Appam
_(cropped).jpg) |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
The Appam was a 1913 transatlantic passenger steamer of the British shipping company Elder Dempster & Company . The appam is particularly known for being brought up on January 15, 1916 by the German auxiliary cruiser Möve . This made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic at the time. In 1917 she was returned to her shipping company, and in 1936 she was scrapped.
The ship
The 7,781 GRT steamship Appam was built at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast , Northern Ireland and was launched on October 10, 1912. It was completed on February 27, 1913 and put into service shortly after. The ship was 129.7 meters long and 17.5 meters wide and had a chimney, two masts and two propellers . It was equipped with wireless radio and refrigeration equipment for transporting perishable food.
The Appam was for the Elder Dempster Lines Limited ( Elder Dempster Lines built), focusing on passenger and cargo traffic to the United States and Canada , but also to more distant destinations such as Africa , the Caribbean , the Canary Islands and India had specialized .
She was the middle of three sister ships . The other two were the Abosso (I) (7,782 GRT), completed in December 1912, and the Apapa (I) (7,832 GRT), which was commissioned in 1915 . Both sister ships were sunk by German submarines during the First World War .
Captured by gull
On January 11, 1916, the Appam ran under the command of Captain Henry G. Harrison in Dakar for the return journey to Liverpool . On board were 156 crew members, 116 passengers, 25 members of the Royal Marines and 22 German civilians who were to be interned in Great Britain. In addition to the passengers, the steamer had around 3,000 tons of cargo on board, including the post office, cocoa beans, corn, cottonseed, tin and 16 boxes of gold. There was also a female leopard named Pompey on board. Before departure, a three-inch cannon had been assembled in Dakar, which was operated by two artillerymen. On January 21, 1916, the ship was to make a stopover in Falmouth . Among the passengers on this trip were the British colonial official and Governor of the Leeward Islands Sir Edward Merewether with his wife, the colonial official and author Sir Francis Charles Bernard Dudley Fuller with his wife and the colonial secretary Sir Frederick Seton James.
On the afternoon of January 15, 1916 which was Appam northwest 135 miles from Madeira from Gull applied . A prize team went on board the British passenger liner and took command. On February 1, 1916, the ship arrived under the leadership of Lieutenant Hans Berg in the Hampton Roads (US state Virginia ). On board were 451 people, including 155 crew members of the Appam , all 116 passengers, 20 of the 22 German civilians, the 22-member German prize team and 138 rescued sailors from other ships that had been sunk by the Möve . The fate of the Appam was completely unclear before arriving in Virginia. The New York Times reported in its January 29, 1916 issue that there were already fears that the ship had sunk.
The 25 Royal Marines, the two remaining German civilians Rosenbrock and Willenseck and the two artillerymen James Chandler and Harold Jones were on board the Möve . Most of the passengers on the Appam were transferred to the Dominion Line's Jefferson passenger ship on February 3, but ultimately sailed to Europe on February 7 with the Holland-America Line's Noordam . When the gull on March 4, 1916. in Wilhelmshaven pulled in, the Marines and the Gunners came as combatants in captivity .
The 22 men from the prize team stayed on board the Appam until February 9, 1917 . When the United States entered the war in April 1917, they became the United States' first German prisoners of war. They were in barracks in Fort Oglethorpe ( Georgia interned). On March 6, 1917, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Appam should be returned to its original owners. On March 28, 1917, she was returned to Elder Dempster & Company.
Shortly thereafter, on April 17, 1917, Captain TE Williams arrived at Newport News to oversee the transfer of the ship to Great Britain. On August 20, 1917, the Appam ran out of Liverpool for its next regular voyage. In order to avoid re-identification or re-registration of the ship, it initially operated under the name Mandingo . However, after the war ended, it was renamed Appam again. The Appam remained in passenger traffic until it was scrapped on February 26, 1936.