Newly restored 19th-century German boat Elbe No 5 sinks after crashing into cargo ship
- Restoration team had spent nine months and US$1.7 million making the wooden schooner from 1883 seaworthy again
A recently restored wooden sailing ship has sunk after colliding with a container vessel near Hamburg, northern Germany.
Six adults and two children were injured when the gaff-rigged schooner Elbe No 5, originally built in 1883, collided with a Cyprus-flagged vessel, Astrosprinter, on the River Elbe after a failed tack steered the sailing ship directly into the container ship’s path.
All 43 passengers were rescued almost immediately thanks to a quick response from five rescue boats that were at the scene of another accident a few hundred metres away.
“If we hadn’t been in the vicinity there could have been fatalities,” a fire service official, Wilfried Sprekels, told the local newspaper Stader Tageblatt.
But the rescue team could not prevent the ship from sinking while they dragged it to shore.
The 37-metre (121-foot) schooner, built as a vehicle for pilots guiding larger craft from the sea to Hamburg’s port, was the city’s last remaining seagoing ship from the era of wooden vessels.