On Sunday, August 10, 1628 she undertook her maiden voyage, an
act of propaganda for the King who was off beating up the Poles. A few minutes underway and the Vasa began to heel over. Water gushed in
through the open gun ports, and, "the world's mightiest warship" sank. Why? The governmental enquiry at the time condemned no one, concluding that the
ship was "well built -- but badly proportioned." But in the 17th
century there were no scientific methods of calculating a ship's stability.
Instead a system of reckonings was used based on previous observations of which
ships were stable, which unstable. As often happened the "reckonings", as ship
design outstripped the core of knowledge regarding stability, were not only
unreliable but known to be so. With two gun decks and the larger cannon on the
upper deck, the ship's builders reckoned several tons of stone ballast resting
near the keel ought to do it. The principal reason for the Vasa capsizing was
that the ballast was an insufficient counterweight to the guns, the upper hull,
masts and sails of the ship. Who, ought to carry the blame for the debacle that cost some 30 - 50 lives? Yet the main reason for the tragic shambles was insufficient theoretical
knowledge and competence of the period. It ought to have a familiar
ring. The Prime Minister schedules a meeting of the Prime Ministerial
Scientific, Engineering and Innovation Council, but misses the meeting, the
first one in eleven months, rather than rescheduling it, in order to attend the
State Funeral of former Prime Minister John Gorton. The Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, who knows
better than to believe the Nation's senior academics who have repeatedly
counseled that Australia's university system is in crisis; sets up yet another
Higher Education Review Consultation Process in such a way as to call
into question the objectivity of the process and giving the impression all that
is required is a reshuffling of the deck to fix any problems such as there may
be. The junior Minister for Science, Peter McGauran, rushes at setting up a
National Research Priorities Taskforce with a consultative panel top heavy
with industrialists, an engineer and scientists exclusive of, mathematicians,
physicists and chemists. There is the strong smell of instant gratification emanating from a
government determinedly building a flimsy, top heavy superstructure resting on a
crumbling foundation. It won't capsize during the term of this Government but it
will continue to inexorably decline. And despite the posturing of Dr. Nelson and his colleagues, palliative care
is insufficient. It is after all only meant to ease the pain of the terminally
ill. Alex Reisner
She
was built at the Stockholm shipyard to be the mightiest warship in the world,
armed with 64 guns on two gun decks.
The Admiral in charge of the Swedish Navy? He could have stopped the voyage
after a stability test had previously shown that there were serious questions
concerning the Vasa's sea worthiness.
On the other hand King Gustavus Adolphus was pressuring the
navy to deliver. He wanted a ship with as many heavy guns as possible. And he
had approved the Vasa's dimensions while it was the shipbuilder, Henrik
Hybertsson, who was responsible for and defended the narrowness of the hull.
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