The Niobe desaster - Fehmarn, SH-DE
N 54° 31.294 E 011° 09.548
32U E 639744 N 6043698
Memorial for the Segelschulschiff Niobe. She was a tall ship used by the Reichsmarine to train cadets and aspiring NCOs. She sank during a white squall on 26 July 1932, with the loss of 69 lives.
Waymark Code: WM10E0F
Location: Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Date Posted: 04/21/2019
Views: 8
At Gammendorfer Strand on Fehmarn island, within view of the site of the sinking, the Niobe-Denkmal monument was erected.
The ship had a steel hull and displaced 645 tonnes. After her conversion into a training ship she measured 57.8 m (189 ft 8 in) in overall length, 46.1 m (151 ft 3 in) without the bowsprit, and 9.17 m (30 ft 1 in) in width. The height of the main mast was 34.8 m (114 ft 2 in), and she carried 15 sails with 983 square metres (10,580 sq ft) of total sail area. She had an auxiliary diesel engine with 160 shaft horsepower (120 kW). Her regular crew comprised seven officers and 27 men. Usually 65 cadets would be trained.
She was built as a four-masted schooner in 1913 by the Danish shipyard Frederikshavns Værft og Flydedok under her original name Morten Jensen and initially sailed as a freighter for F. L. Knakkergaard in Nykøbing Mors. In 1916 she was sold to Norway and renamed Tyholm. Later that year, while carrying mine timber to England, she was taken as a prize by SM UB-41 and sold to private German owners. Following several intermediate phases under various names (Aldebaran, Niobe, and Schwalbe), including one as a charter ship for a film company.
Niobe was purchased in 1922 by the German navy which selected her new name Niobe after the mythological daughter of Tantalus, and converted her into a three-masted barque to train future officers and non-commissioned officers. The previous training vessels, Grossherzog Friedrich August and Prinzess Eitel Friedrich, had been seized by the Allies as war reparations.
The first commanding officer of Niobe was the legendary Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Commander) Graf Felix von Luckner. Von Luckner had previously commanded the Seeadler, a sailing ship used as a commerce raider, during the First World War and won fame for his outsized personality, daring and compassion. Von Luckner, who was a recipient of the Blue Max and the Iron Cross, resigned from the German Navy in 1922.
In a white squall on 26 July 1932, the ship capsized near the German island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea (54°35.7'N 11°11.2'E) and sank within minutes as due to the hot weather, all hatches and portholes were open. 40 of her crew were rescued by the cargo ship SS Theresia L M Russ, but 69 died. The ship was raised on 21 August 1932, towed to Kiel and inspected while the bodies were buried. On 18 September 1933 the wreck was ceremonially sunk by the torpedo boat Jaguar, attended by much of the then-small German navy.
Source Wikipedia
Date of Shipwreck: 26.07.1932
Type of Boat: Sailboat
Military or Civilian: Military
Cause of Shipwreck: Capsized due to a white squall
Accessibility:
The memorial only, free access.
Diving Permitted: Not Listed
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Visit Instructions:
Only log the site if you have visited it personally.
Floating over a site does not qualify as a find if it is a wreck that requires diving - you must have actually visited the site - therefore photos of the site are good.