You might as well be coming upon the bones of an epic dragon straight out of some fantasy saga so out of place is the shipwreck of the Eduard Bohlen inexplicably lying a good half mile inland due to the shifting sands of the last century. I have a confession, shooting this wreck has been on my bucket list before I even had the chance to visit Namibia so you can imagine the glee I felt when the chance to see her popped up. The journey to her was just as immense. We left behind the towering dunes of Sandwich Harbour with her treacherous sheer drop slipfaces and entered the Cape Fur Seal dominated coast of Conception Bay which in stark contrast to Sandwich Harbour is flat almost as far as the eye can see. So the 310ft long Eduard Bohlen can be seen growing on the horizon long before you have reached her.
The Eduard Bohlen - Ran aground September 5, 1909.
Namib Desert, Skeleton Coast, Namibia, Africa
I have had the good fortune to return to Namibia and the Eduard Bohlen again on a subsequent trip to Namibia and I even had the slightly spooky experience of visiting the wreck at night while Namibia’s famous sea fog(what we call a haar in Scotland) limited visibility down to a few feet and her resident jackal’s came out to see who was intruding on their sleep. Time had taken its toll on her since my previous visit and her bow had finally succumbed to the desert and collapsed. This literally did make her night time profile look like some skeletal dragon to me. I’ll let you judge yourself. On the return trip back to our camp at night the fog cleared and the night sky came out to play.
As to fate of the Eduard Bohlen crew and passengers all those years ago in 1909, they all survived, the Namib Desert was deceptively full of industry at that time for such an uninhabited area of Africa. You had a plethora of nearby diamond mining towns in Conception Bay and a whaling station further south at Meob Bay. The quickly shifting sands meant they quickly gave up on salvage attempts and so she remains.
I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I did capturing them but I'll be brutally honest in admitting this is one of theses sights you have to see in the flesh.... and better yet, visit with your own camera and tripod in tow.
© 2026 Johnny Graham
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