1st Expedition to the Wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff in April 1988

Team members of the first expedition to the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff in early 1988 on board the Bremen-registered steel yacht Aphaia, in Maasholm Harbour near Flensburg, Germany.

From left to right: Phil Sayers, Marietta Kaufhold, Hartmut Tanski, Rudi Lange, Brian Coll and Fritz Nuttlemann (owner and captain of the Bremen registered steel yacht Aphaia).

It is worth bearing in mind that in 1988, East and West Germany were still separated by the iron curtain and it is probable that no westerners had dived on the wreck before us. She lay in international waters just a short distance outside of the international 12 mile zone. At that time the Wilhelm Gustloff had not been declared a war grave and no attempts had been made by any persons or organisations to salvage her. Although disputed by various people after the event, it was not illegal to dive on her at the time and no special permissions needed to be obtained in order to do so.
It was not until later on in 1988, after our return from our third expedition (when we recovered a number of portholes), that she was declared a protected site by the German and Polish governments. The latest charts now identify her position as a protected site.

Rudi Lange embarking on the Aphaia in Maasholm Harbour, April 1988. Rudi was the radio technician who gave out the SOS when the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed, and was one of around 1,350 people who survived the sinking of the vessel. He was rescued by the motor torpedo boat Löwe and taken to the port of Kolberg.
Note the blue one-man home-made decompression chamber on the rear deck of the Aphaia, built by Fritz Nuttlemann out of an old boiler. The chamber was actually used by the team for surface decompression procedures of one of our divers after he accidentally dropped his weight-belt at a depth of 45 metres missed the usual decompression stops when returning to the surface due to awkward conditions caused by the choppy seas.
2nd and 3rd Expeditions to the Wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff,  June/July 1988

From left to right: Brian Coll, Damien Sanders, Phil Sayers, Marietta Kaufhold, Hartmut Tanski and Peter Killikowski (out of picture), with the plaque taken to the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff and laid on the ship’s hull at a depth of 45 metres.
Diver Damien Sanders receiving the plaque from a team member and preparing to dive to the wreck.

MS Seafin, previously MS Alida, the 35 metre coastal freighter built in 1928 and converted into a wreck hunting and salvage vessel by its owner Erich Kaufhold. Erich was a licensed Master Diver and Explosives expert. The vessel was left to Marietta when Erich died in February 1988, and then donated to the expedition team for use in two expeditions to the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff. The Seafin was equipped with a large Russian-built decompression chamber and everything a salvage or treasure hunting diver could possibly need.

The plaque taken to and placed on the wreck by the team in remembrance of the 9,500 refugees, sailors and soldiers who perished when she sank on the night of 30 January 1945.

Remembrance Plaque – The Gustloff Disaster

Here lie the remains of over 6000 children, women, aged and soldiers, who attempted to escape from the German eastern territories on 30th Jan 1945 and on this day were sunk by a Russian U-boat.

This place of rest should serve as a memorial. Never again war

 Gustloff Expedition 1988
Left: The B-deck porthole to the ‘secure room’ on board the Wilhelm Gustloff, cut out from the wreck by Phil Sayers and Brian Coll using oxy-arc burning equipment in 40m depth, and salvaged on behalf of Rudi Lange for the museum ship Albatros. Right: The same porthole now in the museum in Kiel.
Left: Diver Damien Sanders with a porthole cut out by him from the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff and later donated to the museum ship Albatros. Right: Two portholes on the port side A-deck of the forward dining room directly above Hitler’s cabins.

Echo-sounding of the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff,  June 1988

The author with two portholes from the Wilhelm Gustloff in front of the Rendsburg River Police Station on the Kiel Canal, where they had been stored in an open galvanised steel basin and locked at the bottom of the station’s large safe for six weeks. The two police officers were only too glad to be rid of the portholes, which were still covered in rotting mussels and other smelly decomposing organisms from the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Accompanied by a film crew, Phil Sayers and Rudi Lange took the portholes to the coastal town of Damp where they were donated to the museum ship Albatros.

Illegal “Treasure Hunters” caught in the Net – Sport divers go to work on the wreck of the Wilhelm GustloffRENDSBURG Monday 5th September 1988

Three illegal “treasure hunters” have been caught in the net of the Rendsburg River Police. It appears that a British citizen from the Channel Island of Jersey had located the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff lying off the coast of Pommern (East Prussia) and had searched the wreck for the famous Amber Room.
A spokesman from the River Police said that the 139 BrT ship Seafin and a three-man crew of sport divers had been discovered by chance by the police. The crew had been diving illegally on the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff that, according to international law, is the property of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Rendsburg River Police found two bronze portholes and a porthole safety cover that the Brits had removed from the wreck. The police officers also discovered “treasure hunting equipment” on the Seafin. The three sport divers, whose ship now lies alongside the Ahlmann Quay in the Obereider Harbour, may be presented with charges of theft and non-disclosure of finds of treasure.
The Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by three Russian torpedoes on 30 January 1945 with over 6000 refugees on board. The wreck has reportedly been visited several times in the past by divers after rumours arose that the Amber Room may have been taken on board. The fabulous lost art treasure was built in 1711 in Berlin under instruction from King Friedrich 1 and is claimed to be the most important work of art that has ever been made out of Amber.

“Souvenirs” from Sunken Ship on Board - Kieler Nachrichten, Saturday 3rd September1988
The Holtenauer River Police made a surprise discovery on Thursday during the routine inspection of a British sport boat. On board the old coaster they found two portholes and a porthole safety cover from the wreck of the sunken refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff lying off the coast of Pommern. The three-man crew had visited the wreck during a trip to the Baltic Sea and had removed parts of the ship. As the wreck officially belongs to the German Ministry of Finance, the divers may have broken the law. The River Police confirmed that they had raised charges against the three Englanders.

The ‘Loot’: Portholes from the Wreck of the Wilhelm GustloffBritish Divers forced to make fast in Rendsburg.
KIEL/RENDSBURG. Three British divers have evidently located and searched the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff lying off the coast of Pommern, looking for the famous Amber Room. Two portholes and a porthole safety cover recovered from the wreck fell into the hands of the Rendsburg River Police as the ship made its way along the Kiel Canal. A spokesman from the River Police stated that, in his opinion, the divers would probably be charged with theft or the non-disclosure of treasure. The old and barely seaworthy coaster Seafin is now lying in the Rendsburger Obereider harbour. The police discovered by chance that the crew of the 139 BrT motorboat Seafin, which was registered in the Channel Island of Jersey, were private sport divers who had illegally gone to work on the wreck, which according to international law is the property of the Federal Republic of Germany. On board the one-time German coaster Seafin was a decompression chamber and equipment “which treasure hunters needed”. The spokesman said that the three souvenirs had been confiscated on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk on 30 January 1945, by a Russian submarine, with over 6000 refugees on board. The wreck had allegedly been the target of several previous diving expeditions after rumours surfaced that the Amber Room may have been on board. The fabulous lost art treasure was built in 1711 in Berlin under instruction from King Friedrich 1 and is claimed to be the most important work of art ever made out of Amber. In 1716, King Friedrich I gave the room as a gift to the Russian Tsar. In 1755, it was assembled in the Catherine Palace. The art treasure disappeared after German troops looted the room and it has never been seen since.

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The two above-mentioned portholes were salvaged by the crew of the Seafin on behalf of Herr Rudi Lange, a survivor of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, for the ‘Evacuation across the Sea’ Society (Kuratorium ALBATROS – Rettung ueber See e.V.). They were to be presented to the museum ship Albatros in the German town of Damp.
Until the return of the portholes to German territory in 1988, no artefacts from the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff were available as a potential focus of attention for the remembrance museums. Previous attempts by another survivor of the disaster, Herr Heinz Schoen, to mount an expedition to the wreck of the Gustloff in 1983 had failed and Herr Rudi Lange spoke openly of an apparent rivalry that had developed between himself and Herr Schoen to be the first to bring back something / any objects from the wreck. Rudi Lange was the radio technician on duty at the time of the sinking, and, through his heroic actions, was responsible for sending out the SOS under remarkable conditions and thus saving countless lives on the night the ship was lost. Herr Lange spoke openly about the fact that his role in the rescue had, in his view, not been given appropriate recognition by Herr Schoen in his book “The Gustloff Catastrophe”. Fearing that his efforts to mount a successful expedition to the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff with us might be ‘torpedoed’ by his rival, I believe Rudi chose not to inform anybody about his plans to bring back some objects for the society, and instead, in an honorary capacity, decided to take over where Herr Schoen had failed. Official permission from the German Ministry of Finance to salvage various ‘low value’ artefacts from the wreck for a Gustloff memorial, such as the bell, the ship’s name or its anchor, already existed. Unfortunately it appeared that Rudi’s rival received a ‘tip-off’ that an expedition to the wreck was in progress and, upset that ‘his permission’ had not been sought to dive on ‘his wreck’ as Rudi Lange put it, contacted the German authorities. Instead of Rudi Lange taking the credit for securing the portholes and personally presenting them to the Albatros museum, a document dated 30.08.1988 bears out the fact that indeed Herr Schoen was intent on doing this himself, officially requesting that legal ownership of the portholes be transferred to his private Gustloff museum. 
So it was that on our return to Kiel Holtenau, with the supposedly ‘ill-gotten gains’ on board, we reported the portholes to the customs inspectors in Kiel, as well as where we had been and what we had done. The inspectors were given access to our logbook where our diving activities and salvage efforts were recorded for them to see. After dropping off three of our crew members with their baggage in Kiel, we were allowed to pass on down the Kiel Canal to the Ahlmann Quay, where we had arranged to moor our boat Seafin for a few weeks. It was then that the boat was subjected to a second inspection by local customs officials, and, acting on orders from the Ministry of Finance, the portholes were handed over to them (with strict instructions from us not to allow them to dry out and risk damaging them). The customs officers were of course dismayed to hear from us that members of our team had left the ship several hours earlier, unchallenged and unsearched, taking with them heavy baggage of unknown content.
To this day I still remember exactly how the officers searched our ship from top to bottom looking for gold bars and jewellery allegedly taken from the wreck (as rivals had falsely claimed in order to discredit us), and how my ‘accomplice in crime’ and first mate, Hartmut Tanski, ‘assisted’ them with their futile search. Needless to say, they left empty handed except for the two portholes.
After a period of six weeks, and much excitement and numerous exchanges of letters between the authorities and all concerned, the charges against the crew and myself were dropped. Herr Lange’s and the crew’s version of events were confirmed, or at least believed by the investigating officers, and permission was given to us to retrieve the portholes from the River Police Station in Rendsburg. The portholes, still submerged in a stinking brew of rotting shells and starfish, were handed over to us, and, to the relief of the station officers, were taken personally by Rudi and myself directly to the museum ship.
Exactly what, if anything, the three members of my crew took with them when they left Seafin with their bags on arrival in Kiel, remained an unsolved mystery to the customs inspectors. The parting comments of the police officers in Rendsburg, who were by coincidence also keen sport divers, were to secure a promise from me that if I were ever to embark on a similar expedition in the future, I should give them a call before I left. After reading the police file they’d had on their desk for several days, they both wanted to be part of the action and volunteered as crew members on the next diving expedition!