Lubeck
Shortly after 0600 hours the port-side pilot door was opened and we took on our pilot for our approach up the River Trave to the city of Lubeck. Conditions were as near to perfection as mid-September can provide: a clear sky, with a rising sun lighting the resort town of Travemunde on the starboard side, its bathing huts and yachts tidied up at summer’s end. To port, the magnificent sight of Passat, sister ship of Pommern that we had visited in Mariehamn earlier in the voyage. Between Travemunde and Lubeck a tranquil wooded landscape unfolded, flocks of cormorants flying low over the surface of the river and swans at the river’s edge.
The situation of Lubeck, the Queen of the Hanseatic cities, is one that we have come to appreciate from our visits to the lesser Hanseatic cities, most recently Gdansk. Hanseatic ports occupied protected positions some way inland from the coast, with river approaches - some twenty miles inland in the case of Lubeck – and then a protective canalized river system to define the city limits. First into view are the towers of the mediaeval churches. The twin towers of St Mary’s, the brick-built church that was the model for all the other brick-built churches with the same dedication that we have seen on our voyage. The tallest spire, that of St Jakobi, serves as a navigation mark, also a feature in other Hanseatic cities; it also has a chapel containing a lifeboat from the Pamir, another of the famous-line, that foundered off the coast of Buenos Aires in the mid-twentieth century. Our morning boat tour enables us to see the city from the water, true to its origins, with numerous warehouses with narrow but attractive frontages and, near the Holstentor, the salt warehouses that were the source of the city’s wealth, for salt was the white gold of the middle ages, essential as a preservative for foodstuffs before the age of refrigeration. One of the earliest canals to be constructed in Europe linked Lubeck to the salt-producing town of Luneburg.
Lubeck sat at the centre of the Hanseatic trading network. From the north, Lofoten Islands cod was brought down the Norwegian coast to Bergen, preserved in salt and distributed across Europe, a Catholic Europe that required fish as the meal for Fridays and most high days and holy days in addition. From the Low Countries to the south came finished cloth, made of British wool, and from the east through the Baltic that the Swedes still call the East Sea, via Novgorod and Visby, came products from the Levant, up the great river systems of Europe’s eastern frontier. Honey and wax, the latter for ecclesiastical uses, and from Constantinople itself precious silks and spices. Other luxury products that found their way to Lubeck from the Eastern Mediterranean were sugar and almonds that gave rise to the marzipan industry for which Lubeck continues to be associated. With Christmas already in sight, the season peak in trade at Lubeck’s celebrated marzipan stores is not far off.
Our morning walking tour of the city took in many of the principal sites, including the Holy Ghost Hospital. Afternoon options included a photo walk in this supremely photogenic city, and an ascent of the St Peters church tower for a magnificent bird’s-eye view of the mediaeval city. A nature walk around the canalized perimeter culminated with a visit to the city’s Botanical Garden, with a delightful sighting of a kingfisher along the way. We departed in the evening, with German beer and pretzels being served on the aft-deck, the Captain’s Farewell Dinner still ahead of us.
