Polish divers have discovered the wreck of the Baltenland, a German cargo steamer torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in 1944 during Operation Hannibal, one of World War Two’s biggest maritime evacuation operations.
Little is left to see of the big ship’s structure 80 years after the massive explosion that sank her, but the wreck had long been on the dive-team’s wish-list of sites to locate.
Operation Hannibal in early 1945 transported German troops and civilians away from Baltic coastal areas that were being cut off by the advancing Red Army.
The Baltictech dive-team, which has already discovered a number of Hannibal-associated shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea, found this one at a depth of 91m, north of the town of Ustka and beyond Polish territorial waters. It lay some 9km away from the sinking position given in contemporary reports.
The team, led by wreck-hunter Tomasz Stachura, started their quest in 2020, finding the Karlsruhe that year, the Frankfurt in 2021 and in 2023 the Geritz Fritzen.
That left only Orion and Baltenland, a large target at 103m long that had originated in the UK, having been built in Sunderland in 1904.
While still named the Valdona, she was seized by German forces in Rotterdam in 1940, renamed Baltenland and put to work between Kiel and Gdynia in Poland – where Baltictech is based – carrying supplies for the Germans’ eastern front and bringing back refugees from Prussia.
She was carrying a large consignment of supplies east with two other merchant ships and three escorts when, on 25 December, the convoy was spotted by the Soviet submarine K-56.
Just before 2am on Boxing Day, K-56 fired the two torpedoes that sank the Baltenland, though according to German reports the escort vessels were able to rescue the ship’s entire complement.
“These two torpedoes, and a huge explosion of carried ammunition, caused the wreckage to be greatly destroyed,” stated Baltictech after visiting the wreck. On the seabed they had found only “a hive of blah blah, spoilt by an endless amount of net”.
Visibility on the dive was rarely more than half a metre, but the team were able to identify military equipment including ammunition and gas-masks as well as spare parts, shoes, tyres and propellers.
“It’s a pity that the wreckage is so far and deep, because it probably hides more secrets,” stated Stachura, who is a deep-wreck photographer and the founder and CEO of dive-suit manufacturer Santi Diving.
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