Ship Chandlery The Family Arnold has been operating its ship chandlery here in this location since 1884. In such a place of business, the residents of Brake as well as the crew members of the sailing ships laying over in the harbor were able to purchase everything they needed for their personal use, including colonial goods such as cocoa, coffee and tobacco. Above all, however, the assortment encompassed equipment required in the work onboard, such as buckets, cordage and blocks as well as lamps and oil. A good supplier of ships had to be capable of delivering provisions for 100 daily rations per crew member of a large tall ship within a single day. Today, the Hillrich Arnold GmbH is engaged not only in the shipchandlery, but also in trading mineral oil, and it owns a bunker vessel involved in underway operations. [More]
Public House For nearly twenty years, from 1845 to 1866, Brake was also an emigrant harbor. Thereby, the year 1854 represented the peak with more than 7,000 passengers. The “Public House” is a witness with regard to this era. Prospective emigrants often spent weeks waiting here for the chance to set sail. During that time, facilities such as the “Public House” served them as a store or a place of dwelling. Even the local ship chandleries catered to this group of people. Indeed, the “Public House” and the ship chandleries were located beneath the same roof. In 1866, a small group of emigrants commenced the last transit from Brake into the New World. Bremerhaven had already specialized in this lucrative transport business. In 1854, more than 75,000 people were transported from Bremerhaven towards America. [More]
Tobias Anton Tobias (1777-1849) was an extraordinarily successful personality in Brake. In 1802, he opened at the age of 25 initially a bakery. He sold his bread to the crews of the numerous ships moored in Brake. Thereby, he laid the foundation for his subsequent wealth. Shortly thereafter, he founded a brewery, a shipping line, a shipyard and a train oil distillery. Above all, his son Christian Tobias (1803-1876) was involved with a fleet of 13 ships, including the barque "Azaria", displayed as a model in the Maritime Museum, in hunting down seals and whales near Greenland as well as in the South Pacific. The inscription on the facade of the storehouse, first built in 1890, reminds us of the bygone era. [More]
Maritime Museum - Haus Borgstede & Becker The packing house was built in 1808 by the ship broker and the subsequent shipyard owner Hinrich Oltmanns. It served as an interim storage facility of the company “Oltmanns & Seeman”, allowing freight and commercial goods to be temporarily kept until their further transport by ship. On the ground floor, a ship´s chandler store was opened from early on.As of 1818, the British Vice Consul and an agent of the North German Lloyd, John Saville MacNamara, lived here with his wife, who became entwined with countless legends. Following MacNamars death in 1845, Johann Hinrich Borgstede and Julius Ludwig Becker, two businessmen from Brake, purchased the building, and this became the exclusive property of Becker a year later, remaining in the family until 1979. In 1985, this house, known as “Haus Borgstede & Becker”, became the second site of the Maritime Museum of the Oldenburgian Lower Weser. [More]