Augusta Victoria

**Augusta Victoria**
	Augusta Victoria , ca.1890
Ship data
other ship names	Auguste Victoria ; Kuban
Ship type	Passenger steamer
Callsign	RHMP
Shipyard	AG Vulcan , Szczecin
Launch	December 1, 1888
Commissioning	May 10, 1889
Whereabouts	Broken down in Stettin in 1907
Ship dimensions and crew
length	144.80 m ( Lüa )
width	16.90 m
measurement	7,661 GRT
crew	245
Machine system
machine	2 triple expansion steam engines
Machine ; performance	12,500 hp (9,194 kW)
Top ; speed	19 kn (35 km / h)
propeller	2

The Augusta Victoria was a fast steamer that was the largest German passenger ship from 1888 to 1889 . He drove for the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG). With this ship, HAPAG organized the very first cruise . The ship was named after the German Empress Auguste Viktoria . There was a sister ship, the Columbia , and the two slightly larger sisters Normannia and Fürst Bismarck .

Records and first drives

Fastest maiden voyage across the Atlantic in an east-west direction (May 19, 1889)
First cruise (January 22 to March 21, 1891), including passage from Gibraltar as: largest commercial ship to date, first twin-screw passenger steamer and first HAPAG ship.

history

Order and construction

At HAPAG, Albert Ballin , who had been Head of the Passage Service since May 31, 1886, carried out a large-scale reorganization. In this context, express steamers were to be purchased that could keep up with those of the British shipping companies. After long negotiations, the Stettiner Maschinenbau AG Vulcan succeeded in receiving the order for a high-speed steamer. The contract was signed in November 1887. Since the Szczecin shipyard had not yet built a comparable ship, it had to submit a bank guarantee given by the Berlin bank S. Bleichröder and the Szczecin bank Wm. Schlutow . The second ship (the Columbia ) was ordered by HAPAG as a cautious company at the same time from the British shipyard Laird Brothers , which had experience in building such high-speed steamers and had applied to build both steamers.

The ship was originally supposed to be called Normannia . It was then named after the German Empress Auguste Viktoria. The Empress was present in Stettin when the ship was launched on December 1, 1888 .

Liner service and cruises with HAPAG

The Augusta Victoria was handed over to HAPAG on April 24, 1889 and began her maiden voyage from Hamburg via Southampton to New York on May 10 . At that time she was the third twin-screw high-speed steamer on the North Atlantic after the British steamers City of Paris and City of New York of the Inman Line , which were larger and faster.

The Augusta Victoria and the Columbia, which was delivered by Laird in June, performed their service reliably and quickly. However, there was not enough public interest in crossing the North Atlantic in winter. The express steamers were therefore launched in their first winter. Albert Ballin decided to offer a cruise during this time for the next winter. From January 22nd to March 21st, 1891, the Augusta Victoria offered a Mediterranean cruise to and from Cuxhaven , in which 241 people, including 49 foreigners and 67 female passengers, took part. Southampton, Gibraltar and Genoa was Alexandria started, where the ship remained five days. The next destinations were Jaffa , Beirut and Constantinople , each with a four-day stay. On the way back Piraeus , Malta , Palermo , Naples , Lisbon and finally Southampton were called. In the ports with longer stays there were excursion programs, e.g. B. to Cairo , Jerusalem , Damascus , Athens and Rome . Similar trips were made in 1892 and 1893. On July 16, 1894, the Augusta Victoria left Hamburg for the first Nordland voyage, which led to Spitzbergen . In 1896, the sister ship Columbia made the first West Indies cruise. Offered as "pleasure trips", these trips have become an integral part of HAPAG's range of services alongside regular services.

Augusta Victoria in the roadstead near Piraeus, 1891. Drawing by CW Allers

From August 1892, the HAPAG ships had a problem because of the cholera epidemic in Hamburg and the strict quarantine regulations in New York. The express steamers only ran to Southampton during this time. When cholera cases increased again briefly in September, Wilhelmshaven became the end of the traffic for the express steamer for a while.

The North German Lloyd (NDL) used its express steamers from Mediterranean ports to New York in winter. HAPAG joined this in 1893 and the Augusta Victoria ran for the first time on March 15, 1894 on the route Genoa- Naples-Gibraltar-New York.

In June 1895, the Augusta Victoria and her sister ship Columbia served to transport the guests of honor at the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal . On October 22nd, 1896, it drove from Hamburg to New York to be rebuilt in Great Britain. The Augusta Victoria was the slowest ship in the series, and it was hoped that an extension to the size of the two later high-speed steamers would also achieve a higher speed.

Remodeling in 1897

The steamer was lengthened to 163.10 m at Harland & Wolff in Belfast in the winter of 1896/1897 , the measurement increased to 8,479 GRT, the middle mast was removed and the bridge roofed over. The name was changed to August e Victoria as this was the correct name of the Empress.

In April 1897 the ship was put back into service and used in the old scope. In May 1897 a reception was held in honor of the 50th anniversary of HAPAG.

Reception in Hamburg May 1897

However, the four HAPAG express steamers had meanwhile been far surpassed by the appearance of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the NDL, and HAPAG was also looking for new ships and had the similar Germany built. She therefore gave the Columbia and Normannia to Spain as an auxiliary cruiser in 1898 . Auguste Victoria remained in the service of HAPAG and left Hamburg for New York for the last time on January 16, 1904.

In 1904, like her two sisters Columbia (which had been bought back from Spain in 1899) and Prince Bismarck, she was sold to Russia and transferred to Libau in May .

Use in the Russian Navy

In May 1904, the Russian Navy (officially the Russian Voluntary Fleet ) bought the ship to use as an auxiliary cruiser in the Russo-Japanese War .

During the conversion work (arming, changing and expanding the coal storage facility) there was an accident in the dock on July 12th, so that the auxiliary cruiser, renamed Kuban (after the Kuban River in the Caucasus) on July 26th , was on a planned inspection trip in the Atlantic with its sister ship Terek (formerly Columbia ) failed. The Kuban ran out of Libau two weeks after the Second Pacific Squadron, which had emerged from the Baltic Fleet , and headed for East Asia alone. It was now armed with two 12 cm L / 45 canet guns, four 7.5 cm L / 50 canet guns, eight 5.7 cm Hotchkiss guns, and two machine guns. On November 30, she reached Dakar and took over coal from the German steamer Friesland at sea , as the French authorities did not allow a supply in the port. From January 2, 1905 off Madagascar , the Kuban was then part of the 2nd Pacific Squadron on the way to the Far East. At the beginning of May she was released from the squadron association before the sea battle at Tsushima in order to disrupt shipping to the USA and Canada as a trade disruptor east of the Japanese islands.

She controlled several neutral steamers and received information from them about the outcome of the battle. She ran back to Indochina , where the French only allowed supplies for the way to Vladivostok . The Kuban passed Singapore on June 18, 1905 and reached Djibouti on July 1 . Supplied with coal by German ships, she ran through the Red Sea towards Suez and continued to search merchant ships for cargo to Japan. On 15./16. In July she passed the Suez Canal . After a stopover in Algiers , she reached Libau on August 3rd, which she had left on October 28th, 1904.

On December 1, 1906, the ship was removed from the list of warships, sold for demolition on March 23, 1907 and dismantled in Stettin from May onwards.

literature

CW Allers : Backschisch. Sketches for an Orient cruise in 1891. New editions: 2008, ISBN 978-3-86805-159-9 and 2020, ISBN 978-3-7504-8155-8 (report on the first German cruise on the Augusta Victoria)
Bernhard Gomm: The Russian warships 1856-1917 . Volume VI: Auxiliary Cruisers, Avisos, Yachts , Appendix: The Voluntary Fleet . Self-published, Wiesbaden 1996
Elias Haffter: Letters from the north , published by J. Huber, Frauenfeld 1899. Report on a trip to the north on the Auguste Viktoria in July 1899 (in the Gutenberg project ).
Manfred Höft: Excursion by Augusta Victoria . In: The Pommersche Zeitung . No. 3/2016, p. 16.
JH Isherwood: The “Augusta / Auguste Victoria” of 1889 . In: Sea breezes , Liverpool, Volume 31, 1961, pp. 240-244 (English).
Arnold Kludas : The German Schnelldampfer II. The "Augusta Victoria" class . In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, Volume 4 (1981), pp. 93-108, ISSN 0343-3668 .
Arnold Kludas: German ocean passenger ships 1850 to 1895 . Transpress, Berlin 1983, pp. 82-83.
Arnold Kludas: pleasure trips at sea . Volume 1: 1889-1939 . Convent Verlag, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-21-7 , pp. 21-28.
HJ Rook: The first German twin screw high-speed steamer> Augusta Victoria <. Background of the order placement. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 14, 1991, pp. 139–156, ISSN 0343-3668
Report on the sister ship Columbia (1890). Wikisource