the Jura story

It was February 12, 1864, when in dense fog the paddle steamer “Jura” set course for Constance. Captain Motz continuously operated the fog bell when suddenly the steamer “Stadt Zürich” emerged from the dense fog and collided with the “Jura”. The bow of the “Stadt Zürich” bores into the starboard side of the “Jura”. The Jura has a hole of about three meters, partly below the waterline.

The “Jura” sinks within a few minutes. It was not the first ship to sink by the “Stadt Zürich”.

A sailor and a waitress lost their lives. The ship went into oblivion until about 90 years later when the shipwreck was rediscovered by divers during a search in an airplane crash in 1954. The two skeletonized bodies of the sailor and the waitres were also found and recovered. Until that time, only one dead sailor was known to have died in the shipwreck.

The 42-meter-long ship wreck, which was submerged under water, lies at a depth of 38 meters between Bottighofen and Münsterlingen, on the Swiss side in the lake of Constance.