Intro
My first dive on the Oldenburg was the epitome of the adventure that my trip to Norway turned out to be. I was alone, had to take winding mountain roads and car ferries, then locate the dive site, and then navigate underwater to find the wreck since the surface buoy was missing — and it was basically a night dive. It was one heck of an adventure. Read on…
I conducted two dives on the D/S Oldenburg — the most successful merchant raider ship in history. When it was previously named Möwe it sank, mined, or captured somewhere between 42 and 50 allied ships depending upon which reference you believe.
On the first dive I was alone and it includes a fun tale of adventure and I was just happy to find the wreck. The second dive was with a couple other divers and my plan was to venture to the deeper portion of the wreck at the stern and photograph the rudder and propeller.
In this post, I’ll cover logistics of how to get to / find the wreck (it is a shore based dive), provide a “cheat sheet” map, and give a detailed history of the D/S Oldenburg. I will also post the photos I took.
Dive 1 – Finding the Oldenburg
The weather was very windy and rainy in Gulen while I was there (predicted wind gusts out near the wrecks at 30+ knots). In fact, it was bad enough that the only options to dive were to explore the house reef (which is quite nice but not a wreck) or go on an “adventure” to dive the Oldenburg wreck. Anybody who knows me can probably guess which option I took.
Ørjan and Richard kindly provided me some background on how to get there.
Step 1 : Drive to Vadheim which involved some very twisty, windy, steep mountain roads to get from the dive center to Oppedal, then a car ferry to Lavik and then a short drive to the town of Vadheim. I still hadn’t taken a ferry in Norway but figured that this would probably be the “easy” part of the trip and I was right.
Step 2 involved finding the spot to dive from. They basically said “well, there is an unmarked road right before you cross the river and get into town and then you go down to a red house.” Of course, pretty much every house in Norway is red so that doesn’t really help. Richard was kind enough to draw me a map:
At this point, I was still figuring that I could probably find the dive spot. But then the real interesting directions were provided.
Step 3: Usually there is a marker buoy on the bow of the wreck but the last time they visited it was missing. Hmmmm. When there is a buoy, you can gear up at the steps and then swim to the bow and drop down. Without a buoy, I was told the best way to find the wreck was to instead schlep your gear through a little trail to a pier and then jump off the pier, swim straight ahead, drop down after a bit and keep swimming in that direction…
Step 4 : After you are done diving, you can’t exit back to the pier because there is no way to get out of the water. Therefore, you have to “just keep swimming in the direction the bow is pointing and you will somewhat end up back at the steps where you can take off your gear and go up the steps.”
Well, that all sounds easy enough.
Without a better plan, I packed up my car with all my gear, drysuit, etc. and headed out on my adventure. I actually found the location pretty easily but it was definitely raining which made gearing up interesting. I had decided (wisely) to only bring a GoPro and a single video light and limit my dive to about 140 feet and only bring a single bailout tank and limit my deco to 15 minutes.
I took all the gear out of my car, got my undergarments on and donned my drysuit inside the car since it was raining and I didn’t want to start the dive with wet undergarments. I took my bailout tank, fins, etc. to the pier and then walked over there with my rebreather on. Without a railing and with a very slippery, wet wooden pier, it can be VERY tricky to put on a bailout tank and fins. I’ll leave the machinations to your imagination, but I can say it wasn’t pretty.
The Dive
I actually did find the wreck and stuck with my plan.
The wreck was very, very eerie. It was very dark in the water and the visibility was very limited. The ship is on her port side and actually a bit overhanging. Because it was so dark, when I started poking around the superstructure, I found myself actually “inside” the wreck because you couldn’t differentiate between the black of the interior and the blackness of the water. I stuck to my plan and did about a one hour total dive time. After about 35 minutes, I started my ascent up the slope and, miraculously, ended up pretty close to the steps. I managed to get all my gear off and back up the steps.
Dive 1 Videos & Pictures
Since I only had a GoPro, below are a couple quick videos and still from my first foray to the Oldenburg. I had a video light in one hand and the GoPro in the other hand so it was quite tricky trying to take videos and deal with drysuit inflation, diluent addition, etc.
You can really get a sense of how dark & eerie the wreck can be when there is bad visibility and no/limited natural light!
Below is another clip of some kind of pressure tank that is inside the superstructure area:
The third clip is a bathtub that is also in the superstructure and close to the tank so I’m guessing the tank was used to heat water for the bathtub? You can also get a sense of the entanglement hazards and the rotting wood structure. Very eerie.
I also took a few still photos from the GoPro that I’ve posted below. Note all the entanglement hazards and how dark the conditions are. Near the bow, you can see the greenish color of the water.
I was very happy to have successfully executed my solo mission and find the wreck!
Dive 2 – Exploring the Deeper Sections
Since I was alone on the first dive and didn’t have anybody to help me, I only had a single tank of bailout which was regular air so I didn’t want to venture deeper than 140 feet or so. On the second dive which was a couple days later, Orjan and Richard were there and I had the idea to rig up a rope so that Richard could lower bailout tanks, camera, etc. from the pier. This approach would allow me to navigate a known path and to jump in with only my rebreather and then don my two bailout tanks (necessary for a deeper and longer runtime) and my real camera setup.
The plan worked well and I navigated to the wreck and started taking pictures as I was headed deeper along the deck of the ship. It kept going and going and going…. At one point, I decided that I would spend two more minutes going down the wreck and, if I didn’t find the prop/rudder, I would turn around and go back. Sure enough, a minute later I saw the end of the wreck and went around to the keel to find the prop.
Once again, it was very, very dark (especially at that depth) and the water had a lot of particulates so pictures were challenging but I managed to get a few decent photos.
One thing to note is that there appeared to be multiple skylights along my traverse of the deck. I’m sure at least one went to the engine room and I’m not sure where the others went. Maybe to the boiler room? They also had cool glass ports on them and one was wide open which was very enticing but I was basically diving alone and didn’t have anybody to help or watch me.
Skylights
There are multiple skylights on the wreck and they have very cool portholes & glass.
Stern & Prop/Rudder
Below are photos of the very end of the stern including some sort of superstructure, and of the prop. The prop & rudder are very interesting. The gear that rotates the rudder is very large and very obvious. It is a little hard to see, but there is a very large rock resting on the rudder just aft of the prop. I have no idea how it go there.
Other Areas
Below are pictures of a few other interesting areas. Most notably, the cool wood texture that has managed to be somewhat preserved after almost 80 years in saltwater. I also noted a room that had some tile on the floor (now a “wall” since the wreck sits on her port side). I’m assuming it is a kitchen or bathroom area.
D/S Oldenburg History
The D/S Oldenburg started life in 1914 as the refrigerated transport vessel D/S Pungo and carried bananas from Cameron to Germany.
Soon thereafter, WW I erupted and in 1915 Germany converted the Pungo into a heavily armed auxiliary merchant raider and renamed her Möwe. Refrigerated ships generally had to be fast to deliver their cargo before it spoiled; therefore, they were favored for conversion into raider ships. The Möwe had multiple cannons, torpedo tubes and 500 mines. Raider ships would sail under false names and flags and conceal their weapons and crews and then attack and capture or sink enemy cargo ships.
The Möwe became the most successful warship of all time and sank, mined, or captured 42 (or more) allied ships.
After the end of WW I, the ship was ceded to the English in 1918 as a war reparation and she was renamed SS Greenbrier. She was reconverted and went back to carrying bananas for a period of time. She was then bought by German shipping company Deutsche Seeverkehrs AG “Midgard” in 1933 and renamed to D/S Oldenburg. During WW II, she was put into service again but used as a cargo ship going between Germany and Norway and was outfitted with guns and anti-aircraft weapons.
You can just make out the “Oldenburg” on the bow in the picture above and note the distinctive serpent logo on the funnel. Below is another picture I found which isn’t quite as good.
On 7 April 1945, she was anchored near Vandheim with a cargo full of fish and on her way to Germany. A squadron of British Beaufighters and Mustang fighters attacked her and scored several hits. The Oldenburg fought back with her anti-aircraft guns but she was a sitting duck. Several hits were below the waterline and the Oldenburg began to sink.
I found a picture of the attack taken from the attacking aircraft. It is very grainy but you can make out two rockets being fired in the lower left of the photo and then two ships at anchor. The upper vessel is the D/S Wolfgang L.M. Russ and the lower one is the D/S Oldenburg.
Below is another picture from the RAF from another angle:
According to the Dykkepedia website, only one German was injured and the Russian prisoners of war who were onboard managed to escape without dying. According to another source, seven antiaircraft gunners and one crew member were badly wounded. A picture exists of the ship sinking but I can’t find a good source with decent resolution.
The ship itself is almost 400 feet long (117m) and has a berth of almost 50 feet (45m) which is pretty large ship.
The Wreck
The Oldenburg lies on her port side and at a slight list/angle such that the deck is an acute angle to the seabed floor. Her bow is about 165 feet (50m) from the shoreline. She slopes downhill with her bow in about 120 feet (35m) of water, the superstructure starts in about 130 feet (39m) and the stern is deep in about 245 feet (75m) of water. There are a bunch of rocks against the keel that form the slope (especially in the deeper sections).
Below is a map from Orjan of the wreck site:
When the buoy is in place, the normal entry/exit is at the steps by the red barn. Without the buoy, if you don’t know the wreck, the best way to find it is to “leap” off the pier that is a short walk from the parking area. On the second dive, as I was leaving the wreck, I did notice and follow a line that led up the slope. It stopped about 30 feet (10m) deep but it does “point the way” as you are exiting the wreck and doing your decompression and heading towards the exit. The deco profile is nice as it just follows the slope up the hill.
Below is a picture of the pier I used to enter the water and the steps I used to exit and a view from the pier looking back towards the parking area where the steps are with the town of Vadheim off to the right (you can see my RAV4 in the parking area).
As you can see in the various maps and diagrams, the mouth of a river is just north of the wreck. The result is that a lot of cold freshwater is dumped into area of the wreck. Orjan mentioned that it is the likely reason that so much of the wood is still preserved since it isn’t a very salty body of water with the runoff.
In fact, when I was there, there was so much rain that the outflow from the river was mixing with the incoming tidal flow and causing some mini-whitecaps in the water.
A few other items to note if you are going to dive the wreck. There are a LOT of hazards on the wreck including ropes, collapsing interiors, fishing line, the overhang of the deck making penetration sometimes tough to judge, etc.
For anybody who wishes to dive the wreck, I made a more detailed diagram of the dive site, compass headings, notes, etc.
References
Going Under : Diving on the D/S Oldenburg by Darren H. Thanks and Robin M. Rondeau
One thought on “D/S Oldenburg (Vadheim, Norway — 80->230 fsw)”