasa steadily changed from a wreck to a ship.
The rigging used a total of four kilometres of specially made rope. The bowsprit, its missing outer end reconstructed with new wood, was mounted first, followed by the foremast and mainmast. Before the six-ton mainmast was stepped, Anders Franzén laid a coin in the maststep for luck.
The mizzenmast (farthest aft) was the only one of the ship’s masts that did not survive, so a new mast, which was left to season for several years after it was made, was stepped in its place. Shrouds and stays, the ropes which support the masts, were set up. The rigging of the ship was carried out before the museum visitors and was completed with the tops, the round platforms near the mastheads, and the caps, the heavy blocks which support the topmasts.
Vasa had four of her ten sails set when she sank. The other six were found carefully folded and stored in the sail room when the ship was raised. Even though they were in very bad condition, it was possible to conserve the sails and save them. The smallest sail, 32 square meters of hemp canvas, is exhibited in the museum.