Scharhörnbake
The Scharhörnbake was the most important beacon on the North Sea coast for a long time . It was first built in 1661 by the city of Hamburg on the Scharhörn sandbank on the south side of the Outer Elbe , renewed over the centuries and finally demolished in 1979. From 1840 to 1965 it was equipped with a shelter for shipwrecked people and was thus one of the five rescue beacons on the high sands of the North Sea. Today the rock foundations still exist in the mudflats in front of the Nigehörn .
From 1898 to December 23, 1914, the Scharhörnbake was the highest beacon on the North Sea coast at 29.10 m. The total cost of the beacon was 70,000 gold marks .
It was often broken in by storms and was also eliminated when wars broke out to make it difficult for the enemy fleets to navigate .
function
The main function of the beacon was to enable a bearing to bypass the Scharhörnriff when entering the mouth of the Elbe . Many merchant ships stranded on this dangerous passage. Hamburg maintained for marking the reef and the routes through Südergatt and Nordergatt from 1440 tons . When entering from sea, the first and most important buoy on the starboard side was the Rothe buoy . The bearings in the Neuwerk and Scharhörnbake tower (red line) were used for this purpose.
The other bearings with the Neuwerker tower as the end point were
- the north beacon as a darkening beacon together with the Neuwerker Blüse and later the small lighthouse to the Schartonne (in front of the Vogelsand, blue line) and
- the Werkbalger beacon to the butter barrel (behind the bird sand, green line).
The Scharhörnbake as the highest beacon and the Neuwerker Tower as the oldest “lake tower” and the associated costs illustrate the importance of the Elbe estuary for Hamburg.
The beacon received the shelter as a secondary function from 1840. The emergency provisions were regularly renewed. When an island grew on the outer sand of Scharhörn with the help of plantings, the first construction huts there made the beacon's shelter superfluous from 1929.
Appearance
The shape and exact position of the beacon changed with each new construction. At first it was a wooden frame with a pyramid and a rectangle as the top mark . From the middle of the 19th century it got the distinctive shape of two diamonds standing on top of one another, under which the shelter was located.
| Built | Gone | comment |
|---|---|---|
| 1661 | first beacon on Scharhörn | |
| 1796 | since 1766 without upper half | |
| before 1818 | 1820 | "... was removed so that the French fleet was deprived of the possibility of landing ..." |
| before 1831 | before 1840 | |
| 1840 | July 19, 1870 | with shelter "... After the night when Scharhörnbake was burned to protect against the French fleet in 1870 (the Neuwerk beacon and all the light ships had already been extinguished and the buoys were picked up), nine ships were already stranded on Scharhörnriff by daybreak; eight of them were dismantled, but the ninth, an American barque, was lost. ... " |
| 1871 | 1871 | Provisional beacon with shelter |
| 1871 | 1898 | Beacon with shelter |
| 1898 | December 23, 1914 | Beacon with a large shelter. In World War I exploded. |
| 1922 | 1923 | Auxiliary beacon |
| June 9, 1923 | November 6, 1965 | Last beacon with shelter |
| August 26, 1967 | 22nd September 1979 | Pipe mast beacon with two diamond top signs |
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Adolf Soetbeer : About Hamburg's trade . Hoffmann and Campe, 1840 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
- ↑ Horst Tschentscher: Review by Lang, AW: Development, structure and administration of the navigation system on the German North Sea coast up to the middle of the 19th century: Bonn, Der Bundesminister für Verkehr, 1965. 1966, accessed on April 18, 2017 .
- ↑ Manfred Temme: Vogelfreistätte Scharhörn , Jordsand Association, 1967
- ^ Gerhard Sagt : Dune Island Scharhörn . Self-published by Sübers, Hannover-Linden 1976.
- ↑ Scharhörn beacon. In: baken-net.de. Retrieved January 26, 2019 .
- ^ Ferdinand Dannmeyer : Sea pilots, light and rescue systems . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1911, p. 64 .
Coordinates: 53 ° 57 ′ 24 ″ N , 8 ° 24 ′ 36 ″ E