Salvage of historic Swiss steamboat has failed
The salvage of the sunken steamship "Säntis" from the bottom of Lake Constance has failed. Silvan Paganini, President of the ship’s salvage association, said on the news station, "BlickTV" on Sunday.
The salvage operation failed because the brakes on the cable winch, which should have lowered the salvage platform to the ship at the bottom of Lake Constance, did not hold, as Paganini explained. With the lifting bags filled with air on the platform, the ship should have risen later in a controlled manner.
More
One of Lake Lucerne’s oldest boats now running on electricity
The lowering of the platform worked well at the beginning. But then, as the live images showed, the ropes suddenly rushed into the depths. The platform then sunk uncontrollably and hit the sunken ship.
“It is sad that the cause of the project’s failure was the cable winch that had been built specifically for it,” said Paganini. Things looked bad underwater. Hoses are torn, beams are broken, and the recovery platform is unusable. For him and the association, which was founded in 2023 to salvage the steamboat, this is a “huge loss”. Now they have no choice but to clean up the “mess”.
The Säntis was sunk in May 1933, as it was no longer seaworthy. She lies in the middle of the lake between Romanshorn and Langenargen in Germany. Scrapping was ruled out at the time, as it was too costly. The 49-meter-long boat had been sailing on Lake Constance since 1892, and carried up to 400 passengers.
Adapted from German by DeepL/dkk/ac
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Switzerland triggers unprecedented special status for Ukrainian refugees
More
Art Basel expands to Qatar despite the drums of war in the Middle East
More
Inside Roche: Taking on the tech sector
More
How Swiss minimalist houses launched a new building style
More
The long road to the Geneva Conventions of 1949
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.