Brancaster's Disappearing Landmark
The SS Vina defied the RAF but has lost it's battle against time and tide...
Lost to the sands. SS Vina before she succumbed to the forces of nature (Julian Dowse/geograph)
The romance that surrounds the subject of shipwrecks is undeniable.
It’s place in popular folklore was heightened by the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. A calamitous tale of complacency that led to a seafaring tragedy that had been perceived as impossible.
Titanic became, instantaneously, the definitive shipwreck, a byword for loss on an almost incalculable scale with it’s place in history reinforced when its last resting place was finally revealed in 1985. A smash hit film followed in 1997 and, with it, Titanic’s place in popular culture and in the consciousness of anyone who dreams of “...a tall ship and a star to steer her by” forever.
The truth of it is that few people can resist the lure of a shipwreck.
A fact of life that used to extend to even to those shapeless lumps of rusting iron that laid on a sandbank just off the popular beach at Brancaster. They may have looked innocuous enough yet, for several decades, that flame to the imagination that any shipwreck ignites meant that this one remained an irresistible magnet to the curious, unwary and, more often than should be the case, the positively foolhardy.
Once you’d got this far, it was time to get back-and quickly. (Julian Dowse/geograph)
The now fast disappearing remains in question are that of the SS Vina, a coaster ( a shallow hulled ship used for trade between ports, in this case, sailing a route between those on Britain’s east coast and those on the Baltic) that was built by the famous Scottish shipbuilders Ramage and Leith in Leith for J T Salvesen & Co. Ltd.
Coasters were worked very hard and sailed in predominantly rough seas and unforgiving weather so, when Vina was nearing the end of her useful seagoing life in 1940, she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy for wartime use as a blockship (ie) one that is deliberately sunk in order to prevent the ingress of an aggressive enemy force into a key port or harbour. She was, at the time, one of just three vessels of her type that the owners possessed, the other nine having been lost to enemy U-Boat action. Vina’s ultimate fate therefore, was to be scuttled near the harbour mouth at Great Yarmouth, an action that would have, temporarily at least, delayed any planned Nazi invasion along that part of the coast.
Thus, with her hold packed with explosives and concrete, Vina was towed into position and left there for four years before, with the threat of invasion abating by the day, she was moved again, this time to the shallow waters off Titchwell (a mile or so to the west of Brancaster) where she was scheduled to be used as target practice for the allied air forces that would be taking place in the invasion of Normandy on D Day in 1944.
Yet Vina, the great survivor, did not want to die such a violent death. Imbued still with the spirit of the sea and with the salt still running through her iron veins, she slipped from her anchorage during a gale on the night of 19/20 August 1944 and ran adrift, sailing for one final time as a sea going vessel before running aground in the shallow waters to the west of Scolt Head island which is where she resides to this day, albeit as a ship that has finally almost sunk from view in the soft and ever viscous sand that has finally embraced her.
Not an adventure playground. The warning ignored by so many (Julian Dowse/geograph)
If you took a trip to Brancaster on a hot summers day in order to enjoy the wide open spaces and skies that this triumph of the Norfolk countryside has to offer, you could reliably cast a leisurely eye over to Vina’s last resting place and count how many explorers and would be treasure hunters could be seen picking over her skeletal remains.
On some days the crowds of people gathered out there would have been more befitting to Stonehenge rather than Vina’s much more recent remains of which her triple expansion engine was perhaps the most identifiable part. Hardly treasure and hardly, as it stands, a sight worth losing your life for. Powerful currents run between the wreck site and the beach and there have been instances of unwary sightseers drowning after walking out to take a closer look only to find themselves cut off by the incoming tide.
A striking image against the Norfolk skies and a wreck that, just like any other, has a fascinating story to tell. People will still, no doubt, stroll over to where the last visible remnants of her can be seen, captivated by the ongoing mystery of a shipwreck before she is completely lost to the fast flowing sands being deposited along the beach from east to west.
Take a look by all means. But rest assured, there really is nothing to see here. But, if you must, do so from a safe distance.
And by that I mean the beach.