Probably not the most expensive but one of my favourites is the Swedish ship Vasa
Swedish king when Sweden was sorta a power wanted a big fuckoff flagship to dickwave against all the other kings, so a huge proportion of the country's wealth and timber was poured into making this giant thing. Even back then, the naval engineers knew the thing was gonna be unstable as they were building it, plus the obvious effects of sticking lots of big heavy bronze cannons placed up high on the sides of an already unstable ship, but the king ignored them cos he wanted his cool ship. The thing got launched to great fanfare with lots of European dignitaries invited so he could rub their noses in it, and then as soon as they put the sails up in the gentlest of breezes it immediately tipped over and sank in Stockholm Harbour in front of everyone.
It was super well preserved in the cold water so they pulled it up in the 60s and it's now in a great museum
Probably not the most expensive but one of my favourites is the Swedish ship Vasa
Swedish king when Sweden was sorta a power wanted a big fuckoff flagship to dickwave against all the other kings, so a huge proportion of the country's wealth and timber was poured into making this giant thing. Even back then, the naval engineers knew the thing was gonna be unstable as they were building it, plus the obvious effects of sticking lots of big heavy bronze cannons placed up high on the sides of an already unstable ship, but the king ignored them cos he wanted his cool ship. The thing got launched to great fanfare with lots of European dignitaries invited so he could rub their noses in it, and then as soon as they put the sails up in the gentlest of breezes it immediately tipped over and sank in Stockholm Harbour in front of everyone.
It was super well preserved in the cold water so they pulled it up in the 60s and it's now in a great museum
To be fair, it is very pretty
She took 1.3 km to sink, but I like to think she just slid promptly from the drydock into the depths. Bloop