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Thanks Wendy. I completely missed the fact that the sentence was part of a conversation!

Hello Tom, if you read this sentence in context, you will see that it is part of a conversation and that someone is speaking in the 'present tense' . He is describing what it is like in the ferry house now, not how it was in the past.
This is the continuation of his sentence: Afterwards I thought it would sound even more natural if it was written so:
It's just becoming more and more dreary and hopeless here at the ferry house." (Don't forget the quotation marks at the end of the sentence, because this is where he finishes speaking.

Wendy, Even though the German verb is in the Präsens tense I prefer to translate using the English past tense in a story narrative.

Tom, as this is part of a conversation, may I suggest:
It just becomes more and more dreary and hopeless here at the ferry house."