Sunken World War II-era tugboat emerges as Europe’s drought reveals lost relics
A historic steam tugboat that sank more than 80 years ago has emerged from shrinking waters in Serbia as extreme heat and drought grip Europe.
The rusting hull of the Slovenian surfaced earlier this month from the Sava River near Sremska Mitrovica, about 70km northwest of the Serbian capital Belgrade.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Century-old wartime shipwreck emerges in Serbian river
Parts of the wreck have appeared above the water before, but locals say it has never been so exposed.
“It’s been several years since it was last seen, so there is quite an interest,” said historian Andrija Popovic, who is the head of the town museum.
“It’s truly something you don’t see every day,” he added about the boat, which has been dubbed “Sava’s Titanic” by Serbian media.
Its reappearance is among a series of extraordinary discoveries emerging from Europe’s rapidly shrinking waterways, with warships, mammoth bones and ancient structures exposed as river levels plunge.
Record-low levels on the Danube have severely impacted nuclear power plants in Hungary and Romania and disrupted traffic along Europe’s second-longest river.
The months-long drought has also ravaged crops from the Netherlands to Bosnia and caused water shortages extending into the Alps.
The Slovenian was built in a Budapest shipyard in 1913, when Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The roughly 54m-long steam-powered vessel was initially named Vag, after Slovakia’s longest river, the Vah, and was used to pull heavy cargo between Budapest and other towns along the Danube.
After the war and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ownership was transferred as part of war reparations to the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which would later become Yugoslavia.
“This is when it was renamed the Slovenian,” Popovic said, adding that it’s a mystery “why this name was chosen.”
During World War II, the vessel came under Nazi German occupation along with Yugoslavia.
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