Silona

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The Silona was a Swedish cargo steamer that ran aground on the Elbe meadows near the Balj lighthouse on the night of February 16-17 , 1962 .

history

The Stockholm-based steamship Silona was built in 1919 and measured 2,261 gross tons . In February 1962 the ship was under the command of Captain Sven Nilson on a ballast voyage from Zaandam in the Netherlands to Gdynia in Poland.

On the afternoon of February 16, 1962, the ship passed Cuxhaven up the Elbe and took the sea pilot Mehlert on board. The locks of the Kiel Canal were already closed in the evening and during the night of February 16-17, 1962, numerous Elbe dykes broke during the storm surge of 1962 . When anchor maneuvers on the Neufeld-Reede off Brunsbüttel the starboard anchor chain broke at about 19:00 first of Silona . When the port chain in the chain case became twisted and got stuck, the ship drifted across the roadstead, pushed by the hurricane. The crew then succeeded in temporarily mooring their ship at buoy 23 in the Elbe fairway. A storm gale tore the Silona loose again, whereupon it drifted towards the Balj lighthouse. The ship passed this with luck and stranded around midnight around 300 meters from the banks of the Elbe and 600 meters from the fairway on the dike foreland near Balje / Hörne. Tugs still tried to get the damaged vessel away from its stranding site despite the running water, but the ship remained sitting upright on the Elbe meadows.

The crew of the stranded ship was only rescued on February 22nd by helicopters of Naval Aviation Squadron 5 . On February 25, a fire broke out on the Silona , which was extinguished with the help of the Hörner volunteer fire brigade , but caused further property damage of around DM 100,000. In the following months the Silona was a popular destination. Since the Silona could not be recovered, it was demolished on site from the beginning of April 1962. However, the double bottom of the ship was not scrapped, but reused.

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.

Web links