Restoring the Rudder of Nelson’s Flagship

Working in a specially constructed dry dock at a museum in Jutland, experts are painstakingly restoring the huge 11.5 metre-long rudder of the St George , which sank off Denmark’s North Sea coast on Christmas Eve 1811, a month after this rudder had been lost in a storm. The oak rudder, weighing 8.5 tons and complete with brass mountings, protective copper sheathing plate and pintles, was recovered by divers in January this year from the sea at Nysted, off the southeastern Danish island of Lolland in the Baltic, during the building of an offshore windturbine park.

‘The loss of the rudder was the cause of the tragedy which later overtook the St George . The ship was fitted with a replacement rudder temporarily but it proved too weak to face another major storm,’ says Lars Froberg Mortensen, curator at the St George Shipwreck Museum at Thorsminde, on the west coast of Jutland. ‘We hope to exhibit the rudder next spring, after completing a special treatment involving linseed oil, in a new extension to the museum, but in the meantime the public can watch the restoration work as it proceeds.’