Felix C wrote:There was an article in the Miami Herald a few decades ago about Hitler's yacht but it was a sloop type vessel not a cabin motor cruiser. Said vessel was then in Miami and of course at that time there were many WW2era Jews living and active here so it was a bit of news item. There was an issue with the vessel being seaworthy and bills owed to different parties.
That's a really interesting story, Felix. I was not aware of that. Here's the story according to the AP in 1989:
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) _ The remnants of Adolf Hitler's yacht, sent to a watery grave recently by a group of Holocaust survivors, were refloated and sunk again Thursday in a deeper resting place off Miami Beach.
Air bags were used to raise the skeleton-like remains of the Ostwind from atop a shallow reef, where it was mistakenly dumped June 4 during ceremonies observing the 50th anniversary of the ''Voyage of the Damned.''
''We've said all along that ship has bad vibes,'' said Linda Arter, a marina worker at A-1 Marine and Commercial Wrecking in Jacksonville. ''It just doesn't seem to want to go away quietly.''
The yacht, intended as an artificial reef, threatened marine life on the coral reef and was a hazard to ships.
An apparent navigational error caused the yacht to be dumped into 25 feet of water as 27 survivors from the SS St. Louis' 1939 voyage watched. The ceremony commemorated the United States' refusal that year to accept the ship carrying 937 Jewish refugees, many of whom perished later in Nazi concentration camps.
A tugboat spent more than three hours Thursday pulling the 85-foot yacht underwater to a 250-foot-deep spot two miles offshore, where the steel cable was cut with a blow torch and the ship sunk to the rocky bottom. The event was supervised by state environmental officials.
''This is an opportunity to retell the story of the Voyage of the Damned,'' said Rabbi Barry Konovitch of the Cuban-Hebrew Congregation in Miami Beach. ''A bit of good may have come from this event.''
The Fountainebleau Hilton hotel on Miami Beach put up $10,000 to move the Ostwind into deeper water. The Army Corps of Engineers ordered the yacht moved or government crews would dismantle the remains and bill Miami Beach officials.
Prior to the resinking a Senate proclamation acknowledging the Voyage of Damned was read by State Sen. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, a Republican candidate to succeed the late congressman Claude Pepper.
The Ostwind was commissioned in 1938 by Hitler as an Olympic racing vessel, but it was never entered in competition and was used instead by Nazi officials. Hitler apparently only used the vessel once or twice.
The United States took possession of the Ostwind as a war prize and it was used as a training craft at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., until it was sold as surplus in the late 1950s. The yacht was then held by various owners in Florida and sold in the mid-1970s to a Nazi memorabilia collector from Massachusetts.
The collector brought the Ostwind to A-1 Marine and Commercial Wrecking for repairs. But the collector never completed work on the vessel and failed to pay for the dock space.
Marina owner J.J. Nelson took possession of the yacht in 1981. The boat was repeatedly vandalized and Nelson rejected an offer by a Nazi group in Chicago to buy the vessel for a shrine.
Last year, Nelson contacted Miami Beach officials about using the remains as a reef. It was transported last month from Jacksonville aboard a large barge.
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1989/Hitle ... 0f258cbb24
Here's the
Ostwind in better days:
ostwind-2-335x438.jpg
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