His Majesty´s ship
It took almost two years (1626-1627) to build Vasa. From dawn to dusk, carpenters, sawyers, smiths, ropelayers, sailmakers, painters, carvers, gun carriage makers and other specialists struggled to complete the navy’s great, new ship. The king, Gustav II Adolf, visited the shipyard to inspect the work.
Vasa should be splendid, a hull built of more than a thousand oak trees with 64 cannon, masts over 50 meters high and hundreds of painted and gilded sculptures.
The shipyard - Skeppsgården
The shipyard where Vasa was built was called Skeppsgården and was located in what is now called Blasieholmen in Stockholm. Skeppsgården was one of the largest workplaces in Sweden at that time, where craftsmen and raw materials from all over Northern Europe met. The workforce was about half Swedish and Finnish, with the rest mostly from Holland. Wood from Swedish and Polish forests was shipped to Stockholm to become ship’s timbers. Iron and copper were mined in Sweden, while hemp for rope, sailcloth and paint were purchased from abroad.
Henrik Hybertsson
The work on Vasa was led by a Dutchman, Henrik Hybertsson, an experienced shipwright. In this period, Dutch ships were not built from drawings, instead the shipwright was given the overall dimensions and used proportions and rules of thumb based on his own experience to produce a ship with good sailing qualities. Hybertsson became ill early on and died in the spring of 1627, so he never saw the ship completed. Responsibility for construction fell to his assistant, Henrik “Hein” Jakobsson, already in 1626.
In the museum there is an exhibition about the Stockholm shipyard
Skeppsgården