Fides (ship)
The Fides was an Italian Liberty freighter that ran aground on January 20, 1962 in the Elbe estuary on the Großer Vogelsand near the British freighter Ondo .
The Fides was built in Los Angeles in 1944, was 148 meters long and had 7,182 gross tons.
The ship's command stuck to an outdated English nautical chart that did not show any buoys or lighthouses.
Despite extensive attempts by two deep-sea and two salvage tugs , the Fides could no longer be towed out of the grinding sand . At the time of the accident, the ship had 9,611 t of aluminum ore on board. The crew of the ship was rescued by the rescue cruiser Ruhr-Stahl . The value of the ship and its cargo at that time was estimated at 5.5 million DM.
The wrecks of the Fides and Ondo passed by excursion boats to Heligoland caught the attention of the passengers, which in Hamburg led to the demand for an explosion. The mast of Fides still protruded from the Elbe until around 2007.
literature
- German Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked People : Disasters at Sea - Stranded on bird sand
- SAGES, Gerhard: Ocean ships run aground off Cuxhaven . 2nd Edition. Self-published by Sübers, Hanover 1970.
- Schwabedissen, Tim: Stranded . Ship accidents off the North Sea coast. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-7822-0893-5 (Contains a detailed chapter on Fides with numerous illustrations.).
Web links
- The sinking of the "Fides" ( Memento from July 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Elbe estuary - Großer Vogel - Schiffahrt Der Spiegel from December 5, 1962.
Coordinates: 54 ° 1 ′ 8 ″ N , 8 ° 26 ′ 20 ″ E