Berlin (ship, 1894)
 Postcard by PF van den Ende (Rotterdam, 1907)
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The Berlin was a passenger ship of the British railway company Great Eastern Railway , which served as a ferry from 1894 to 1907 and carried passengers and cargo from the English port city of Harwich to Hoek van Holland ( Netherlands ). On February 21, 1907, the ship was thrown in a storm on the northern pier of Hoek van Holland and broke in two. The storm severely hampered the rescue of 143 passengers and crew , so that only 15 people could be saved.
The ship
The Berlin was built on the shipyard Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in northern England Hull and ran on 10 January 1894 by the stack . In March 1894 the ship was completed. The owner was the British railway company Great Eastern Railway (GER), founded in 1862 , which operated a wide rail network in the East Anglia region and also had a fleet of steamers . The ships sailed from Harwich on the Essex coast , one of the most important ferry ports in the United Kingdom, from which important ferry connections to the Netherlands and Denmark still run today .
The Berlin had two sister ships , the Amsterdam (1,745 GRT) and the Vienna (1,753 GRT), both of which were commissioned in 1894.
The steel- built, 92.2 meter long and eleven meter wide steamship was equipped with two propellers and was powered by triple expansion steam engines that reached 5,800 PSi and gave the ship a maximum speed of 18 knots. The Berlin commuted on a regular line between Harwich and Hook of Holland near Rotterdam . It was able to carry 218 passengers in first and 210 in second class.
Downfall
On Wednesday evening, February 20, 1907 at around 10 p.m., the Berlin departed for another crossing through the North Sea to Hook of Holland. On board were 90 passengers and 53 crew members. Her captain , 44-year-old John Precious from Dovercourt , had been with the Great Eastern Railway for 26 years and was one of its most renowned skippers. Immediately after casting off, the ship got into strong winds coming from the southwest . However, when the port of Hook of Holland was safely reached the following morning, most assumed they had survived the worst. The ship passed the port entrance and approached the pier . The passengers prepared for disembarkation. At around 5.45 a.m., however , the Berlin was hit by a gale force and thrown against the northern mole , the Noorderpier. The steamer was hit by strong waves two more times and hit the pier.
The third time the Berlin broke in two. The front part went under immediately, causing most of the people to be thrown into the water and drowned. The stern , to which several passengers were clinging, was still sticking out of the water. The passengers on board a passing ship, the Amsterdam of the Holland America Line , could hear the screams of the castaways. The storm was at its peak, which severely hampered rescue attempts. Because of the high waves, it initially looked as if the Berlin had sunk completely; the soaring stern was only noticed later. The nine-man crew of the lifeboat of the port of Hoek van Holland, the President van Heel (Captain Jensen), tried to approach the ship, but was repeatedly pushed back by the waves. A tug also took part in the rescue operation. The passenger, Captain Parkinson, a ship's captain from Belfast , was the only person who could be saved for the time being. A man named Martijn Sperling crossed over to Berlin in a yawl from the rescue ship Van der Tak and managed to save three women.
A total of six female and four male passengers and five male crew members were rescued alive. These were the only survivors of the disaster. 128 people drowned (48 crew members and 80 passengers) in close proximity to the bank. The corpses washed up by the dozen were lined up on the landing stage of the Holland America Line. Among the fatalities were Arthur Herbert, a personal messenger of the English king who carried diplomatic baggage for Berlin , Copenhagen and Tehran ; former Member of Parliament Alfred Davies; the equestrian John F. Rollason; the Dutch businessman Hendrik-Jan Spijker (one of the co-founders of the car manufacturer Spyker ); William Dearborn Munroe, executive director of the Arctic Coal Company ; as well as 19 members of the Mannheim National Theater and the Dresden Semperoper who returned from an engagement at the London Royal Opera House . With 128 dead, the sinking of the Berlin was the worst shipwreck in the history of the Great Eastern Railway and the city of Hoek van Holland.
film records
Film teams from the Dutch film company Alberts Frères and the British Warwick Trading Company filmed the rescue attempts and the sinking of the Berlin . Aside from Queen Wilhelmina's coronation and wedding , these films were the only Dutch recordings that attracted international attention in the early years of the film . The Dutch production company Filmfabriek FA Nöggerath turned it into the film Hoek van Holland after the disaster. The shipwreck of the steamer Berlin , which in 1907 also found a wide audience in Germany. The Dutch television station Andere Tijden broadcast the rare recordings on March 1st, 2007.
Web links
- Further links to data, lists and further information
- Overview of the disaster in Berlin on www.wrecksite.eu, a database on shipwrecks
- Details on the course of the sinking, photos of the ship and crew list
- STEAMER LOST WITH 142 LIVES ( New York Times report of February 22, 1907)
- LOSS OF THE BERLIN, 1907 (report in Liverpool Mercury of February 23, 1907)
- List of fatalities