Blame game
If we look at Vasa the way a modern accident investigation board looks at an airplane crash, we can identify four different areas of failure that make the error chain leading to the sinking:
- The designer, Henrik Hybertsson, built an unstable ship that was too tall and too heavily built above the waterline. There was not enough ship in the water to carry the heavy gundecks safely.
- Even after the ship’s poor stability had been demonstrated to him, Vice Admiral Klas Fleming ordered the ship to sea, because he was under heavy pressure from the king to get the ship to sea.
- Captain Söfring Hansson, who knew the ship was unsafe, sailed with the gunports open. If they had been closed, Vasa would not have sunk.
- King Gustav II Adolf had created an environment in which his officers, like Fleming and Hansson, were afraid to tell him the truth and persisted with bad decisions.
There were known methods for correcting the flaws in the design, if anyone had just said “Stop!”