The Vasa museum is amazing. The ship itself sank 15 minutes into it's maiden voyage and had as uninteresting a career as can be imagined, but the museum captures a slice of 17th century Stockholm life in a way that's utterly compelling. It does a fantastic job of telling the story of the people who built the Vasa.
Note: There's a documentary on the Vasa that was playing in a side-room at the museum when I was there, but can be found online. It's worth watching if you have an interest in the ship.
The quality of the Vasa museum gives me hope that, one day soon, the recently discovered wrecks of the Erebus and Terror might be raised and put in a museum. Similar to the Vasa, these 19th century ships sank in waters with excellent conditions for preservation. Archaeologists believe conditions may actually have been good enough to preserve paper[1]! We can only hope journals kept by the crew may resolve the mystery surrounding the fate of the Franklin expedition. If a ship that sank 15 minutes into its maiden voyage can be the centrepiece of a world-class museum, imagine the museum that could be made out of ships that explored both of the world's poles and met fates that remain shrouded in mystery!
I was at the Vasa museum just a few weeks ago. While the ship itself is massive and amazing, what they recovered with it and how is even more so.
It wasn't lost at sea in battle but on the way out of port. Therefore there wasn't any battle damage and it was fully stocked with supplies and gear.
Then since the mud was soft enough, a good portion of the ship sank deeply and was protected from water, weather, etc that would normally erode and destroy things. You can see all kinds of detail from woodwork and decoration.
Finally, they have a display on how they were able to recover it ~50 years ago and the sheer amount of effort it took. It's stunning looking through the diagrams, etc.
They also have a large collection of artifacts that were well preserved in the cold, low-oxygen environment. The most interesting item I recall was a portion of human brain from the wreck that was preserved and somehow recovered.
Note: There's a documentary on the Vasa that was playing in a side-room at the museum when I was there, but can be found online. It's worth watching if you have an interest in the ship.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2301604/
The quality of the Vasa museum gives me hope that, one day soon, the recently discovered wrecks of the Erebus and Terror might be raised and put in a museum. Similar to the Vasa, these 19th century ships sank in waters with excellent conditions for preservation. Archaeologists believe conditions may actually have been good enough to preserve paper[1]! We can only hope journals kept by the crew may resolve the mystery surrounding the fate of the Franklin expedition. If a ship that sank 15 minutes into its maiden voyage can be the centrepiece of a world-class museum, imagine the museum that could be made out of ships that explored both of the world's poles and met fates that remain shrouded in mystery!
[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/terror-wreck-exploration-fran...