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National Geographic : 1962 Jan
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KODACHROMESBY MAXLEWOLD(ABOVE) AND W. E . ROSCHER, NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSTAFF Divers brought the first guns to the surface in April, 1664. Some of the guns from the deck beneath were then recovered by fishing them out through the gunports. Official Report Furnishes Vital Clue Von Treileben and Peckell salvaged more than 50 cannon before departing. Then, for almost three centuries, Vasa rested in her grave, virtually forgotten by all but a few historians. Eventually even the exact loca tion of the ship was forgotten. By 1954, however, I had amassed a huge amount of research data and was ready for an all-out attack. Using borrowed and hired motorboats, I began a systematic sweep of the bottom with grapnels and wire drags. Crews aboard harbor craft became accus tomed to the sight of a lonely figure engaged in a strange kind of fishing. They laughed when I brought up old bedsteads, tires, stoves, Christmas trees, and the like. Poring over a contour map of the bottom, drawn for engineers who planned a bridge across the harbor, I noticed that echo-sound ing gear had traced a large hump 300 feet south of the navy's Gustaf V Dry Dock on Beckholmen. The engineers told me that the mound no doubt was debris from the dry dock, blasted out of solid rock years before. 51 N.G .S.
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