Daniel Wienholt

Daniel Wienholt was aboard the ill-fated frigate 'Lutine' which sank between the Frisian islands of Vlieland and Terschelling, off Holland's coast, on 9 October 1799. The ship was en route from Yarmouth Roads (Great Yarmouth) to deliver a large amount gold and silver to Hamburg. His body was found washed ashore some 350 miles further north, on the Island of Sylt, Germany (which was then part of Denmark). There he was buried on 11 November 1799.

According to The Eccentric Mr Wienholt, by Rosamond Siemon, Daniel was carrying £40,000 on the Lutine for investment in the House of Parish & Co., Hamburg.

The tablet to his memory in the church at Westerland, Sylt, reads: "Sacred to the memory of Daniel Wienholt second son of John Wienholt Esq of Great St Helen's in the City of London, merchant, who was lost to the inexpressible grief of a mother, a brother and a sister in HBM Frigate 'Lutine' off the coast of Holland in the night of the 9th Oct. 1799. Having drifted on the shore of Sylt, he was discovered by Herrn Straendvoyt Decker to whom the family owe a debt of gratitude for his great attention and for his careful preservation of the property found on the body which was interred in Westerland churchyard on the 11 Nov. 1799."

Little information can be found online regarding more than 200 other victims of the disaster, of whom only one survived. An account on Wikipedia suggests that most were buried in a mass grave near the Brandaris lighthouse on Terschelling. It seems extraordinary, then, that Daniel's body drifted so far away.

It is likely that the Wienholts knew some of the other merchants on board. According to this source: www.dutchjewry.org/genealogy/cohen_amers/30.htm, one of the victims, Joseph Hartog Schabracq, had been sent on the voyage by the Goldsmid family with whom he had business and family connections. A cousin of Daniel's, Caroline Birkett (born 1799), later married Albert Goldsmid, son of one of the Goldsmid brothers, Benjamin.