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Shipwreck · Raised (museum)

The Vasa

Sank 1628 · raised 1961, Stockholm harbour, Sweden
RECOVERED
Evidence status: Historical tradition. no documented source (historical tradition); legal status unknown (manual verification recommended). This account is presented as historical tradition, not verified fact. Manual verification recommended. Repository evidence: 0 sources · 0 timeline events · 0 media items · legal unknown · view on the Map Evidence on file: historical tradition

The Vasa: still unexplained.

A near-complete 17th-century warship, 95% original timber

The law of this ground: Preserved at the Vasa Museum, Stockholm, the most-visited museum in Scandinavia.
The subject
developing the photograph…
The manifest
A near-complete 17th-century warship, 95% original timber
The account

The pride of the Swedish navy sailed thirteen hundred metres into her maiden voyage, caught a gust, heeled, and sank in the harbour with the city watching, too tall, too narrow, too proud. The cold brackish Baltic kept the shipworm out, and in 1961 she came up almost whole after 333 years. No other ship of her age survives like this; she is a Tudor-era warship you can stand beneath.

Leads, where the trail points now
  • The Swedish warship capsized on her 1628 maiden voyage minutes from the dock, too tall and over-gunned; she was raised nearly intact in 1961 and is the heart of the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.
  • This is a conservation story, not a hunt; the open problem is preserving the waterlogged oak and managing the acids attacking it.
  • The 1961 salvage recovered thousands of objects, and the site is fully documented and protected.
What the record holds

What remains open

  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
What we know, and what we don't
Established

No documentary claim is yet established. The account rests on tradition.

Still open
  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
The evidence room

No documentary or visual exhibits have been located yet. The trail below and the open leads are where this dossier grows next — every exhibit that enters here carries a source.

Where the trail points now
  • The Swedish warship capsized on her 1628 maiden voyage minutes from the dock, too tall and over-gunned; she was raised nearly intact in 1961 and is the heart of the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.
  • This is a conservation story, not a hunt; the open problem is preserving the waterlogged oak and managing the acids attacking it.
  • The 1961 salvage recovered thousands of objects, and the site is fully documented and protected.
  • Search Library of Congress + DPLA (IIIF) for period cartography of the site.
  • Run Chronicling America for dated newspaper mentions.
  • Query NARA for archival records tied to the site.

Have a source, a map, or a clipping? Add a lead and it enters the record with its citation.

Start the hunt here
The first leads, so no one walks in cold.
Sources and the record
Related case files

The full hunt kit

Starting brief, what's known and disputed, evidence timeline, source list, map card, coordinate-confidence and legal-access summaries, and a field checklist, free with a Fellowship account.

Latest Word From the Newswire

Context, not proof. The dossier's own sources remain the evidence record.

Checking the wire…

Chart position 59.320°, 18.090° (approx.) View on the Map