Gert Lont is 22 years old and skipper of the WR6 when he can go to New Zealand for a few months in 1966. There he gets the opportunity to set up a new fishing method. Father Simon takes over Gert’s job as skipper at home on Wieringen. It’s a wonderful experience until a phone call from home changes his life forever. On January 11, 1967 his father Simon and Gerts crew members went missing at sea. After more than 55 years of uncertainty, Gert Lont is now anxiously awaiting whether a wreck diving team can find the cutter on the German seabed.
Gert Lont hopes that the wreck of the WR6 will finally be found – NH Nieuws
It may have been more than 55 years ago, but the grief is still there with the now 78-year-old Gert Lont from Hippolytushoef. During a wild storm, the WR6 sank with Gert’s father and two other crew members on board.
When the storm has passed, the search is on for the fishing cutter. No fewer than 24 Wieringer fishing boats went to the German island of Helgoland to search, but without result. All this time Gert is powerless in New Zealand. “Finish your work”, Gert was told by his mother, “because there is nothing”.
The hope that the cutter will still be found becomes smaller and smaller after days. Only a few months later Gert’s mother is visited by the police. A body has washed up on the German island of Amrum. Mother and son don’t hesitate for a second and drive there as fast as they can. “And there we identified him on the basis of a watch, a name in a collar and the teeth,” says Lont emotionally.
The family manages to get Simon’s body to the Netherlands, because it is their great wish to bury him at Wieringen. “In September 1967 we sailed there with two cutters and picked it up,” says Gert.
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Crew members
The body of Simon Lont therefore washed ashore a few months later, but the other two crew members Piet Everts and Gerrit Boerdijk were never found again. It is thought that they were asleep at the time of sinking and therefore sunk to the bottom of the sea. And although Gert could not have done anything to prevent the fatal accident, after all these years he is still very sad that this happened to his crew. “That stays with you for the rest of your life,” explains Gert.
“I’m going to look in the archives to see if there is more to be found”
New DNA research
The thought that the cutter has still not been found after years has haunted Lont all this time. A few years ago he is told that the police is starting a new project to search for unidentified drowned people through DNA of relatives. He immediately feels the urge to continue the search for the missing cutter. It was precisely at that moment that historian and fisheries researcher Cees Meeldijk contacted Lont.
“Otherwise, I’ll pick it up myself and look in the archives to see if there’s more to be found,” Meeldijk thought at the time. He searched all newspaper clippings, image banks, archives and statements from the time in search of information. Gert, Cees and several experts managed to narrow the search area again and again. In the end they came to the conclusion that the cutter had to be in a certain area and it was already known that there are a number of wrecks on the seabed.
Heap
Wreck diving team Zeester has been searching for the wreck of the WR6 for several days now in the search area near Helgoland. The team of volunteers, with years of experience diving wrecks, is hopeful that they can finally tell the bereaved where their loved ones died. It would give Gert a lot of peace, because after more than 55 years he still has not fully processed it. “You don’t dare to hope for it, but it would be nice if it is.”
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