After several years of searching, we have managed to locate another wreck of a ship that took part in Operation Hannibal.
In 2020, when Tomasz Stachura published his book Route of Death (available here) we set out to discover and identify the last remaining shipwrecks involved in the largest maritime evacuation in history.
Already in April 2020, we discovered SS Karlsruhe, followed by Frankfurt in 2021, and Geritz Fritzen in 2023. This July, after many years of searching, we discovered and identified one of the last wrecks: the steamship Baltenland.
This steamship was a large vessel, 103 meters long, with a gross tonnage of 3,042 GRT. It was built in 1904 in Sunderland, UK. Baltenland regularly sailed the route between Kiel and Gdynia, delivering supplies to the Eastern Front and returning with refugees from East Prussia. On its final voyage in December 1944, it carried a large load of supplies for the German forces. On December 25, it was detected by a Soviet submarine (the Baltenland was sailing in a convoy of three ships and three escort vessels). On December 26 at 01:52, Captain Popov, commander of the Soviet submarine K-56, launched a successful attack, sinking the ship with two torpedoes.
According to a German report, the entire crew was rescued by the escort ships.
For years we had been searching for a large, intact wreck. It turned out that the two torpedoes and the massive explosion of the onboard ammunition caused extensive destruction. On the seabed, we saw nothing but a twisted mass of steel plates, entangled in a countless number of fishing nets.
The wreck lies north of Ustka, at a depth of 91 meters, outside Polish territorial waters. It is heavily entangled in nets and covered with hydrogen sulfide. During our dives at the beginning of July this year, the visibility was only 0.5 meters, so our photos were purely for identification purposes and not among the “pretty” ones. We could only stay at the bottom for 20 minutes, and the poor conditions made things even more difficult. Nevertheless, we saw a lot of military equipment, ammunition, spare parts, gas masks, boots, tires, and aircraft propellers.
And most importantly—we found the wreck only 5 nautical miles from the position reported in historical records. It’s a pity the wreck lies so deep and far away, as it likely still holds many secrets.
The Team:
Tomasz Stachura
Tomasz Zwara
Maciej Honc
Marek Cacaj
Kamil Macidłowski
Piotr Cybula
Paweł Wilk
Rafał Garyga
