The Seute Deern (Low German for Sweet Girl) – originally Elisabeth Bandi, later Bandi and Pieter Albrecht Koerts – is a wooden bark and restaurant ship in Bremerhaven. The ship was declared a cultural heritage in 2005 as part of the overall German Maritime Museum. On August 31, 2019 Seute Deern sank in the Old Port.
In 1919, the ship was launched at the Gulfportshipyard in Mississippi as a four-masted gaff schoonerElisabeth Bandi. It was made of fresh wood of longleaf pine in caravel method of construction without copper fittings (“worm skin”) put together, which led in the aftermath to extreme problems. The ship was constantly leaking due to warping of the hull and because of shipworms, and had to be pump out steadily and repaired after each trip. In 1925 it was sold to Walter E. Reid in Bath, Maine. The ship transported timber under the American flag before it was sold in 1931 to Europe to the Finnishshipowner William Uskanen from Sotkoma, who now used it as Bandi also in the timber trade between Finland, Denmark and England. The cool and salt-sparse Baltic Sea water stopped the worm and mussel damage. In 1935, the Bandi came to the Finn Laiva Bandi as a new owner, but the ship was handed over to the brokerage firm Yrjänen & Kumpp, Rauma, for chartering. After three years, no sufficient amount of cargo for the sailor could be found and it was sold on November 7, 1938 for 26,500 Reichsmark to the Hamburg shipowner John T. Essberger. He had the wooden ship overhauled by Blohm + Voss in Hamburg and converted into a barque with a steel rig. Within about half a year of work the ship was retreaded. A striking addition to the bark was a larger-than-life figurehead – a “Seute Deern” that adorned the stem and gave the bark the name Seute Deern. By the end of the Second World War, which the Bark outlasted by prudent captains, it was used in the Baltic Sea and adjacent waters as a freight training ship. At the end of the war she was moored Lübeck.
After the war, in June 1946, the bark was brought in tow to Travemünde to Schlichting shipyard for the purpose of transformation to a hotel ship. In 1947, the Seute Deern came in tow to Hamburg and lay as a hotel and restaurant ship in the harbor at the berth of the old Fähre VII. Due to increasing unprofitability, the shipping company Essberger sold the Seute Deern in 1954 for 40,000 Mark to Albert Jan Koerts, of American Dutch origin, to the Netherlands. He donated it as a floating youth hostel to his hometown Delfzijl under the name of his father Pieter A. Koerts (Pieter A. Koerts Foundation). After another ten years, the ship was again unprofitable because of the high maintenance costs and came back to Germany by selling it for 33,440 marks. In 1964 the new owner was the Emder restaurateur Erna Hardisty, the new home port became Emden. The ship got its former name Seute Deern again. Significant finishing work on the restaurant ship were needed. In addition, the again leaky wooden ship sank at its berth, which destroyed all plans. So it was sold in 1965 to the merchant Hans Richartz from Heligoland for now 61,000 marks. Richartz succeeded, after lifting the ship, in finishing the expansion and transformation of the bark at the Schröder shipyard in Emden to his own plans to a floating restaurant. on June 22, 1966, the bark was taken to their new mooring in the Old Port of Bremerhaven.
In 1972, the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven received the bark as a founding gift from the city of Bremerhaven. Both cities, Bremerhaven and Bremen, let the Seute Deern thoroughly overhaul again. This puts it among the world’s museum ships of today. The bark is a restaurant, museum and wedding ship, located in front of the Columbus Center. Over time, it has become a landmark of the city of Bremerhaven.
