Baron Gautsch
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The Baron Gautsch was a passenger ship of the Austrian Lloyd shipping company , which carried passengers on the Dalmatian express line from Trieste to various ports on the northern Adriatic coast from 1908 to 1914 . The Baron Gautsch ran on 13 August 1914 the island of Brijuni on the coast of Istria in one of the Austro-Hungarian Navy laid minefield and sank within minutes. 147 people died. Today the wreck is a popular destination for wreck divers .
prehistory
Österreichischer Lloyd, one of the most flourishing and important shipping companies in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries , was able to expand steadily around the turn of the century thanks to the constantly developed shipping routes and the growing public. The shipping company's fleet grew in order to reach the important ports of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, especially in the northern Mediterranean . Especially under the direction of Dr. Julius Derschatta , Edler von Standhalt (1852-1924), member of the Reichsrat , Minister of Railways and President of the Austrian Lloyd, many new ships were built. During his tenure as President, three new modern sister ships were commissioned.
These were the 2,069 GRT Baron Gautsch , which was completed first in May 1908, followed by the Prinz Hohenlohe (1,962 GRT) in October of the same year and the Baron Bruck (2,085 GRT), which was not put into service until the summer of 1913 . Since the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in Trieste, one of the largest in Austria-Hungary , where many Lloyd's ships were built, was busy, the Baron Gautsch and the Prinz Hohenlohe were built in Scotland . Only the Baron Bruck emerged in the newly formed San Rocco AG in Trieste.
The ship
The 2,069-ton steamer Baron Gautsch was at the shipyard Gourlay Brothers & Company in the Scottish city of Dundee built and ran there on May 3, 1908 by Stack . The passenger ship was 84.5 meters long, 11.64 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 7.5 meters. The maiden voyage began on June 16, 1908. The ship was three with heavy oil heated steam boilers equipped, the three each have a steam engine propeller drives of bronze. The machines developed 4600 hp and allowed a speed of 17 knots (31.5 km / h). The shipping company hoped for a considerable increase in performance from the new concept with three steam engines, but this did not materialize. This defect was reported to the Gourlay Brothers & Company shipyard, which resulted in extensive renovations in Trieste, the costs of which Gourlay had to bear. This was one of the reasons Gourlay went bankrupt and had to be liquidated in October 1910 .
The ship was named after the former Austrian Prime Minister and Interior Minister Paul Gautsch , Freiherr von Frankenthurn. The Baron Gautsch and her sister ships were built for the so-called Dalmatian Express Line, a route south of the Austrian Riviera on the coast of Istria and Dalmatia (now Slovenia and Croatia ). Home port and starting point of every crossing was Trieste. The ship transported commuters , business travelers as well as vacationers and summer guests who wanted to visit the popular seaside resorts of the Adriatic.
In the first World War
With the outbreak of the First World War on July 28, 1914, the merchant ships of Austria-Hungary were called up for military service and the k. u. k. Subordinated to the Kriegsmarine . They were given a camouflage and were now used as auxiliary cruisers , troop transports or supply ships . Many officers were reservists and entered the service of the Navy.
The Baron Gautsch was also affected. On July 27, 1914, the ship was already used by the k. u. k. Navy taken over. Four trips followed, on which the Baron Gautsch brought supply troops to Kotor . During these four trips, 1,810 nautical miles were covered and 2,855 people were carried. On the respective return journeys, civilians were evacuated to the ports of the northern Adriatic.
On August 11, 1914, the mission was over and the Baron Gautsch was returned to the Austrian Lloyd. The ship's second officer, Tenze, received prior to the last departure in the k. u. k. Maritime district command in Trieste instructions for Baron Gautsch to stay on course , since the Navy had laid minefields in the Adriatic. Tenze passed the information on to his captain, whereupon the course for the upcoming crossing was set. The information had to be transmitted orally, as written records were not allowed for reasons of confidentiality. On the way back from Kotor to Trieste, further instructions regarding navigation were received by radio . On the voyage were refugees from the areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina and many holiday returnees on board the steamer.
Downfall
On Thursday, August 13, 1914, the Baron Gautsch began her first regular passenger crossing since the outbreak of war. At around 11 a.m. the ship left Veli Lošinj (Kvarner Bay) for Trieste. In addition to 66 crew members, there were 240 passengers on board. Among the travelers were again a large number of refugees , summer vacationers and relatives of Austro-Hungarian military personnel on their way back to Austria, including numerous women and children.
The ship was supposed to arrive in Trieste around 6 p.m. Captain Paul Winter was in command of this voyage. The first officer Josef Luppis was assigned to watch until 2 p.m., but left the navigating bridge a quarter of an hour earlier without the master's permission or knowledge to go to the first class dining room for lunch. Second Officer Tenze was supposed to take over the watch at 2 p.m. Captain Winter slept in his cabin.
The Baron Gautsch steamed on a direct north course, which brought her much closer to the coast of Istria than the instructions of the Navy provided. Either no consideration was given to it or it was not registered. The commanding officer also received several indications from the travelers that minefields were to be laid in the area by the Austro-Hungarian navy in order to protect the port of Pola . This also did not result in a course correction. The miner Basilisk saw the passenger ship steaming directly into the danger zone in front of the Brion Islands and gave warning signals that were not noticed or not understood. At the last moment on board the Baron Gautsch the danger was recognized and the rudder of the ship was turned around hard, but it was already in the middle of the minefield.
A huge explosion on the port side tore open the ship's side and shook the steamer as it ran towards the mine . Another followed shortly thereafter, possibly triggered by a boiler explosion . The tremors caused numerous people to fall to the ground. The Baron Gautsch leaned heavily to port and quickly began to fill up. Panic and chaos broke out among the people on board . A rush began on the lifeboats , which were quickly overcrowded with passengers before they could be swung over the edge of the deck. This made them too heavy to swing out and put into the water. For others, the brackets were so tightly lashed or tangled that they could not be opened for freeing. Numerous people jumped overboard in their panic and drowned.
Liters of heavy oil leaked from the burst oil tanks, which clogged the noses, eyes and ears of people swimming in the water and prevented them from breathing. The oil caught fire in places and started larger fires in which many travelers were killed. Many surviving passengers testified afterwards that the crew did not take care of them and only thought of rescuing them. Many lifeboats are said to have had significantly more crew members than passengers. The Baron Gautsch capsized about seven minutes after the mine hit and went under.
The Austro-Hungarian destroyers Csepel , Triglav and Balaton were nearby and came to the aid of the shipwrecked. Together they saved 159 people from the water. 147 passengers and crew, mostly women and children, were killed. 68 of them could then be recovered. They were found at the Pola naval cemetery alongside numerous fallen members of the k. u. k. Navy buried.
Aftermath
Captain Winter and First Officer Luppis survived and were placed under house arrest in Pola . Both were given responsibility for the accident in a trial before a maritime court. In the 1920s both worked as skippers for the Lloyd Adriatico , where they commanded transatlantic liners, among other things. Details of the trial and the verdict are not known, as the events were under war censorship and due to the upholding of morality no details should leak to the public.
The shipping company received numerous condolences from authorities and government agencies, most of which were addressed to President Derschatta. Survivors and bereaved relatives of the downfall sued Lloyd for damages , which was initially rejected, but later made possible by the Ministry of Commerce in a limited form of 200,000 kroner . The bereaved, who did not agree, continued to complain. Almost all court documents about the downfall of Baron Gautsch and the subsequent trials were later lost. Numerous files were burned in the Vienna Justice Palace fire in 1927 because they had been stored in the building. Other documents fell victim to the November pogroms in 1938 because the bereaved's lawyer was Jewish and his office was looted.
In August 1994, on the eightieth anniversary of the sinking, a commemorative event was held in Rovinj with representatives from the church, the military and politics. In this context, a documentary film produced by Radiotelevisione Italiana was shown in front of a large audience. In addition, wreaths of flowers were dropped into the water in memory of the victims and a plaque was placed on the wreck. The efforts of the Croatian government to name the wreck of the Baron Gautsch a war memorial were supported by the Austrian Navy Association. In October 1995 the wreck was declared a national cultural monument .
The wreck
The Split- based salvage company Brodospas was commissioned by a Trieste businessman to find the Baron Gautsch and found the remains on August 15, 1958. Previously, the location was only known to locals. One of the divers reported the position of the port authority of Trieste, which was aware of the importance of the wreck and wanted to secure a share of the valuables in the ship according to the applicable maritime law .
The wreck of the Baron Gautsch lies at the coordinates 44 ° 56 '25 " N , 13 ° 34' 40" E. at a depth of 28 to 40 meters. It lies on a level keel on a sandy and stony bottom and is overgrown with algae and sponges. It is not in good condition as it has collapsed in many places and chimneys and masts are kinked. Even so, it is now considered one of the most popular diving destinations for wreck divers in the northern Adriatic. In the 1920s, the wreck was used by the Yugoslav Navy as a training target for attack maneuvers, which caused severe damage. Since then, divers have also recovered numerous items from the wreck. The three propellers have also been removed.
The municipality of Rovinj , in whose waters the Baron Gautsch lies, recognized the potential impact on local tourism . The Italian broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana produced a film in 1993 about the sinking of the ship and the wreck, which attracted media attention and resulted in reports in the Austrian and Italian press.
For the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War and the fall, several events were planned in 2014, for example a memorial diving and other projects.
Weekend 6./7. July 2019, a 36-year-old Graz woman died after climbing from a dive to the wreck in the hospital in Pula.
literature
- Hermann Pfeiffer: Hold close to me and hurry! The downfall of the Baron Gautsch . Braumüller, 2014, ISBN 978-3-99200-114-9 .
- Wladimir Aichelburg: The merchant ships of Austria-Hungary in the World War 1914–1918 . 1st edition. Herbert Weishaupt Verlag, Graz 1988.
- Samuel George Edgar Lythe: Gourlays of Dundee: The Rise and Fall of a Scottish Shipbuilding Firm . Abertay Historical Society, Dundee 1964.
- John Leng (Ed.): The Dundee Year Book, Facts and Figures for 1908 . Dundee 1909.
- Imperial and Royal Public Prosecutor's Office in Rovigno: Indictment against Captain Paul Winter and First Officer Josef Luppis, translation, Vienna undated (source: General Administrative Archives, Transport Archives Department) Capitaneria di porto di Trieste, Denuncia di identificazione di relitto, no. 16806, 26th Ago. 1958.
Web links
- harald-geiger.de: The story of Baron Gautsch (illustrated) (German)
- fineartreisen.de: Information on the wreck of the Baron Gautsch (illustrated) (German)
- wrecksite.eu: Technical data in the wreck database Wrecksite (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ Baron Gautsch: Istria's most famous diving destination sank 100 years ago.
- ↑ 100 years of the First World War - The wrecks in the sea off Istria.
- ^ Commemorative diving of the IAC Carinthia. ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ 100-YEAR SUBMERGING OF THE STEAM SHIP BARON GAUTSCH. ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Grazerin died after diving in Croatia orf.at, July 8, 2019, accessed July 8, 2019.
