Maritime record MWX4897 - Okahandja

The German Steamer Okahandja stranded at Blacknor Point, Portland, in 1910. (1)
Fog was also the cause of the wreck of the German steamship Okahandja. On the 8th June 1910 she was bound from Cartagena to Stettin when she lost her way in dense fog and ran onto Tar rocks on Portland, just to the north of Blacknor Point. The captains wife and children were sent ashore by boat whilst the lifeboat stood by. The rocket apparatus was erected in case the crew needed to be evacuated, but the men worked hard and managed to get the pumps working and so saved their ship. Badly holed she was towed off by a salvage vessel and taken into Weymouth Harbour where she was given temporary repairs before sailing back to Germany.(3)

The building date for this vessel is an estimate based on an average age at wrecking of twenty years. This average is derived from those vessels wrecked on the Dorset coast whose age at wrecking is known.

<1> Le Pard, G, 1995-2003, Dorset Coast Forum Maritime Archaeological Database (Digital archive). SWX8707.

<2> Boddy, M, 1975b, Dorset Shipwrecks part 2 (Article in serial). SWX7302.

<3> Le Pard, G F, 2005, Shipwrecks of the Dorset Coast (Monograph). SDO9637.

Record last edited

May 6 2004 10:39AM