Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
A Royal Fuckup
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Before embarking on my holiday to Stockholm, I had never heard of the ‘vasa syndrome.’ Never given it a thought. Couldn’t care less until I discovered that I was living it.
The Vasa Museum, drydocked at Stockholm’s seaport, showcases the 17th Century Swedish warship Vasa. The naval carrier strike force of its day. Firepower twice that of its nearest rival. King Adolf commissioned it for the royal navy—his royal navy—to project military and political prowess throughout the Baltic Sea.
Twenty minutes after setting sail from Stockholm harbor, after cruising less than a mile, this floating fortress was sitting on the seabed, 105 feet below the surface. There it remained for 333 years.
In 1962, the Vasa was hoisted off the harbor floor, painstakingly restored and then installed in a stunningly effective, six-story, single-exhibit museum. Three towering masts. Four decks. To impress friend and foe alike, 760 sculptural ornaments. Crow’s nests. Sails and riggings. 40,000 artifacts. And on the ship’s two gundecks, 64 cannons with munitions.
During pre-launch trials, the navy determined that the Vasa was unstable to the point of being unseaworthy. The King had demanded a second gundeck and heavier cannons. A primitive stability test—a cluster of men running back and forth amidships—left the vessel rocking so badly that the test was abruptly called off.
The solution was fatally worse than the problem. The additional 120 tons of ballast necessary to stabilize the top-heavy ship would have sunk her below the gun portals, flooding her instantly.
As recognized by luminaries no less than Carl von Clausewitz, Napoleon Bonaparte and George Patton, King Adolph was a brilliant military general. Overconfident and overbearing, he presumed that genius on the field of battle translated into genius as a naval architect, thus granting to himself dictatorial control over the ship’s blueprints and budget.
Making a royal ass of himself, Adolf promised “disgrace” to anyone responsible for any design flaws or delays. Constructive criticism and fact-based decision-making were pretty much outlawed—the hallmark of dictatorships to this day.
That night, my mind churned over the story of the Vasa. As if my bed were on the high seas, fits of tossing and turning marked the broken night. I awoke at 12:07 am, 1:23 am, 3:39 am, 4:06 am. My mouth tasted like parched sewage dredged from the seabed.
A captain’s log of my royal fuckups cascaded over me like sheets of cold salt water. My self-inflicted ‘Vasa moments’—a masterclass in mistakes, miscalculations, missteps—reappeared in nightmarish gravity.
In my classroom, I’m plotting a course in uncharted waters. My lectures project a power beyond what my academic expertise or my life experience justify. I am as big a fool as King Adolf.
Hauling myself out of bed in the early pre-dawn, when working Swedes are just starting their breakfast of bread, butter and cheese, before the fishing fleet casts off, I emerged from my hotel. Bowed, brittle, without bearings. The blood in my ears surged in tidal pushes and pulls.
In the tattered riggings of my brain, the wind howled.
