Swedish Regal Ship Vasa

[Shar2]

Swedish Regal Ship Vasa

Revell 1:150

History

Vasa is a Swedish warship built 1626 - 1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing less than a nautical mile (ca 2 km) into its maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. It fell into obscurity after most of its valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century. After it was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor, it was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. It was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Shipyard") until 1987 and then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961.Vasa has since its recovery become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish "great power period".

Vasa was built top-heavy and had insufficient ballast. Despite an obvious lack of stability in port, it was allowed to set sail and foundered only a few minutes after it first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. The impulsive move to set sail was the result of a combination of factors: Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who was abroad on the date of its maiden voyage, was impatient to see it join the Baltic fleet in the Thirty Years' War; at the same time, the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to discuss the ship's structural problems frankly or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish Privy Council to find personal responsibility for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished for the fiasco.

During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around the hull of the Vasa by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship itself have provided historians with invaluable insight into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden. Vasa was intended to express the expansionist aspirations of Sweden and to glorify king Gustavus Adolphus. No expense was spared in decorating and equipping the Vasa, which was also one of the largest and most heavily armed warships of its time.

The Model

The kit comes in the standard end opening box with a picture of the great ship under sail on the front. Inside 330 parts on 9 sprues of caramel coloured styrene, the two ships halves and two sheets of vacformed sails, plus a stand for the completed kit to be displayed upon. All the parts are nicely moulded with no flash and only a few moulding pips. The completed kit measures out at 450mm long and 345mm high.

The Vasa was a very highly decorated ship, with lots of mouldings and carvings, particularly at the stern and these are well depicted on the hull halves, which will be enhanced with some careful, detail painting. When dry fitted, the hull parts go together well with no warpage and with little or no requirement for filler. Inside the hull the two gun decks can then be fitted, and whilst little of it would have been seen it would have been nice if these had been full decks instead of just “gun catwalks” as this would have given the hulls more strength and rigidity. 56 gun barrels are provided to fit on the moulded gun carriages, and these will need to be painted before fitting, although it may be possible to leave them off until the hull has been painted are positioned through the gun ports. The single piece main deck is next along with the bulkheads and stern sections. There are loads of smaller items to fit, the majority of which are the gun port doors, various ladders and gratings and even blocks for the rigging. Two ships boats are included, each in two parts, the hull and the gunwales/thwarts, although there seems to a complete lack of oars for them. The masts are each in two parts for the verticals with crows nests at the joint with separate yards for each sail. The large bowsprit is a single piece moulding but again with separate yards. For ease of building, the ratlines have been provided as moulded items, more experienced modellers may wish to replace these with their own scratchbuilt items.

The vacformed sails will need some careful removal from the sheet as they are quite thin and I would have, easy to tear. But will look quite effective when fitted to the model as they have nicely moulded folds where the sheets attach.

Decals

The only decals for this model are for the stand giving the name of the ship in three languages. There is also a paper sheet of Swedish ensigns and pennants.

Conclusion

Apart from the minor point about the gun decks mentioned above this kit looks like it will build into a very nice model and with care taken with the painting and rigging it will look great. There is also scope for super detailing and scratch building should the modeller wish to do so. Overall a good kit for the intermediate and experienced modeller.

Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For further information visit

[avro683]

That does look good. I had the Airfix kit in the 70's which I really enjoyed; it might be interesting to do a comparison.

Tony

[alex]

Apparently it's a nice kit, but I can't understand why they kept the painting instruction in black and white. It has a plethora of sculpted figures with letters from a to z to indicate which colour to use. Would have been nice to include a coloured painting guide, or at least, use the back of the box for that...

Thanks for the review!

Alex

[avro683]

Apparently it's a nice kit, but I can't understand why they kept the painting instruction in black and white. It has a plethora of sculpted figures with letters from a to z to indicate which colour to use. Would have been nice to include a coloured painting guide, or at least, use the back of the box for that...

Thanks for the review!

Alex

Revell always do that, I suspect it's a cost thing. Their kits are, pro rata, amongst the cheaper ones on the market and they have definitely upped their game in terms of quality.

Tony

[GordonD]

Interesting. I was on a school cruise in 1970 and our first port of call was Stockholm. We went to the Wasavarvet and saw the hull. Every twenty minutes or so they turned on big shower units in order to stop the wood drying out too quickly and splitting, or something like that. They said it would be many years before they could begin to restore her.

[Julien]

Apparently it's a nice kit, but I can't understand why they kept the painting instruction in black and white. It has a plethora of sculpted figures with letters from a to z to indicate which colour to use. Would have been nice to include a coloured painting guide, or at least, use the back of the box for that...

Thanks for the review!

Alex

Its a really nice kit. However for once they should have put a colour guide in there. At worse they could have printed it on the box. The black and white instructions are very confusing as they dont even put the colours on the page, they are at the front of the booklet.

I know revel do these things to keep costs down and promote their paints; but this is one time they should have used some colour. The kit is pretty darn nice. The instructions are pants.

Julien

[AndyC]

That looks nice. I built the Airfix version ages ago as a present for an elderly relative and this looks to be an improvement. The rigging looks better than Airfix and the sails look just as difficult! Nice review Dave.

Andy

[wyverns4]

Hi all,

Having spent nearly 12 weeks spread over 8 years copying the polycromatic finish of the Vasa onto the largest set of plans I could ´find´ I doubt that any manufacturer could do this boat justice. It has to be seen to be believed! When we lived in Turnipland (AKA Sweden) all visitors were taken to see the Vasa!

The reason for my insanity? After my first visit I went out and aquirred the Billings Boat wooden model of the Vasa as a loooooooooong-term ( ) build to do once I retire!

As an aside I am the proud owner of a few wood samples taken from borings collected from the Vasa . Probably the ony fragments outside Turnipland. Its a long story involving a very wet summer (2002?), an ex Royal Marine, Uppsala uni, a SEM...

Christian the Married, back from Nepal

Edited April 10, 2012 by wyverns4

[Noel Smith]

I had the pleasure of visiting the Vasa Museum 3 years ago and shortly after I got home I purchased the Airfix kit. My intention was to build the Airfix kit using the excellent Eva Marie Stolt drawing set bought in the museum shop. This is the plan set to buy if you are contemplating building a fully rigged model of this ship. The Airfix kit has been sitting on my shelf for ages as I am working on another long term modelling project. In the meantime the brand new Revell kit appears on the scene in late 2011, so I treated myself to this kit anticipating that it would be much better than the Airfix kit.

The kit scales are not that much different. The Airfix kit is acaled at 1/144th scale and the Revell kit at 1/150th scale. Revell have worked with the Vasa museum to produce this kit, and looking at the parts, they have made a very accurate kit that puts right some of the inaccuracies of the Aifix version. Having said that, the Airfix kit is actually quite a nice reasonably accurate kit, considering it was produced way back in 1972 when the Vasa restoration was incomplete, and the hull was still being sprayed to stop the timbers from drying out before preservative could be used to saturate the wood. With a bit of extra work the Airfix kit can be made into a very accurate model of the Vasa. So if you already have the Airfix kit the potential is there.

The Revell kit has better deck detail and the area beneath the bowsprit is much better detailed than on the Airfix kit. The Airfix kit has a 'dormer' window sticking out at each side of the stern side galleries that will have to be removed for accuracy. I did not like the way that Revell have depicted the bowsprit gammoning as an integral moulding on both the bowsprit itself and the hull sides where it interferes with the open carvings below the beakhead. Horrible and difficult to put right. Airfix have left the modeller to rig their own gammoning in the correct fashion, although the Airfix beakhead carvings need to be 'opened' out to look right. Airfix have gone the rigging jig route for modellers to make up their own ratlines from thread, whereas Revell have simplified this by having moulded polystyrene items, presumably to aid younger modellers. Serious modellers will probably ditch these and make their own. Rigging instructions in both kits are simplified, but the Revell ones have a bit more to do on them than the Airfix. Both these will have to be ditched by more serious modellers and work to the Stolt plans instead.

The rendition of the intricate carvings of the Vasa were surprisingly better on the Airfix kit, being much sharper and better defined in appearance than on the Revell kit. Revell's method of mounting the main armaments is much superior to the way Airfix have done theirs and will look much more convincing on the finished model. Vac formed sails to me look hideous and are supplied in both kits. This leads on to a problem with both kits. The parrals that slide up and down the masts to move the upper yards up and down have been integrally moulded onto the upper masts in the upper position when all sails would be set. I wish manufacturers would mould the parrals as a separate item so that the modeller has the option of showing their model with the upper yards in the lowered position. This will be difficult to modify.

Forget the painting instructions in both kits and print off some pictures of the 1/10th scale model in the Vasa museum to work from instead.

Packaging......Airfix's packaging is far superior being a good work tray that slides out of the end of their box. Revell's packaging is rubbish. The kit is pulled straight out of the end of a one piece box, so where can you store part made assemblies safely? Sorry Revell....Nil Points for your packaging on this one!

To summarise All in all two reasonably priced good kits of the Vasa, but both have their pros and cons. The Revell kit is the more accurate of the two, but I would have actually expected much better from this kit, having 30 years advantage over the Airfix offering. I cannot see Airfix ever retooling this kit as it would probably would not be viable in this day and age. So despite its minus points I would put the Revell model ahead.

[GEEBEE Z]

Apparently it's a nice kit, but I can't understand why they kept the painting instruction in black and white. It has a plethora of sculpted figures with letters from a to z to indicate which colour to use. Would have been nice to include a coloured painting guide, or at least, use the back of the box for that...

Thanks for the review!

Alex

I know it can be a bit of a pain being like that,but some of us here modellers are colour blind,and having a key ref for colour,is so much easier,esp with my level of colour blindness.Left to me own devices,my kits would be a little on the gawdy side,colourfull,but in all the wrong ways.

[Noel Smith]

Hi Gee Bee. I'm not affected by it myself, but you have made a salient point about colour blindness, so paint colour references are absolutely essential.

If this is of any help, Humbrol have a comprehensive chart showing all their own colour references cross referenced against all the other major players in the modelling paint market. Maybe it can be downloaded off t'internet?

[alex]

I know it can be a bit of a pain being like that,but some of us here modellers are colour blind,and having a key ref for colour,is so much easier,esp with my level of colour blindness.

I agree, but why not do both? Or a painting guide in colour, along with the colour codes? I didn't mean to replace the keys, just to add a colour guide on the back of the box (which is already printed in colour anyway...)

Alex

[Greg Mix]

So is there a way to obtain a copy of the Eva Marie Stolt drawings online or does one need to go to Stockholm?

I've had the Airfix kit, sitting on the shelf, for years. Time to dust it off and get busy.

[lentorpe]

I know that copying it would be like photocopying a photocopy, but here

http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/Exhibitions/The-Vasa-model/ you have high-resolution detail photos of the 1:10 painted model at the Vasamuseet. You have an example below. Quite striking colours (for me at least, I was expecting something more sober, more... Swedish.) There is also a video about the colour research and a slideshow of the model.

P.S. Visit Stockholm if you can. It is worth going, even without the Vasa! Great country, beautiful city. I loved it even if I went in december (black cold sky by 16:00)

P.S.2. The website is free and the images are not protected so I guess there is no copyright issues. (glups)

[Anthony Kesterton]

Just seen the Airfix Vasa build thread by Jorgen (http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234945127-1144-airfix-vasa/) and then read this review. Really useful review and comments.

Can definitely recommend the museum and Stockholm in general - fantastic place. And definitely worth testing is Rose Hip "Soup" poured over vanilla ice cream and almond biscuits.

anthony

[foxy]

Thanks for that Lentorpe.

Fasinateing subject is the Vasa.

Yep lovely City is Stockholm, never tried the Rose Hip"Soup".

Cheers foxy

[Noel Smith]

My Vasa model is now complete. I used the Revell kit as the base model utilising a number of better defined parts from the old Airfix kit. In an earlier post I mentioned the Eva Marie Stolt drawings being available from the museum. Unfortunately these are no longer available via the museum shop. However, I understand that Fred Hocker the technical director can make the plans available by email if requested directly. The Stolt plans have been withdrawn as they are being updated within a set of new publications currently being worked on.