Salvage can begin
Lake Constance wreck “Säntis”: lifting bags for the race against the quagga mussels
The “Säntis” in better days: On May 2, 1933, she was decommissioned and sunk in Lake Constance
© DPA
The ship “Säntis” has been sunk in Lake Constance for 90 years. A club wants to raise it and put it on display. The material crucial for the complicated operation has now arrived.
The planned lifting of a 130-year-old ship from the bottom of the Lake Constance is entering the hot phase. Shortly before Christmas, the twelve lifting bags with which the wreck is to be brought to the surface of the water from a depth of 210 meters arrived in Romanshorn on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance, as the president of the ship salvage association, Silvan Paganini, told the DPA news agency. The bags were ordered in China and were first shipped to Hamburg and then brought to Switzerland.
“Säntis” club is confident
The deadline for authorities and organizations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to object to the project expired on December 31st. The association that works to raise the “Säntis“, in the next few weeks. “We are confident that everything will go according to plan,” said Paganini.
The “Säntis” was no longer seaworthy and was sunk in May 1933. She lies in the middle of the lake between Romanshorn and Langenargen on the German side. Scrapping was rejected at the time as being too expensive. The 48 meter long ship had been sailing on Lake Constance since 1892. It could carry 400 transport passengers.
Lift planned for April
The rescue is scheduled to begin in early March. The ship should be lifted using the lifting bags and a recovery platform and stored closer to the shore at a depth of around twelve meters. It should then be completely recovered at the beginning of April.
Time is running out, said Paganini. On the one hand, because the club can use the shipyard in Romanshorn free of charge for 14 weeks from March. “But also because of the quagga mussels,” explained Paganini. The introduced species has been spreading in Lake Constance for a few years. The shells could soon cover the wreck in a thick layer. Something like this has already happened with some wrecks in shallower water, he said. “The wreck of the steamship “Jura” off Bottighofen is now just a large quagga shell mountain.” Also at the fireplace the “Säntis“, which was recovered in July, was already mussels.
280,000 euros collected in donations
In addition to donations in kind, the association with around 30 members collected an estimated 280,000 euros through crowdfunding for the salvage material and the preservation of the wreck. There is already a berth for two years after the salvage, said Paganini. The “Säntis” is to be issued. It was still unclear whether in Switzerland. “We don’t have any confirmation yet and are open.”
Paganini, technical operations manager at Swiss Lake Constance Shipping, worked in the offshore oil and gas industry for a long time. What attracted him to the project was how lifting could be accomplished with little money and without large crane structures. “The depth of the water is exciting and you have to use some tricks,” he said.