The storm has subsided, but the wind is still blowing strong out here in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea. On the hike at low tide out to Japsand, a high sand area off Hallig Hooge, you can feel the uncanny pull of the water in the tide channels. Barely knee-deep, it follows the North Sea and reveals the muddy mud flats. Soon the sea will return, flooding and changing the intermediate realm of land and water again.
It is a mysterious, beautiful and dangerous world. Tideways, sandbanks and shoals are in constant motion. As long as seafaring has existed, the North Sea coast has regularly been its undoing. Countless ships have wrecked on the mud flats – in that northern Bermuda Triangle – lost their way, ran aground on sand or been deliberately misguided by islanders who wanted to plunder them. Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, they reappear after centuries - and tell their story.
Nobody knows exactly how many ships found their final resting place on the North Sea coast. Even experts cannot quantify the total number of wrecks, but only dare well-founded estimates. Hans-Joachim Kühn, until his retirement a wreck researcher at the Archaeological State Office Schleswig-Holstein (ALSH), has recorded more than 900 losses of wooden cargo ships that passed between Eiderstedt and Sylt up to the year 1900.
"If you include all the iron ships to date, as well as the Elbe estuary, Dithmarschen and the Danish coast, 10,000 ship losses are not unrealistic," he says. And so it can even happen, with a large portion of luck, that you discover a shipwreck while hiking on the mudflats. The oldest finds recorded by the ALSH are from the Mesolithic period - parts of dugout canoes and paddles dating from at least the 5th century BC. come from.
"I knew right away that we had found something unusual," says Michael Klisch, head of the Wadden Sea Protection Station on Hooge. He takes guests to Japsand all year round, but on this special day in 2017 he was alone with his colleague Ella Papp on a patrol. "Then suddenly we saw these pieces of wood on the sand."
They didn't touch anything that would have been forbidden: The so-called context of the find is essential for archaeologists. The exact location of the discovered parts, but also things in the area that at first glance seem to have nothing to do with the wreck, can provide important information about the ship that crashed, its cargo and its origin.
In fact, the planks turned out to be part of a particularly intriguing wreck - that of a half-carvel, a merchant ship of a special design from the early 17th century. Just a few months earlier, three other Hoogers had accidentally discovered other wreckage parts on the Japsand during a winter mudflat hike, which, as it later turned out, belonged to the same ship.
In both cases, ALSH archaeologists rushed to the sites. Because: "As quickly as a wreck emerges from the sand, it can disappear again," says Birte Anspach from ALSH.
The researchers finally dated the year of construction around 1609 - and after analyzing the wood, they suspect that the ship of this special type, which had previously only been handed down from Sweden, was built here in Schleswig-Holstein. Half-carrivals were possibly more common on the North Frisian North Sea coast than previously thought. The wreck is now gone. Maybe it will reappear on the next mudflat hike - or another one that tells new stories.
Outer sands such as the Japsand move up to 30 meters per year through the Wadden Sea, wind and waves constantly change the shape of the sand islands. A hike through this landscape is a spectacular natural experience.
You can feel how adventurous seafaring was here back then, without modern navigation instruments, without lighthouses. It is an experience that inspires awe – of old seafaring and of the force of nature that Theodor Storm described in 1888 in “Schimmelreiter”: “I saw nothing but the yellow-grey waves that incessantly pounded the dyke with a roar of rage.”
A younger wreck, that of the "Pallas", shows how dangerous the North Sea still is today. In clear weather you can see it from Japsand. Dramatic scenes played out when the timber freighter was stranded in flames off Amrum in 1998.
The cargo caught fire, the crew had to be rescued by helicopter, and the ship lurched around without a pilot until it finally ran aground. Heavy oil leaked from the tanks and polluted the beaches of Amrum and Föhr. Everyone who could helped fight the largest oil spill in the Wadden Sea to date. 16,000 birds alone died. The wreck of the "Pallas" is still a memorial to this tragedy today.
"The waters off Amrum are treacherous," says Watt guide Dark Blome. On his hikes between Amrum and Föhr, he shows guests the wreck of the mysterious "City of Bedford". He pauses on a sandbank in the middle of the mudflats and points to a couple of ribs sticking out of the seabed, covered with shells and seaweed. Barely knee-high, they reveal the location of the long-awaited wrecked ship with a visible length of around 18 meters and a width of around seven. The wind tugs at the hood, the cold prickles your face.
"The small cargo ship was probably on its way from England to Scandinavia in 1825 with saltpeter when it was caught in a hurricane off the coast," says Blome. "Whether the captain was driven between the islands or whether he was seeking shelter, we do not know."
In any case, the ship got lost in the labyrinth of tidal creeks and sand, three sailors lie, it is said, without a gravestone in the cemetery in Süderende auf Föhr. Nothing can be found about the accident in the church archives, but the history of the "City of Bedford" is passed on orally from generation to generation, from Watt guide to Watt guide - and thus remains alive.
There is also a wreck off Sylt that stimulates the imagination - the "Mariann". On a guided walk through the wild, romantic Braderup Heath, Maike Lappoehn from the Sylt Nature Conservation Society points to the remains of the once proud three-master – dark structures out in the mud flats in front of the White Cliff.
Cormorants sit on it and dry their feathers. People are not allowed to enter the wreck, even going there would be far too dangerous and is forbidden because there are deep mudholes. The remains of the wreck lie in a nature reserve and have long since become a refuge for sea creatures.
In any case, the curious story of the “Mariann” is more exciting than the rotten remains. During their excursions, the Braderup Nature Center staff are happy to tell the story – with all its unsolved mysteries and strange twists and turns.
In 1903 the ship was launched in Denmark under the name "Britannia" and sailed across the Atlantic for half a century as a cargo ship, originally designed for grain. Then the slow decline of the sailor began.
In the years after the Second World War, it initially languished unused in a Swedish port. Until a group of artists from Sylt discovered the forgotten three-master in the early 1960s and made plans for its resurrection: "The ship that was unable to manoeuvre, renamed 'Mariann', was then towed to Sylt," explains Maike Lappoehn. "A floating tea room was to be set up in the port of Munkmarsch." But the authorities opposed it.
The old sailor was sold again and taken to the mudflats in front of the Braderuper Heide, this time with the aim of turning it into a location for cabaret events. But this dream also failed. From time to time, private parties were held on the stranded vintage car – until it burned down in 1981. The cause remained unclear, there are different ways of telling about her last way. The fact is: ice, wind and waves dismantled the wreck; it is only a matter of time before the remains of the wreck will be gone.
In the stories, however, the "Mariann" remains beautiful and alive - like the other sunken ships, if they are found. Whether it’s a World War II submarine, a Hanseatic freighter or a fur boat that is thousands of years old – the North Sea and its Wadden Sea reliably hold their secrets until the sand and floods occasionally release them.
Some are salvaged, in many museums on the North Sea coast important and well-preserved wrecks can be admired in a wonderfully prepared way (see below). But most stay where they are, even when discovered. "There would not be enough space to exhibit all the wrecks," says Birte Anspach from ALSH. They are archaeologically examined, photographed, documented - and then allowed to continue to slumber in their wet beds.
You should never go to the mud flats without a guide: Far too dangerous - and the locals not only know their way around, they also bring sunken ships back to life with their stories. The Hallig Hooge protection station offers mudflat hikes from Hallig Hooge to Japsand. Interested parties can ask questions about the find of the old half-carve and about the "Pallas", which can be seen on a clear day (schutzstation-wattenmeer.de).
Between Amrum and Föhr, where the remains of the "City of Bedford" lie in the mudflats, Dark Blome, the mudflat guide, offers hikes - he knows a lot about the legendary wreck (der-insellaufen.de).
The nature conservation community Sylt organizes guided walks to Braderuper Heide, where the story of the "Mariann" is told, whose wreck can be seen from afar in the mudflats (naturschutz-sylt.de).
Anyone who accidentally discovers wreckage while hiking on the mudflats should inform the Archaeological State Office of Schleswig-Holstein.
Further information: nordseetourismus.de; die-northsee.de; nationalpark-wattenmeer.de
Wreck diving in the depths of the North Sea: You can virtually undertake the adventure yourself in the exhibition room "In the kingdom of wrecks". Part of the tour are impressive original finds, such as the five meter high propeller of the emigrant ship "Cimbria", which sank in 1883 and whose tragic history is told. (Wind force 10 - the wreck and fishing museum Cuxhaven, windstaerke10.net).
400 years ago a Dutch cargo ship ran aground near Uelvesbüll. The wreck was found during construction work in 1994 and preserved in sugar solution for two years, hence the nickname. Findings tell what the ship was carrying (grain), what the two-man crew ate (goose, horse) and what else they had on board (compass, bagpipes). (Naval Museum of North Friesland in Husum, schiffahrtsmuseum-nf.de).
In the Viking Age, Haithabu, today a UNESCO site with a museum near Schleswig, was an important port and trading town. A royal longship sank here after a fire around 990-1010, one of the longest warships of the Vikings, which can be admired in the exhibition as Haithabu Wreck I (Viking Museum Haithabu (Busdorf), haithabu.de), which is well worth seeing.
A spectacular witness to the Iron Age is the 23-metre-long, ocean-going rowing boat made of oak wood - sunk around 320 in the Nydam Moor near Sonderburg (Denmark) as a sacrifice and salvaged in 1863 (Museum for Archeology Schloss Gottorf, museum-fuer-archaeologie.de).
Discovered in the Weser in 1962, the world's best-preserved medieval merchant ship has been on display in the light of recent research since 2017. The worth-seeing exhibition all about the wreck from 1380 makes it possible to experience the time of the Hanseatic League, seaman's life and pirates included (German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven, dsm.museum).
On the island in the Dutch Wadden Sea lies Hille van Dieren's quirky inn and private museum. Since 1975, the beachcomber (beach collector) and wreck diver has been collecting curiosities from the sand and sea. Rubber duckies from containers, copper nails from frigates, thousands of finds from around 150 North Sea wrecks, dating from 1650 to the present, are creatively exhibited. Even his house is built with ship remains. Anything that doesn't fit in (guns, a submarine's turret) is in front of it. For example in the "Pirate Garden", which resembles an art installation with towers made of glass bottles and a brightly painted torpedo (Wrakkenmuseum on Terschelling, wrakkenmuseum.nl).
This article was first published in May 2021.
Overfishing and fishing nets destroying the seabed, and then there is climate change. The German seas are under constant pressure. This could even be dangerous for bathers.
Source: WELT/ Gerrit Seebald
