The thick mud of the Vasa

This short, highly detailed passage, translated into English from Swedish, shares the difficulties faced by divers in diving bells when pulling up the Vasa after 333 years on the Stockholm seabed. The low salinity of the harbour preserved the ship as chewing shipworms and sucking molluscs require more salt to exist and feed. Skeletons, the plaque on the teeth of sailors, knives, cannons, wooden spoons, leather boots and bag handles made of whale bone came up to the surface for air also, entombed down there in the darkness since 1628. I took a photo of this passage as it reads like some kind of poetry, the poetry of sludge, perhaps. The ship is brown now, over the centuries becoming the colour of its adopted home. The lions, mermaids, soldiers and the plump cherubs adorning the stern used to be painted in garish colours but with time they peeled away and drifted off into the blue Baltic.