Admiral (ship, 1905)

admiral

Imperial mail steamer "Admiral"

Ship data flag  German Empire Portugal   other ship names Laurenco Marques Ship type Combined ship Owner German East-Africa Line , Hamburg Shipyard Blohm & Voss , Hamburg Build number 178 Launch June 25, 1905 Commissioning September 30, 1905 Whereabouts Wrecked in 1950

Ship dimensions and crew length 126.8 mm ( Lpp ) width 15.2 mm measurement 6,355 GRT   crew 136

Machine system machine 2 triple expansion machines Machine performance 4,000 PSi Top speed 13.5 kn (25 km / h) propeller 2

Transport capacities Load capacity 6078 t dw Permitted number of passengers 72 I., 112 II., 80. III. Class 106 tween deck

The Admiral was a Reichspostdampfer of the German East Africa Line (DOAL) delivered by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg in 1905 . The ship was one of a series of seven twin screw steamers that were used by the shipping company in the "Rund um-Afrika" service between 1901 and 1906.

During the First World War , the Admiral was confiscated by Portugal in 1916 , where she - together with the Crown Prince - had been interned in Lourenco Marques (now Maputo), Mozambique , since 1914. The ship then went under the name Lourenço Marques and was scrapped in 1950.

Construction of the ship

The Admiral was the eighth newbuilding of the Hamburg shipyard Blohm & Voss for the German East Africa Line. It was a further development of the Herzog , the shipping company's first twin-screw mail steamer, from 1896 and slightly larger than the Kronprinz, which was delivered in 1900 . It largely corresponded to the Prinzregent delivered in April 1903 (construction no. 164). Both ships were 126.8 m long and 15.2 m wide, initially measured at 6,341 GRT and had two triple expansion engines of 4,000 hp.
The Admiral was launched on June 25, 1905 and was delivered on September 23, 1905. With the Princess, she was followed in April by another sister ship in the service of the DOAL.
The Reiherstieg shipyard with the Elector (who had already been lost in 1904) and the Field Marshal in 1903 and the Flensburger Schiffsbau-Gesellschaft with the Mayor in 1902 had also delivered very similar ships . The Admiral was the second bearer of this name in the service of the DOAL. From October 1891 to April 1902 the shipping company had already used an Admiral with a special permit from the Reich on the mail steamer line. This purchased ship of 2,589 GRT was built by Swan Hunter in 1890 as Tosari for the East Asian service of the German steamship shipping company and was sold to Liverpool in 1902.

business

The new Admiral began her maiden voyage on September 30, 1905 on the so-called main lines (western and eastern bypass of Africa), on which the DOAL offered departures every four weeks. On the round trips, the steamers called at up to 30 ports, but not all of them were called on every voyage. From Hamburg the (eastern) journey went via Bremerhaven, Rotterdam or Antwerp, Vlissingen, Southampton, Lisbon, Tangier, Marseille, Naples, Port Said, Suez, Aden and Mombasa to Tanga , Sansibar and Dar es Salaam . The return journey took place via Mozambique, Beira, Lourenco Marques, Durban, East London, Cape Town, Lüderitz Bay , Tenerife, Las Palmas and European ports. In 1906 the Reich government signed new contracts with the DOAL. Under pressure from the government, Swakopmund was also accepted and the DOAL guaranteed departures from the two ports of the colony of South West Africa every six weeks. Before 1914, a trip from Hamburg to Swakopmund or Lüderitzbucht cost 750 marks in first class , 500 marks in second and 250 marks in third class.
After the timetable was changed, from 1907 departures took place every three weeks, with the Woermann-Linie and Hapag now also occasionally stopping ships. The planned time for the exit in an easterly direction to Durban was 48 days (9097 nm). For the return journey from Durban to Hamburg 33 days were planned (7508 nm) and the orbital time of a ship should be 87 days. For the western bypass, 35 travel days to Durban and 47 back were planned. Sections of the route, such as Hamburg-Marseille or Hamburg-Tenerife, were offered and advertised as vacation trips, with a possible return trip with another ship of the shipping company.
In 1912 the runs were again densified. From January 1912, there was a departure on each of the two lines every 14 days. In the summer of 1914, the DOAL used the new Kigoma and its sister ships Tabora and General as well as the older mail steamer Princess , Admiral , Prince Regent , Field Marshal , Mayor and Crown Prince on the two main lines. In addition to the nine imperial mail steamers of the DOAL, the Gertrud Woermann and Adolph Woermann of the Woermann line as well as the Windhuk and the Rhenania of Hapag were also used.

Footnotes

1. ↑ from the history of the DOAL
2. ↑ Kludas: Passenger Shipping, Vol. III, p. 21f.
3. ↑ Kludas, Vol. III, p. 226
4. ↑ Kludas, Vol. III, p. 31
5. ↑ from the history of the DOAL
6. ↑ Reinke-Kunze: Reichspostdampfer , p. 76
7. ↑ Kludas, Vol. III, p. 32

literature

• Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Africa Lines 1880 to 1945 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1867-4 .
• Arnold Kludas: The History of the German Passenger Shipping Volume III Leap growth 1900 to 1914 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 20
• Hans Georg Prager: Blohm & Voss , Koehler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-78220-127-2 .
• Christine Reinke-Kunze: The history of the Reichspostdampfer , Köhlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1994, ISBN 3-7822-0618-5