Melanie Schulte (ship)
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The Melanie Schulte was a general cargo ship operated by the Emder shipping company Schulte & Bruns and the Hamburg trading company Toepfer , which sank in the North Atlantic just a few weeks after its commissioning on November 9, 1952 for reasons that have not yet been finally clarified . The last contact with the ship was made on the evening of December 21, 1952. The Maritime Administration in Hamburg assumed the probable cause of the loss was an unbalanced loading of the ship sailing in stormy seas, which is why the loading regulations for ore-transporting cargo ships flying the German flag were changed shortly thereafter . The sinking cost the lives of 35 crew members and is considered one of the most serious marine casualties in German merchant shipping after the Second World War .
Economic background
The shipping company Schulte & Bruns had been based in Emden since 1890 - initially as a branch of the Papenburg shipping company of the same name , and since 1917 as an independent company. The shipping company was active in both inland and maritime shipping - primarily in cargo shipping, later also in herring fishing . After the Second World War , the company was initially subjected to the economic restrictions imposed by the Allied occupying powers. After the conclusion of the Agreement on the Surveillance of Industry , Annex C to the Petersberg Agreement , in April 1951 , the limitations and restrictions on the size and speed or the tonnage of merchant ships built or otherwise acquired by Germany fell, Schulte & Bruns decided to participate in merchant shipping with larger ships. In those years, the port of Emden was still one of the main import ports of iron ore for the smelters in the Ruhr area . Emden shipping companies participated in the import business, but also transported ore between other ports. In order to avoid empty journeys as much as possible, the ships also picked up other goods in the ports of discharge, especially North American grain on the North Atlantic west-east voyage of those days . The Hamburg agricultural trading company Toepfer took a 50 percent stake in the freighter. Owner Alfred Toepfer not only had a weakness for seafaring , the entry into the shipping business also seemed worthwhile for his company for tax reasons. The participation took place when the ship was already under construction. The outward sign of the entry of the Hamburg company was that the Hanseatic city became the home port of the ship. The Emden shipping office of Schulte & Bruns took over the operational economic control.
The ship
The Melanie Schulte was built at the Nordseewerke shipyard in Emden. Although the shipping company also had its own shipyard , its building sites were subject to size restrictions. The ships of the Emden class had been developed by the Nordseewerke as universally usable general cargo carriers with a reinforced double floor , which made them particularly suitable for use in ore shipping . With an overall length of 143 meters, a measurement of 6,380 gross register tonnes and a carrying capacity of around 10,000 tdw, the ships of that class were the largest that the shipyard had built after the Second World War. The freighter was a shelter decker with superstructures arranged amidships. He had five cargo holds (three in front of and two behind the deckhouse ), each with an intermediate deck . The loading gear consisted of twelve 3/5 ton loading booms and a heavy lift boom . The hull was riveted to 60% (e.g. all longitudinal seams of the plate ducts of the outer skin and all frames) and 40% welded . Only welders approved by Germanischer Lloyd were used for the welding work on the main units of the ship and 70% of all welds were x-rayed. The X-ray showed only minimal errors that were immediately corrected. Based on experience with the previously built sister ships of Emden series which received Melanie Schulte additional steerage ballast tanks to improve the seaworthiness of ballast voyages. A special feature for the ship's officers at the time was that there was a fireplace in the saloon with Delft tiles . The bow of the ship was decorated with the coat of arms of his home port .
When launching the vessel on September 9, the freighter was not running from the slipway , but remained for several hours on the running track has stuck. During an investigation of the consequences of the launch, including a longitudinal strength calculation, only small dents were found in the floor area, which, according to the judgment of Germanischer Lloyd and other experts, were less than comparable normal dents during the operating time of such a ship and did not represent any damage to the ship's formation. The Melanie Schulte had from the ship classification society Germanischer Lloyd , the classification + 100 / A 4 E get so corresponded entirely with the then applicable building codes.
crew
| Team List of Melanie Schulte | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| position | Surname | birthday | origin |
| captain | Heinrich Rohde | September 28, 1905 | Hamburg |
| 1st Offz. | Lorenz Tebbens | March 17, 1920 | Rhaudermoor |
| 2nd Offz. | Arend Freerks | June 26, 1921 | HH Stellingen |
| 3rd Offz. | Manfred von Schuckmann | Nov 5, 1921 | Bremen |
| Radio officer | Helmut Balzerssen | Jan. 9, 1927 | Brunsbüttelkoog |
| Lt. Ing. | Wilhelm Finkhausen | Apr 17, 1902 | Bremen |
| 2. Ing. | Wilhelm Goerlach | July 20, 1910 | Aurich |
| 3. Ing. | Helmuth Andree | Nov 7, 1904 | Quakenbrück |
| 3. Ing. | Johannes Niebuhr | Feb. 2, 1914 | HH-Eidelstedt |
| electrician | Georg Krause | 4th July 1925 | Emden |
| Engineer assistant | Gerhard Welzel | 2nd July 1930 | Empty |
| Engineer assistant | Rolf Brodthagen | Oct. 30, 1934 | Borkum |
| Engineer assistant | Wilhelm Lindenbeck | Oct. 20, 1931 | Jheringsfehn |
| cook | Ms. Wilhelm Wiethüchter | Nov. 27, 1930 | Bremen |
| Cook's mate | Johannes van der Wall | Feb. 18, 1931 | Jheringsfehn |
| Salon steward | Werner Oldenburger | Oct. 24, 1914 | Aurich |
| Exhibition steward | Rudolf Giebner | Jan. 10, 1928 | Emden |
| Fair boy | Jürgen Boelsen | Oct 2, 1936 | Norderney |
| Fair boy | Georg Schweers | Nov 18, 1936 | Aurich |
| Boatswain | Willi Schlimmermeyer | 4th July 1916 | Empty |
| Carpenter | Hermann Fokkena | December 24, 1925 | Emden |
| sailor | Bernhard Pommer | Nov 29, 1932 | Empty |
| sailor | Johannes Weber | Sept. 14, 1920 | Warsingsfehn |
| sailor | Hermann Guhling | Jan. 29, 1923 | Hamburg |
| sailor | Heinrich G. Freese | March 8, 1932 | Empty |
| sailor | Werner Nickel | December 20, 1928 | HH-Bramfeld |
| Ordinary seaman | Horst Kimmerle | Jan. 13, 1936 | Düren |
| Ordinary seaman | Johann Tromp | Sept. 30, 1932 | Loppersum |
| Young man | Fritz Cassens | 4th Sept 1935 | Neermoor |
| Deck boy | Alfred Körte | Dec 14, 1931 | Westrhauderfehn |
| Deck boy | Hans Misenta | Oct. 20, 1932 | LU-Oppau |
| Deck boy | Konrad Berlage | March 27, 1930 | Papenburg |
| cleanser | Paul Dirks | Feb. 22, 1930 | Back |
| cleanser | Jan Hesse | Nov 19, 1929 | Emden |
| cleanser | Walter Pätzold | Dec 10, 1926 | Neermoor |
The Melanie Schulte had a crew of 35 men. The captain, Heinrich Rohde, was considered an experienced ship master in the ore trade. He was still at sea on sailing ships and, among other things, served as a second officer on the HAPAG passenger steamer Patria . Lorenz Tebbens and Arend Freerks acted as first and second officers. Tebbens had already sailed for over a year on the sister ship Henriette Schulte and was therefore very familiar with the type of ship. The third officer , Manfred von Schuckmann, had started his naval career as a midshipman on the battleship Tirpitz and survived its sinking in 1944. Radio officer Helmut Balzerssen was responsible for contact with the outside world. The oldest crew member was the 50-year-old chief engineer Wilhelm Finkhausen, the youngest on board the mess boy Georg Schweers, who turned 16 during the maiden voyage. The average age of the crew was low: 28 of the 35 seafarers were younger than 33 years. With the exception of three, all crew members were born on the Waterkant .
commitment
After its commissioning on November 9, 1952, the maiden voyage took the Melanie Schulte in ballast to the east coast of Québec . During the voyage, there was a leak in the tween deck tank No. 2 and slight rivet and seam leaks on both sides in the sub-room No. 1, which were closed by cement boxes. The crew also found damage to the boat deck and the entrenchment. In Québec, the ship loaded grain and left port on November 27th. After arriving in the port of Hamburg on December 10, 1952 and unloading , complaints were made about 14 tonnes of the grain cargo that had been damaged by leaks in the fore and aft. During the port stay in Hamburg, the Hamburger Maschinenfabrik repaired eight leaks on behalf of the shipyard. On December 13, 1952, the Melanie Schulte continued her voyage in ballast to Narvik , where she moored at the quay on the afternoon of December 16, 1952. Loading the ship with 9,306 tons of Swedish iron ore in the Norwegian port took a little more than a day: the Melanie Schulte cast off in the early evening of December 17th . The ore was destined for US Steel , and the trip was to go to the port of Mobile, Alabama . In view of the expected weather and the associated swell , the ship's command feared that the ship's propeller could knock blindly during the passage, i.e. that the propeller would periodically protrude completely or partially out of the water, which on the one hand could overload the engine and on the other hand that Ship temporarily takes the controllability. In order to minimize this risk in heavy seas , the ship's command had the ore loaded as follows: The foremost hold remained empty, 2,875 tons in hold II, 3,018 tonnes in hold III, 2,408 tonnes in hold IV and 1,000 tonnes in hold V. The majority of the ore (about 8,300 tons) was therefore in the holds immediately in front of and behind the engine room located amidships , a further 1,000 tons in the eighth of the five holds. This distribution, with almost 90 percent of the cargo in the three cargo holds located amidships and the rest aft , gave the ship a draft of 7.8 meters forward and 8.5 meters aft. The captain did not consider it necessary to weather the forecast storm because the Melanie Schulte had already proven her seaworthiness on her return voyage from Québec in a force 9 storm .
The route from Narvik to the port on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico crossed the North Atlantic, passing the British Isles to the north. The freighter stamped - typical of the season - against heavy lakes from the west. The ship's penultimate radio message was sent in the afternoon at 2:40 p.m. four days after sailing. In it, Captain Rohde announced that he was at sea position 58 degrees, 22 minutes north and 9 degrees 33 minutes west, i.e. about 90 nautical miles northwest of the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides . The last radio contact was made with Norddeich Radio on the evening of December 21 at 10 p.m .: Radio officer Balzerssen asked the marine radio station whether there were any other radio messages, which was not the case. The next regular report would not have been sent until 8 a.m. the following morning. In the event of urgent connection requests during the night, there was a car alarm device that would have alerted the radio operators to the presence of radio traffic. The Melanie Schulte did not report the next morning on his own initiative, prompting first no concern. The agreed position report on December 23, however, also failed to materialize, which was explained on land by the fact that the radio system could possibly have failed for a short time.
At noon on Christmas Eve , ship owner Heinrich Schulte sent Christmas greetings to his three ships at sea - again via Norddeich Radio. While the sister ships Henriette Schulte , on the way from Brake to the Gulf of Mexico , and Heinrich Schulte , on the way from Newport News to Havana , responded to the wishes, the message from Melanie Schulte stayed away . When the shipowner repeated the radio message on Christmas Day and again there was no response, a search began for the ship, from which no sign of life had been heard for four days. Norddeich Radio sent a request to all ships in the relevant sea area to look out for the Melanie Schulte . The Foreign Office asked the British government via the German embassy in London to take part in the search. British planes then rose to locate the ore freighter - a search that lasted into January. Finally, on January 5th, a pilot discovered a large oil spill in a sea area at coordinates 54 ° 58 'N, 18 ° 32' W, more than 200 nautical miles west of the north-western tip of Ireland . Since there were no other ship losses in this sea area, the scouts interpreted this as an indication of the Emden freighter.
It was only weeks later that there was certainty about the sinking of Melanie Schulte . First, the ocean washed on January 23, 20 tattered spruce planks on the coast of the Hebrides North Uist , on February 5, finally, a wooden door with the brass plate "Mithörleitung". There was final clarity when the sea on February 17th on the west coast of the Hebridean island of Benbecula released a lifebuoy bearing the inscription of the Emden freighter.
Maritime Administration Negotiation and Impact
On April 23, 1953, the employees of the maritime office in Hamburg dealt with the probable cause in a one-day negotiation and later summarized their results in a 74-page negotiation protocol. In addition to the documents, 20 witnesses and experts were heard during the maritime administration hearing. The representative of Germanischer Lloyd, Hansen, summarized findings on the construction, classification and questions of ship safety of Melanie Schulte , expert Hebecker went into great detail on the aspects of loading, weather and sea conditions, swell and encounter periods and the found rubble of the ship and mine expert von Grumbko gave a presentation on the subject of ore loads. Another expert opinion, which was emphasized in the maritime administrative proceedings due to the detail, came from Götschenberg.
The experts at the Maritime Administration's hearing pointed to a number of comparable cases, including that of a British protective deck ship in 1934. This had 82 percent of its cargo loaded in holds II, III and IV and 18 percent forward and aft. It turned out to be too heavily loaded in the middle in a rough sea storm and broke apart in a trough. The buoyancy was too great fore and aft, and the ship was too heavy in the middle. The Melanie Schulte even had 89.3 percent of her cargo in the middle three of the five holds. The Hebecker report carried out a longitudinal strength calculation based on the usual sea conditions to be assumed, namely waves of about 130 meters in length and 6.5 meters in height, that the pressure loads in the wave trough increased to double that of normal conditions, while the tensile loads on the Wellenberg were only 40% of the permissible values. According to the Maritime Weather Office, waves of about 80 meters in length and 8 meters in height could be assumed at the time in question, with the crews of fish steamer reporting a swell of 9 to 10 meters in the area in question . Hansen extrapolated from this a further increase in the forces that occur: bending moments of over 90,000 meter tonnes , compressive stresses of over 2500 kilograms / square centimeter - values that probably caused the forecastle to break upwards, with the midship superstructure probably also being compressed in the longitudinal direction.
In the ruling of the Maritime Office it was emphasized that a final clarification could not be provided due to the lack of eyewitnesses, it was only "assumptions, but no specific determinations possible". The chairman also made it clear: “Probably the coincidence of an unfavorable distribution of the cargo in the ship with an unusual bad weather situation including wind sea and swell [...] led to such high pressure loads in the ship that the ship collapsed so quickly that it did There was no longer any possibility to send a radio message. ”According to the assumption of the maritime office, the Melanie Schulte collapsed in a trough between two high wave crests because the heavily loaded center of the ship could not withstand the loads. The charge distribution was rated as "unfavorable".
The Melanie Schulte was not a ship expressly classified as an ore carrier by Germanischer Lloyd, but a conventional general cargo ship whose double bottom was reinforced with a view to the intended ore voyage. According to the state of the literature on the ore trade at the time, the holds at the ends could possibly remain empty. A corresponding note was found in the specialist book Die Laden, which was widely regarded by boaters at the time . For the corresponding passage in the work, however, there was a note in the loose enclosed misprint list, in which it said that this “does not apply to all ships”. The article Ships in the ore voyage by F. Winkler , published in 1943 in the Hansa , dealt more precisely with the subject, whose loading recommendation for five-port ships in the case of Melanie Schulte , called the "Winkler Norm", would have resulted in considerably less stress on the hull, as compared in Maritime administrative proceedings showed.
Expert Hebecker raised the demand in the maritime administrative procedure that all ore transporting freighters must be given the ore freighters classification of Germanischer Lloyd. However, the Maritime Administration did not adopt this requirement and pointed out that there are shipping companies who would then have to completely stop ore transport. Melanie Schulte's misfortune should be assessed as an individual case. Between 1951 and 1957, the shipyard built a total of around 20 ships of the same type, which sailed without major incidents.
Getting caught during the launch, on the other hand - although always understood as a bad omen by superstitious seafarers - probably had no influence on the accident. Small cracks were discovered in the ship's hull around a month and a half after the launch. However, according to the joint assessment of the shipping company, shipyard and Germanischer Lloyd, these had no effect on the seaworthiness.
In October 1953, Germanischer Lloyd announced in a circular to shipping companies a change to the ore loading recommendations for those freighters that are not only used for transporting ore but also for the transport of other bulk goods - such as the Melanie Schulte . The new recommendations of the classification society contained distribution keys for the individual cargo holds to be applied to the sea area to be navigated, which were intended to ensure a more balanced loading of the ships. In this way, a load distribution that endangers the strength of the ships should be excluded.
Already in the spring of 1953, comparisons were made between the sinking of Melanie Schulte with the loss of Irene Oldendorff off Borkum almost exactly one year earlier and that of the sailing training ship Admiral Karpfanger, which went missing in 1938 . Today, the sinking of the Melanie Schulte, along with the sinking of the sailing school ship Pamir in 1957 and the Hapag-Lloyd freighter in Munich in 1978, is considered to be one of the greatest ship accidents in the German merchant navy of the post-war period. The lifebuoy washed up in Benbecula reminds of the freighter in Emden. It hangs in the chapel of the Emden seaman's home .
literature
- Alan John Villiers: Posted Missing: The Story of Ships Lost Without Trace in Recent Years . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1956
- Otto Mielke: Lost in the Atlantic: the motor ship “Melanie Schulte” . Moewig, Munich 1953
- Hellmut Hintermeyer: Puzzling Sea . Pietsch Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-50409-X
- Gunther Hummerich, Wolfgang Lüdde: Reconstruction - The 50s in Emden . Verlag SKN, Norden 1995, ISBN 3-928327-18-6
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Uwe Bahnsen: A wholesale merchant dares to go out to sea . In: The world . June 27, 2001 ( welt.de ).
- ^ Rolf Stödter: On the release of shipping and shipbuilding in the Hansa No. 15 of April 14, 1951, p. 509/510
- ↑ Ernst Siebert, Walter Deeters, Bernard Schröer: History of the city of Emden from 1750 to the present (Volume VII of the series "Ostfriesland im Schutz des Deiches", published by Deichacht Krummhörn, Pewsum) . Verlag Rautenberg, Leer 1980, without ISBN, p. 306ff.
- ↑ Hummerich, Lüdde: Reconstruction. 1995, p. 110.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i The sinking of the "Melanie Schulte" . In: Hansa , edition 29/30, July 21, 1953, pp. 1273–1276
- ^ Heinrich Busch: The Downfall of Melanie Schulte , accessed on April 2, 2012.
- ↑ The search for "Melanie Schulte" in the Hamburger Abendblatt of January 8, 1953 continues without any result
- ↑ Hummerich, Lüdde: Reconstruction. 1995, p. 110 f.
- ↑ Hummerich, Lüdde: Reconstruction. 1995, p. 109 f.
- ↑ Hummerich, Lüdde: Reconstruction. 1995, p. 112 f.
- ↑ a b c d e Crushed by the Atlantic . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1953 ( online ).
- ↑ W. Rothermund: The charge - A manual for everyone who has to do with shipments . Volume I. 5th edition. Eckardt & Messtorff Verlag, Hamburg 1956, p. 195 ff.
- ↑ In the field of vision: "Melanie Schulte" . In: Hansa , No. 3, January 17, 1953, p. 157.
