Admiral Karpfanger
.jpg) The barque flying the Belgian flag as L'Avenir
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The Admiral Karpfanger (formerly the Belgian L'Avenir , French for Die Zukunft ), was a German four-masted barque that was bought by HAPAG in 1937 as a sailing training ship . On her first trip abroad from Australia to Europe, she probably went missing in the sea area of Cape Horn in March 1938 . All 60 crew members , including 33 cadets between the ages of 15 and 18, are missing.
Technical specifications
- Construction: steel , both hull and mast .
- Size: 2853 GRT .
- Propulsion: sails .
- Radio: radio telegraphy system operated by a generator .
- Namesake: Admiral Berend Jacobsen Karpfanger (1622–1683).
Use as L'Avenir
After its commissioning in 1908, the L'Avenir was used as a training ship in the Belgian merchant navy for a good 20 years . No particular incidents are known from this period.
In the early 1930s, due to the global economic crisis, it was sold to the Finnish shipowner Gustaf Erikson , who maintained a fleet of cargo sailors that he used on the Australian wheat voyage.
Used as Admiral Karpfanger
In 1937, L'Avenir was acquired by HAPAG , which wanted to use the ship as a training ship for its officer cadets. The ship was completely overhauled, renamed Admiral Karpfanger (after the Hamburg captain Berend Jacobsen Karpfanger ) and classified as class 100 A4 by Germanischer Lloyd . In September 1937 the barque ran from her new home port of Hamburg to Australia with a crew of 60 men (27 men regular crew, 33 cadets) under Captain Walker . In December she arrived in Port Germein in the Spencer Gulf (Southwest Australia) and took over a load of 42,549 sacks of wheat.
On February 8, 1938, the Admiral Karpfanger ran from Port Germein with the destination Falmouth and Queenstown ( Ireland ). The route led around Cape Horn . Before leaving, Captain Walker had informed the shipping company that the generator of the radio telegraphy system was not working properly. Walker had orders to inform the shipping company about the location of the ship by radio at least every 14 days.
On March 1, 1938, the barque reported its position via Norddeich Radio with latitude 51 ° south and longitude 172 ° east. She was thus on the usual sailing route between South Australia and Cape Horn, but had apparently not progressed at the expected speed. The reason for this is unknown. On March 12, 1938, the Admiral Karpfanger confirmed the receipt of a radio message. This was the barque's last sign of life.
Search for the Admiral Karpfanger
Although the agreed radio reports about the respective position of the barque did not materialize, the shipping company was initially not concerned, as it was assumed that the radio system had finally failed completely. It wasn't until five months after the last radio message had arrived, in August 1938, that Hamburg realized that the ship was overdue. It hit the reinsurance market; an indication that the insurers assumed a high probability that the barque had been lost.
HAPAG initiated its own search campaign. The motor ship Leuna was instructed not to take the west route through the Suez Canal as planned , but the east route around Cape Horn when returning from Australia . In addition, inquiries were made into ships that had sailed the route during the period in question. But neither the Durham nor the Waiwera , both under British flags , had sighted the barque or intercepted radio messages from her. However, the Durham reported that it had sighted icebergs on the route around Cape Horn .
The Argentine government dispatched the control ship Bahia Blanca to the Cape Horn region, but they did not find any wreckage , survivors or any traces that would have indicated the Admiral Karpfanger .
Maritime administration negotiations and wreck finds
On September 21, 1938, the Admiral Karpfanger was declared missing in the Maritime Administration hearing in Hamburg.
Years later, parts of the wreckage were found by the Argentine tug Galvarino on the Patagonian coast and assigned to Admiral Karpfanger , including wooden ship doors with German inscriptions and a 6.40 m long piece of wood from a mast or yard . These items were landed by the Galvarino in the port of Ushuaia . More wreckage was found later still, such as a box labeled Frieretsen Wellington and debris from a lifeboat propelled on Wollaston Island . In Aguirre Bay on the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego , an unidentifiable lifebuoy was washed ashore, but it was attributed to Admiral Karpfanger .
To this day, it is believed that the barque either collided with an iceberg or ran aground on a reef and then immediately slipped off. In any case, the accident must have occurred so suddenly that lifeboats could no longer be launched.
In the summer of 2018, a cap tally of the Admiral Karpfanger turned up at an antique dealer in Buenos Aires , which was then acquired by a grandson of Captain Walker's. The original origin of the well-preserved volume is not known.
Missing crew
captain
- Reinhold Walker
Officers
- 1. Feodor Eylmann
- 2. Otto Piper
- 3. Hans Schönberg
- 4. Helmut Goele
Ship's doctor
- Ernst-Walter Heitchen
- Erich Kollwitz
Regular crew
Sailmaker
- Kurt Bruer
Carpenter
- Heinz Koop
cook
- Gustav Pfeiffer
Cook's mate
- Hugo Weiss
steward
- Otto Plath
Top heater
- Karl Lenz
- Axel Nilsdotter
Fair boys
- Günther Häussler
- Günther Fröhling
Officer Candidates
Sailors
- Max Koch
- Heinz laugh
- Christians Lorenzen
- Jürgen Miehlmann
- Otto Oether
- Friedrich Rauen
- Walter Schäberle
- Siegfried Trappmann
Ordinary sailors
- Hans Albertsen
- Karl Bellingen
- Johannes Linder
- Josef Müller
- Wolfgang Wittmis
Boys
- Wolf-Dieter Bever
- Fritz Borgwardt
- Heinz Le Coutre
- Heinz Dierks
- Werner Düsing
- Heinz Eilers
- Hubert Endesfelder
- Klaus Frick
- Georg Gretges
- Hans Groegor
- Josef Heger
- Hubert Hösel
- Erwin Holm
- Gustav von Husen
- Jens Jensen
- Lothar Klinkhardt
- Ralf Kroeger
- August Lammers
- Eckehard Lippert
- Sword Moeltgen
- Hans-Georg Nebling
- Rolf Neuburger
- Reinhold Oppermann
- Klaus Roye
- Günther Ruhkiek
- Günther Schmiga
- Hans Bruno Schneider
- Peter Vogel
- Theodor Werth
- Hans Wiechmann
- Herbert Zanger
A memorial plaque in the portal area of the Hamburg main church St. Michaelis commemorates the Admiral Karpfanger and his crew of 60 "who stayed for German sea sailing".
See also
- Danish sailing training ship København
literature
- Jürgen Meyer: No trace of the "Admiral Karpfanger". In: sea chest. The journal of shipping. No. 9, 1950, ZDB -ID 525624-0 , pp. 25-30.
- Otto Mielke : A journey of no return. Sailing training ship "Admiral Karpfanger" (= SOS - Fates of German Ships. 3, ZDB -ID 1468387-8 ). Pabel Moewig, Munich 1953.
- Alan Villiers : Lost at sea . Delius, Klasing, Bielefeld a. a. 1965, XI .: Two sailing training ships , p. 171-193 .
- Heinz Burmester: Sailing training ships around Cape Horn. The adventurous life paths of the four-masted barques “Duchess Cecilie”, “Duchess Sophie Charlotte” and “L'Avenir / Admiral Karpfanger” . Stalling, Oldenburg u. a. 1976, ISBN 3-7979-1873-9 .
- Manfred Hessel, Manfred Kretzschmar: Save from oblivion. The sailing training ship "Admiral Karpfanger" and its crew. In: Ship & Time. Panorama maritime. No. 48, 1998, ISSN 1432-7880 , pp. 9-14.
- Gerhard Simonsen: Journey of No Return. The history of the German sailing training ship "Admiral Karpfanger" (= ship and time. Special . Volume 3 ). Koehler, Herford 1991, ISBN 3-7822-0528-6 .
- Rudolf Wittenhagen: Conclusive theory on the sinking of the Admiral Karpfanger. In: PPV logbook. Vol. 27, No. 3, 2004, ZDB -ID 2116358-3 , pp. 15-17.
Web links
- Photo of the Admiral Karpfanger ; Location and time of recording unknown ( memento from January 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- Illustration of the shipyard model of the Admiral Karpfanger
- Report about the Admiral Karpfanger at wrecksite.eu
- Probably last photo of crew members - Port Germein, Australia, January 1938
Individual evidence
- ↑ Port Germein and Sailing Ships for the Grain Trade on portgermainhistory.com; accessed on December 28, 2018.