Ingemar Lundgren
04-23-2006, 02:40 PM
Thanks to Uffe Eriksson for giving me permission to republish this article from the old BSTD website
I am republishing this article here knowing that this wreck still attract a lot of interest to the Trimix divers around Stockholm. Me, Richard and Uffe Eriksson re-discovered this wreck in 1996. The wreck had been discovered before by an old commercial diver, or so the rumor has it. In 1996 our diving group, the BSTD made a series of dives on her documenting the wreck. In 1999/2000 some of the members of the BSTD bought a side scan sonar and started the group Ocean Discovery.
Jürgen Fritzen
After s-drill, bubble check and OK signs to the safety diver, I started to descend. I tried to focus ahead on my task, to shoot video, but I couldn't help that some thoughts went away to the history of the wreck.
After extensive research and many hours of searching with sonar gear, we would finally dive the wreck of Jürgen Fritzen. The wreck is well known to most dedicated wreck divers in the Stockholm area, but before trimix diving "came to" Sweden it had been a too deep dive.
Rumors abound as to the background of the wreck and how it sank. According to the newspapers from the time, she sank with her cargo of coal on April 20, 1940, after running aground at the lighthouse of Landsort, on the approaches to Stockholm.
http://www.ulfman.se/bstd/images/projects/foundcf.JPG
In our research we came across a couple of interesting stories that add to the mystery of the ship. One obvious lead concerns the way the Germans invaded Norway, only a week earlier, using coal as a cover for transporting troops and infiltrating Norwegian ports. On the Swedish West Coast there are in fact the wrecks of two such ships - the Amasis and the Antares - sunk in neutral Swedish waters by a British sub.
At the time of the sinking, there were three other German coal-carrying ships in the Stockholm harbor. According to some reports these ships never completely unloaded, but returned to Germany with most of their cargo after the sinking of Fritzen. Also, there was a Swedish pilot onboard of Fritzen (which puts in doubt the theory that she hit a rock). When she started to sink, the Captain asked the pilot's whaleboat to take the crew off the ship. However, he was refused assistance from Swedish Navy patrol boats that were in the area. They could easily have towed the ship to shallower water where at least her valuable cargo could have been salvaged.
According to other reports, such as navigation notes from current Swedish Navy, the ship was loaded with tanks. In all this it is very difficult to make out where the truth lies, thus our enthusiasm for diving her...
I continued down the descent line and I had all these questions in my mind. What were we going to find down there? Was she really carrying tanks? Was she even carrying hundreds of troops, like the ships in the invasion of Norway? I stopped at 30m to check that the rest of the team was OK. We continued down, entering the black waters where the sunlight does not reach.
Ulf, Richard and Ingemar dived the wreck the day before, to confirm that it really was a wreck down there and to confirm the depth. The visibility was terrible (1-2m) and the maximum dive depth was 75m (250fsw). We had planned our dive with these conditions and had decided on a 25 min bottom time. While passing 50m (165fsw) the good visibility from the shallower parts of the descent disappeared and we experienced the slight disorientation that comes with entering areas of poor visibility.
http://www.ulfman.se/bstd/images/projects/frittklocka.JPG
Finally, at 65m (215fsw) we were able to see the first parts of the wreck. What a feeling! Our anchor had hit one of the cargo holds. Earlier we had seen from the sonar scans that the wreck was laying SW-NE, so I led the team to the NE. It had not been possible to determine which end was the stern or the bow from the sonar scans, so our job was to find this out. After a 10 min swim, having passed several massive loading booms, we found a platform. We crossed the platform and went off to one side. I could see that railing was angled inwards so I followed it. This led us right up to what turned out to be the bow. Looking over the side I noticed a nice big anchor hanging in its place. We turned the dive after 13 min and tied off the guideline to follow it back to the ascent line.
Due to the conditions of the dive (depth, visibility and water temperature) we had chosen a 17/40 mix, so we had a pretty long hang in front of us. At the first stop (33m/110fsw), our safety diver was waiting with extra decompression gas and a slate. We wrote down what we had seen so that the next team, which were on their way down, could receive the information and carry on where we left off. During decompression on the shallower stops we saw the third team descending. I had a little feeling of jealousy watching them going down.
Back on the boat we gave a more extensive report to the supervisor onboard. We made drawings of what we had seen and where our guideline was located. The group of divers had made a total of three dives all together during one day. We agreed that it had been hard to get a good idea of the layout of the wreck due to the poor visibility. However, we were all pleased with what we had achieved on this first day of the Jürgen Fritzen project.
http://www.ulfman.se/bstd/images/projects/Fritz.jpg
After a long night of filling, we tried to set the drawings together and match the experiences and memories of the three teams. Anders was working on his Nikonos camera, Bobby was getting the video camera ready again and we were all mentally preparing for the following day.
On the second day we found the bell of the ship
The last team to go down had decided to follow the line that was laid the day before, to take some pictures in the bow area. "When we got to the platform, I decided to go to the right, away from the main line", Richard explained later. Just a couple of meters from the tie-off the team found what really confirmed that we were on the right wreck, the bell of the ship. They brushed off the silt of the bell to see the name and to take some pictures when it was time to return to the ascent line. The information about the bell was spread to the waiting group at the surface, through a slate from the safety diver.
Due to water temperatures we were unable to complete all the dives planned for the expedition. BSTD will continue to do dives and carry out more research on this interesting bit of marine history. Even though we had not found all the answers we were looking for, we were a lot closer to solving the mystery of the Jürgen Fritzen.
Photos by Sigmund Lundgren and Anders Jallai
Text by Johan Candert
I am republishing this article here knowing that this wreck still attract a lot of interest to the Trimix divers around Stockholm. Me, Richard and Uffe Eriksson re-discovered this wreck in 1996. The wreck had been discovered before by an old commercial diver, or so the rumor has it. In 1996 our diving group, the BSTD made a series of dives on her documenting the wreck. In 1999/2000 some of the members of the BSTD bought a side scan sonar and started the group Ocean Discovery.
Jürgen Fritzen
After s-drill, bubble check and OK signs to the safety diver, I started to descend. I tried to focus ahead on my task, to shoot video, but I couldn't help that some thoughts went away to the history of the wreck.
After extensive research and many hours of searching with sonar gear, we would finally dive the wreck of Jürgen Fritzen. The wreck is well known to most dedicated wreck divers in the Stockholm area, but before trimix diving "came to" Sweden it had been a too deep dive.
Rumors abound as to the background of the wreck and how it sank. According to the newspapers from the time, she sank with her cargo of coal on April 20, 1940, after running aground at the lighthouse of Landsort, on the approaches to Stockholm.
http://www.ulfman.se/bstd/images/projects/foundcf.JPG
In our research we came across a couple of interesting stories that add to the mystery of the ship. One obvious lead concerns the way the Germans invaded Norway, only a week earlier, using coal as a cover for transporting troops and infiltrating Norwegian ports. On the Swedish West Coast there are in fact the wrecks of two such ships - the Amasis and the Antares - sunk in neutral Swedish waters by a British sub.
At the time of the sinking, there were three other German coal-carrying ships in the Stockholm harbor. According to some reports these ships never completely unloaded, but returned to Germany with most of their cargo after the sinking of Fritzen. Also, there was a Swedish pilot onboard of Fritzen (which puts in doubt the theory that she hit a rock). When she started to sink, the Captain asked the pilot's whaleboat to take the crew off the ship. However, he was refused assistance from Swedish Navy patrol boats that were in the area. They could easily have towed the ship to shallower water where at least her valuable cargo could have been salvaged.
According to other reports, such as navigation notes from current Swedish Navy, the ship was loaded with tanks. In all this it is very difficult to make out where the truth lies, thus our enthusiasm for diving her...
I continued down the descent line and I had all these questions in my mind. What were we going to find down there? Was she really carrying tanks? Was she even carrying hundreds of troops, like the ships in the invasion of Norway? I stopped at 30m to check that the rest of the team was OK. We continued down, entering the black waters where the sunlight does not reach.
Ulf, Richard and Ingemar dived the wreck the day before, to confirm that it really was a wreck down there and to confirm the depth. The visibility was terrible (1-2m) and the maximum dive depth was 75m (250fsw). We had planned our dive with these conditions and had decided on a 25 min bottom time. While passing 50m (165fsw) the good visibility from the shallower parts of the descent disappeared and we experienced the slight disorientation that comes with entering areas of poor visibility.
http://www.ulfman.se/bstd/images/projects/frittklocka.JPG
Finally, at 65m (215fsw) we were able to see the first parts of the wreck. What a feeling! Our anchor had hit one of the cargo holds. Earlier we had seen from the sonar scans that the wreck was laying SW-NE, so I led the team to the NE. It had not been possible to determine which end was the stern or the bow from the sonar scans, so our job was to find this out. After a 10 min swim, having passed several massive loading booms, we found a platform. We crossed the platform and went off to one side. I could see that railing was angled inwards so I followed it. This led us right up to what turned out to be the bow. Looking over the side I noticed a nice big anchor hanging in its place. We turned the dive after 13 min and tied off the guideline to follow it back to the ascent line.
Due to the conditions of the dive (depth, visibility and water temperature) we had chosen a 17/40 mix, so we had a pretty long hang in front of us. At the first stop (33m/110fsw), our safety diver was waiting with extra decompression gas and a slate. We wrote down what we had seen so that the next team, which were on their way down, could receive the information and carry on where we left off. During decompression on the shallower stops we saw the third team descending. I had a little feeling of jealousy watching them going down.
Back on the boat we gave a more extensive report to the supervisor onboard. We made drawings of what we had seen and where our guideline was located. The group of divers had made a total of three dives all together during one day. We agreed that it had been hard to get a good idea of the layout of the wreck due to the poor visibility. However, we were all pleased with what we had achieved on this first day of the Jürgen Fritzen project.
http://www.ulfman.se/bstd/images/projects/Fritz.jpg
After a long night of filling, we tried to set the drawings together and match the experiences and memories of the three teams. Anders was working on his Nikonos camera, Bobby was getting the video camera ready again and we were all mentally preparing for the following day.
On the second day we found the bell of the ship
The last team to go down had decided to follow the line that was laid the day before, to take some pictures in the bow area. "When we got to the platform, I decided to go to the right, away from the main line", Richard explained later. Just a couple of meters from the tie-off the team found what really confirmed that we were on the right wreck, the bell of the ship. They brushed off the silt of the bell to see the name and to take some pictures when it was time to return to the ascent line. The information about the bell was spread to the waiting group at the surface, through a slate from the safety diver.
Due to water temperatures we were unable to complete all the dives planned for the expedition. BSTD will continue to do dives and carry out more research on this interesting bit of marine history. Even though we had not found all the answers we were looking for, we were a lot closer to solving the mystery of the Jürgen Fritzen.
Photos by Sigmund Lundgren and Anders Jallai
Text by Johan Candert