History of passenger shipping on the Rhine
This article describes the development of passenger shipping on the Rhine after steam shipping began.
The first steamship , the English paddle steamer Defiance , reached Cologne on June 12, 1816 . The machine made twelve hp. A year later, James Watt jr. Coming with the Caledonia from England, the Rhine to Koblenz . However, not entirely without the help of tow horses.
First steamship company
With the appearance of the first steamships on the Rhine, a comfortable and fast means of transport was created for travelers. The travel times were shortened considerably.
The first steamship company was founded in Rotterdam on September 24, 1822 , the Rederij Van Vollenhoven, Dutilh & Co. The first scheduled transport for goods and people was started on June 3, 1823 between Rotterdam and Antwerp with the steamer De Nederlander . In October 1823 the Rotterdam– Nijmegen line was opened. In order to get more capital for the construction of new ships with which the traffic to Cologne should be carried out, the Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij (NSM) was founded in October under the direction of Gerhard Moritz Roentgen . The shareholders included the Cologne merchant Boisserée and the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta . Cologne merchants bought 50 shares in NSM, and in 1824 the De Zeeuw was built to haul barges from Rotterdam to Cologne. (The travel time of up to six weeks in the towboat business was reduced to six days.)
On October 29, 1824, towing maneuvers were demonstrated with this ship in Cologne; then the De Zeeuw drove under the command of Roentgens to the wild danger below Bacharach . Impressed by the capabilities of this ship, the Cologne merchants then set up their own shipping company. From July 1825 there was a regular service between Cologne and Rotterdam.
First German Rhine shipping company
On September 22nd, 1825, the Grand Ducal Badische Rheindampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft was founded in Karlsruhe to carry out the passenger and freight traffic between Mannheim and Basel . This was soon taken over by the steamship company of the Rhine and Main in Mainz , founded in 1825 . On June 11, 1826, the Prussian Interior Minister Friedrich von Schuckmann approved the establishment of the Preußisch-Rheinische Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (PRDG) in Cologne, later Cologne-Düsseldorfer (KD), one of the first German stock corporations.
The Mainz company had ordered two ships in the Netherlands for traffic between Mainz and Mannheim and Mainz to Frankfurt , the Concordia and the Friedrich Wilhelm . When the first ship, the Concordia, was delivered in spring 1827, it was found that the draft was too great for the voyage above Mainz. Both ships were sold to the Cologne company.
The Concordia was the first German steamship on the Rhine. It was 45 meters long, five meters wide and could carry 230 passengers and almost 60 tons of cargo. It was driven by a single-cylinder steam engine with 70 hp at 30 rpm. The paddle wheels had a diameter of 3.76 m. On May 26, 1827, the Friedrich Wilhelm was put into service as the second ship. With these two ships the regular service between Cologne and Mainz was started. The trip there and back took three days. On the first day from Cologne to Koblenz, on the second day from Koblenz to Mainz and on the third day the return journey from Mainz to Cologne. In addition to passengers and freight, horses and coaches were also transported. The Rheinisch-Prussische took over the Mainz company in 1832 and expanded its traffic to Strasbourg over the next few years. The Nijmegsche Stoomboot shipping company was founded in the Netherlands in 1830. It operated the Nijmegen - Rotterdam route with the cargo and passenger ships Willem I and Koningin der Nederlande and existed until 1858.
In 1836, the steamship company for the Lower and Middle Rhine was founded in Düsseldorf , because they were dissatisfied with the transport services of the NSM. The General Steam Navigation Company from London , which operated a regular service between London and Rotterdam, was also involved. The Düsseldorf company was supposed to sell tickets from the Rhine stations to London and thus act as competition to the NSM, which had carried over 17,500 passengers from the Rhine to London in 1838. In March 1838, the Düsseldorf company began operations, but was not allowed to travel to Holland because the Dutch government, contrary to the provisions of the Rhine Shipping Act of 1831 on the Free Rhine, had not given them permission to sail on Dutch waters. This was not submitted until autumn 1838.
Competition on the Rhine
From the autumn of 1838, the Cologne shipping company sailed regularly to Strasbourg with a connection to the ships of the French Service Générale de Navigation , which went to Basel . The Düsseldorf company operated the same route from 1840 with connection to the ships of the Basel shipping company Adler from the Upper Rhine . Over the years the Cologne team took over the ships of the French and Swiss. From March 1839, the NSM expanded its traffic to Mainz and Mannheim. In June 1839 an NSM ship in Koblenz was refused entry, the freight and passengers had to be reloaded onto a ship belonging to the Düsseldorf company. A great competition arose between the three large shipping companies NSM, Rheinisch-Prussische and Düsseldorfer. With special offers, races and increasingly comfortable ships, attempts were made to steal each other's customers. There were even deliberate collisions. As a consequence of this struggle, the Cologne and Düsseldorf united and on June 9, 1853 founded the Cologne-Düsseldorfer with a total of 28 ships.
Change in passenger shipping
With the construction of the railway lines on the Rhine, the number of passengers fell and a purely seasonal operation for excursions developed. In 1857 seven shipping companies with a total of 46 ships were registered for freight and passenger traffic on the Rhine. There were also eleven companies that only operated cargo ships.
Over the years, more and more regional shipping companies emerged on the Rhine, such as the Cologne company Gebrüder Weber, the lever shipping company in Boppard, the Luwen company in Duisburg-Ruhrort or the ships of the Rheinbahn Düsseldorf .
In 1927 there was an agreement between the KD and the NSR, which emerged from the NSM in 1859. The KD had taken over the majority of shares in the Dutch company, and so the Cologne-Düsseldorfer took over the passenger traffic and the NSR the freight traffic. This agreement lasted until the end of World War II. The NSR built the express steamer Juliana and five combi-motor ships. These were cargo ships equipped with passenger cabins that were used on regular routes from Rotterdam to Basel. These ships can be described as the predecessors of today's river cruise ships.
New beginning
The NSR was separated from the KD by order of the Allies and was now called NSRA, Nederlandsche Stoomboot Reederij Akkermans . In 1949 the KD rented several ships from the NSRA, which is now independent again. At the beginning of 1954, the NSRA ceased operations, the last steamers were scrapped and four combination ships were sold to the KD. These were converted into the passenger ships Bonn , Wiesbaden , Koblenz and Düsseldorf for day trips.
In addition to the numerous small local shipping companies on the Middle Rhine that only offer trips for day tourists, a new form of Rhine tourism developed from 1960: the multi-day trips from Rotterdam to Basel with modern cabin ships.
Shipping company list
- Van Vollenhoven, Dutilh & Co., founded in 1822
- NSM, 1823 as successor company, from 1859 NSR (shipping company)
- 1825, Grand Ducal Badische Rheindampfschifffahrtsges. Karlsruhe, taken over by in 1825
- 1825, Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft. Rhein und Main, Mainz, taken over by
- 1826, Preußisch-Rheinische Dampfschifffahrtsgesellsch. Cologne (RPDG)
- 1836, Steamship Company for the Lower and Middle Rhine , Düsseldorf
- Service Génerale de Navigation, Strasbourg, sold to RP in 1842
- Adler des Oberrheins, Basel, ships later to RP
- 1837, Geldersche Stoombootmaatschappij, Deventer
- June 9, 1853 The Prussian-Rhenish and Düsseldorfer merge to form KD
- 1871, Gebr. Weber, Cologne
- 1880, Stoombootreederij Concordia, Arnhem
- 1880, Mülheimer Dampfschiffahrtsgesellsch, Mülheim am Rhein, taken over by KD in 1925
- 1891, shipping company Philipp Hebel, Boppard
- 1914, Rheinbahn Düsseldorf starts shipping
- 1923, Moerser Dampfschifffahrt district
- 1923, Luwen Brothers Duisburg
- 1924, Basler Personenschifffahrts-Gesellschaft (BPG)
- 1927, KD takes over majority of shares in NSR, separated again after 1945
- 1930, Bingen-Rüdesheimer Fähr- und Schiffahrtsgesellschaft eG
literature
- Paul Koelner : The Basler Rheinschiffahrt from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age , Basel 1954
- Contributions to Rhine Studies, Issue 31, published by Rhein-Museum Koblenz, 1979
- Josef Dollhoff: The Cologne Rhine Shipping. From Roman times to the present , Bachem Cologne 1980, ISBN 978-3761605288
Web links
- Bibliography on paddle steamers on German and Swiss waters ( Memento from July 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
Footnotes
- ↑ website of BRFSG ( Memento of the original on 22 January 2009 at the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ faz.net of June 3, 2005: Rüdesheim: With cannons on deck, military service on the Main. History of the BRFSG
