page_title: Torfschiffswerft Schlussdorf
section_title: History of the shipyard
hierarchical_section_title: Torfschiffswerft Schlussdorf / History of the shipyard
caption_attribution_description: English: Torfschiffswerft Schlussdorf: Shipyard building hall half-finished Entenjäger boat
context_page_description: The Turf Shipyard in Schlussdorf, Lower Saxony, Germany, is a former boat builder's yard now used as an open-air museum. The yard, operating from 1850 to 1954, was specialised on barges to transport turf, that is dried peat used as fuel. In 1975 the Heimatverein Schlußdorf started to rescue the dilapidated shipyard buildings and reopened the site as a museum in 1977. The Turf Shipyard is about 3 kilometres north of Worpswede's outskirts.
  The Turf Shipyard is the only of its kind preserved in Northern Germany. As a museum it is undoubtedly in the front row of Worpswede's tourist sights. Among the attractions of the artists' village of Worpswede, the Turf Shipyard museum turned out to be a gem. The visit is especially recommended to people with children, as everything is presented very vividly.
context_section_description: In 1800 Johann 'Jan' Grotheer, then head of one of the 24 original colonist families, took the land lot Schlussdorf #6, readdressed Schlussdorfer Straße 22 in 1978. The Grotheers replaced their initial cottage by a solid farm building by 1820, and in 1850 Jan Grotheer built a boat builder's yard for his son Cord Hinrich Grotheer (1844–1914), at last led by his grandson Hinrich Grotheer (1871–1957). Boat builders established on mire rivers and turf canals, such as in Moorhausen upon Hamme, Mooringen, Trupermoor (there even two), Überhamm and Weyermoor, with Grotheer's in Schlussdorf having then been the best known in all the Teufelsmoor. 
  Over three generations the Grotheers launched more than 600 boats within the 104 years of boat building in Schlussdorf. Without constructional drawings they built their barges, each taking about six weeks of actual boat building. Besides turf barges, mostly for freight (such as fuel turf, or hay to be brought from the remote meadows to the barns at the farmsteads, or construction materials) the Grotheers also built locally typical passenger boats, the so-called Entenjäger (i.e. duck hunter). 
  Grotheers built their boats from long saisoned 10-metre-long (33 ft) oak wood and supplied them with lugsails of 10 square metres (110 sq ft). The barges from Schlussdorf belong to the class of Halbhuntschiffe with a capacity of c. 6 cubic metres (7.8 cu yd) or 50 standard baskets of turf (½ a Hunt) each. They could not be bigger because the Grotheers launched their turf boats to the Schlussdorf-Winkelmoorer Schiffgraben which – like many of its kind entering the Hamme or the Wümme – does not allow larger barges. 
  Boatbuilding was poorly paid. In the early 19th century a ½-Hunt barge cost Thl. 80, by its end ℳ 250-300 and ℳ 450 for a full-Hunt barge. In 1934 Heinrich Grabau paid for a ½-Hunt barge ℛℳ 450 to Hinrich Grotheer, with a down payment of ℛℳ 100 for wood. In 1950 a full-Hunt barge cost deutschmark (DM) 1,000. 
  One 1938-built boat from Schlussdorf is preserved in the Osterholz Traditions Museum in Osterholz-Scharmbeck. Another one, built in 1930 in Schlussdorf, was renovated and is now shown in Giehlermoor (a locality of Vollersode). In 1950 the Senate of Bremen ordered the last turf barge in Schlussdorf which Hinrich Grotheer laid down in 1951. The turf barge was completed in 1954 and hauled by low-loader to Bremen where it was used as a working boat on the Weser. Decommissioned in 1954 the shipyard went into rack in the following decades, especially after Hinrich Grotheer's death in 1957.
caption: An Entenjäger (a type of passenger boat) inside the shipyard hall, early 1990s
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