Cologne shipyard

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Shipyard in Mülheim harbor

The Kölner Werft GmbH & Co. Schiffbau KG, E. Berninghaus was an inland shipyard company in Cologne on the Rhine and Duisburg on the Ruhr .

history

The company was founded on December 1, 1866 by Ewald Berninghaus as a boiler forge in Duisburg . With the beginning of the industrialization of the Ruhr area, the company enjoyed a rapid upswing, because the favorable location allowed large workpieces to be transported to the customer by water.

Soon Berninghaus took the connection to shipbuilding on, provided initially ship boilers and repaired the first inland waterway vessels and barges . In 1869 a slipway was taken over and in 1873 the construction of new ships began. The first new construction was a paddle steamer with 300 hp , followed by four rope tow steamers by 1875 , which were also known as the Tauer.

Factory hall of the FOTG power plant from 1884

The experiences with the propulsion of steamships could also be applied to other projects, such as the boiler system of the power station of the Frankfurt-Offenbacher Trambahn-Gesellschaft (FOTG). The electrical components were manufactured by Siemens & Halske . This was put into operation on 18 February 1884 coal power plant serving electricity for one of the first electric tram - lines in the world. At the same time, with the help of this power plant, FOTG was its former municipal energy supplier , which supplied the first electricity to companies and private households in Oberrad .

After the company's founder passed away, his son Caspar Berninghaus took over management of the company in 1885. Caspar Berninghaus became one of the most prominent figures in German inland shipbuilding. His name is associated with the use of model testing technology for the development of inexpensive inland waterway vessels and with the improvement of the paddle wheels prevailing at the time. For his practical and scientific work in the field of ship technology, Dr. hc Caspar Berninghaus awarded the “Rhine flag” in 1924 by the Association for the Protection of Shipping Interests.

In 1890 the traditional steamship yard was taken over by Franz Haniel and in 1929 the inland shipyard of Sachsenberg-Werke in Cologne-Deutz . In the 1930s, numerous river and sea-going ships for the Rhine-Sea service and two passenger ships for the Rhine with Voith-Schneider propulsion were built in Cologne .

The Nederland , built in 1964 , now operates as the Road to Mandalay

The Duisburg shipyard did pioneering work in the first years of the war by building tugs with engines powered by generator gas. After the war, powerful Rhine tugs with shallow drafts were developed and built. New technical territory was broken in 1956/57 with the construction of two ammonia tankers. After that, the construction of special ships for the transport of chemicals was an important pillar of the shipyard.

From 1965 the focus of shipbuilding was shifted to Cologne, the shipyard there was modernized and the increasing production in boiler, container and apparatus engineering was concentrated in Duisburg. In addition to the construction of barges and tugs, Berninghaus was mainly known for the construction of numerous passenger ships, especially for the Cologne-Düsseldorf Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt .

Triggered by the lack of demand for inland waterway vessels, the company, with around 150 employees, came under increasing pressure in the mid-1970s. In July 1976 a settlement was requested, but this was rejected, so that bankruptcy proceedings had to be opened shortly afterwards. This is why the shipyard's last ship, the 499 GRT coaster Capella, was completed at Gutehoffnungshütte shipyard in Walsum . The shipyards built a total of 29 ocean-going vessels with around 7600 GRT, 257 powered inland vehicles and 536 ships without their own propulsion .

Web links

Commons : Ships of the Cologne shipyard E. Berninghaus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Individual references and references

  1. ↑ Verkehrsmuseum Frankfurt am Main (ed.): 125 years of buses and trains between Frankfurt and Offenbach . Exhibition for the 125th anniversary of the first commercially operated electric tram in 2009. Historic tram of the city of Frankfurt am Main e. V. (HSF), Frankfurt am Main 2009.
  2. ↑ History of the Association for European Inland Shipping and Waterways eV ( Memento from June 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 11.6 ″  N , 6 ° 59 ′ 1.5 ″  E