08/12/2026
🎙️ NEW EPISODE — SURE, IT’S ONLY HISTORY
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sure-its-only-history/id6787116401?i=1000783004015
🇸🇪 THE SHIP THAT FORGOT TO FLOAT — THE VASA
In 1628, Sweden launched one of the most magnificent warships ever built.
It was enormous. Ornately decorated. Packed with cannon. Designed to demonstrate Swedish power across the Baltic.
There was just one fairly significant problem.
It had a slight difficulty with the whole floating business.
The Vasa was too tall, too narrow and dangerously top-heavy. Even worse, they actually tested its stability before it sailed and discovered that, yes, there was indeed a problem.
So naturally they sent it out anyway.
Because apparently It’ll Be Grand translates rather well into seventeenth-century Swedish. 😂
The Vasa sailed less than a mile on its maiden voyage before a gust of wind caught her sails, the ship heeled over, water poured through the open gun ports and Sweden’s magnificent new flagship sank in Stockholm harbour in front of the assembled crowds.
This episode has everything I love about history: ambition, extraordinary craftsmanship, terrible decision-making, people afraid to tell the boss he’s wrong, an inquiry where nobody particularly wants to identify the person responsible… and physics sitting quietly in the corner waiting to have the final word.
🎧 The Ship That Forgot to Float is available now on Sure, It’s Only History, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sure-its-only-history/id6787116401?i=1000783004015
📚 This episode comes from It’ll Be Grand, and it’s also a little taste of how the podcast is going to develop from here.
☘️ Something new is joining the show: Bite-Size Irish History.
These will be shorter trips into Irish history — people, places, battles, strange moments and stories that deserve to be remembered without necessarily requiring a full-length episode.
The first of those will take us back more than a thousand years to Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf.
After that, the plan is to alternate between the longer historical stories and Bite-Size Irish History. Same show, same curiosity, same tendency to wonder what on earth people were thinking — just two slightly different ways of telling the stories.
There is one other change.
🚌 I’m back behind the wheel of my school bus.
Summer gave me the chance to put a huge amount of work into the podcasts, but school is back, the yellow bus is rolling again, and my days once more involve considerably more children than microphones.
So episodes may become a little more sporadic.
I’m not setting myself an artificial weekly deadline simply for the sake of having one. When I have the time to research, write and record an episode properly, there’ll be a new episode. Sometimes they’ll arrive close together. Sometimes there’ll be a bit of a gap.
I’d much rather make something worth listening to than put something out because the calendar says Tuesday.
The podcast isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, I think it’s finally finding exactly what it wants to be.
History, Irish history, extraordinary people, spectacular mistakes, the occasional eejit… and probably a cup of tea somewhere nearby. ☘️🎙️🫖
For today, though, we’re off to Stockholm in 1628.
They built Sweden’s greatest warship.
They tested it.
They knew it wasn’t stable.
They launched it anyway.
Sure…
It’ll be grand. 😁⚓️
