Hitler’s Yacht, the Ostwind

The Ostwind, Hitler’s Yacht

The Ostwind, reputedly owned by Adolf Hitler, was sunk off the coast of Miami back in the 1980s. Its story begins with Germany’s disappointing performance at the 1936 Olympics, winning one gold, one silver, and one bronze in sailing. In response, Hitler commissioned a fleet of Olympic racing yachts constructed at the Bremen-based shipyard Burmeis & Wain and designed by renowned naval architect Heinrich Gruber.

Two 70-ton, 86-foot vessels, the Ostwind and the Nordwind, meaning “east wind” and “north wind” in German, were delivered in 1938. The Ostwind was constructed of mahogany planking over steel framing, with a teak, mahogany, rosewood, and walnut finish throughout the interior. The sails were made of Egyptian linen. The sleeping quarters contained 17 fancy bunks with sliding door medicine cabinets and silver-shell door pulls. The galley contained a deep freezer and a diesel-powered stove. Throughout the ship were silver eagled swastikas.

After the Nazi party’s defeat in 1945, the United States seized the ship as a war prize and was transported across the Atlantic on the USS Mercury, a U.S. Navy cargo ship. The Nordwind was said to be taken by the British and renamed White Rose. The Ostwind was reconditioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York, as a training vessel at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was quickly realized that the cost to maintain her would be too high, so she was put up for auction.

Commander John G. Lyman

Commander John Lyman, a colorful character with an eyepatch and a love for the sea, traveled across the South Pacific in a trading schooner before World War II. With 20 years of experience and knowledge of the area, he joined U.S. Naval Intelligence and mapped out routes and Japanese activity for the U.S. Navy. He docked his schooner for what he thought would be the duration of the war in the Coco Islands, but Japanese bombers left it a burning hulk. Toward the war’s end, he worked counterintelligence in Bavaria, when he heard of the Ostwind.

He tracked down the racing yacht and purchased it from a Norfolk man who acquired it at auction. Lyman brought it down to Miami, where he sailed it up and down the coast of Florida and made several trips to the Bahamas. The boat became known as “Hitler’s yacht,” and rumors spread of romantic vacations Hitler and Eva Braun would take. It was also rumored that other high-ranking officials, such as Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, also spent some time on the ship. Lyman was always skeptical of the rumors, having spoken to no one who saw them aboard the Ostwind or any photos of them.

By 1966, Lyman worked as an announcer at the Miami Seaquarium and had a large family with his wife and five children. It had been years since the ship was used and had been docked by his home on the Miami River for years, so it was put up for sale for $90,000. One of the prospective buyers, George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party, wanted to use it as a mobile headquarters. Lyman ended up selling the ship to Nicholas Masters, a Daytona Beach attorney, for $60,000.

The East Wind Rots in Florida

By 1969, the ship was moored by the Northwest 27th Avenue Drawbridge. From local residents’ descriptions, it looked like any other derelict ship on the river, having rotted there for years. On the morning of September 29th, the Coast Guard placed a red buoy nearby after finding the Ostwind underwater. It was raised out of the water, but after two weeks, it sank again.

In 1971, the yacht was moved to the Intracoastal Waterway near Flagler Beach, and the rotting hulk remained stuck in the mud for months. Horace Glass acquired the boat and took it to Jacksonville, where he spent the next 12 years and $178,000 restoring the aging vessel. He eventually gave up on the endeavor.

Plymouth, Mass., developer Charles Sanderson purchased the Ostwind for one dollar. As part of the deal, Sanderson would also inherit all the debt that came with it, including a $12,000 charge owed for docking. He planned to convert it into a World War II museum in Massachusetts, but this proposal infuriated local officials and residents. The work never materialized, and Sanderson eventually failed to pay for the dock space.

The Ostwind eventually came into the possession of marina owner J.J. Nelson of Jacksonville. For years, she remained in storage, gathering dust but remaining largely well-preserved—until rumors spread that she had once belonged to Adolf Hitler. The yacht was repeatedly vandalized, stripped by souvenir hunters, and even set on fire while Nelson received numerous threatening letters just for owning the boat. The American Nazi Party, again, offered to buy what remained of the ship for $500,000, but he declined to sell to them.

The Sinking of Hitler’s Yacht in Miami

Instead of being sold, the Ostwind was donated to Abraham Resnick, a Holocaust survivor and Miami Beach City Commissioner. What remained of the Ostwind would be destroyed and sunk off the coast of Florida to be transformed into an artificial reef. Resnick raised $20,000 to move the yacht from Jacksonville to Miami.

The sinking was planned to mark the 50th anniversary of the St. Louis tragedy, often referred to as the “Voyage of the Damned.” The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner that set sail in May 1939 with nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution. The ship initially sought asylum for its passengers in Cuba, but Cuban authorities denied them entry. Efforts to find refuge in the United States also failed, leaving the St. Louis with no choice but to return to Europe. While European countries eventually accepted some passengers, many were later killed during the Holocaust.

On June 4, 1989, the German yacht was rolled off a barge and sunk in a solemn ceremony. Among those in attendance were 27 survivors from the St. Louis, who embraced one another and sang Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem, as the yacht’s remnants vanished beneath the waves. Overhead, a plane flew by with a banner bearing the message: “Never Again.”

Instead of a poignant end to the Ostwind saga, the yacht had to be raised out of the water and sunk again. According to Resnick, the tugboat captain who towed the yacht from Jacksonville dropped the ship far from the intended drop site and landed on a living reef on a healthy bed of coral and sponges. The Army Corps of Engineers ordered the yacht moved, or government crews would dismantle the remains and bill Miami Beach officials. The Fountainbleau Hotel put up $10,000 to have the ship raised and sunk two miles east of the hotel. Her location is marked on charts as the Ostwind Reef.