Borussia (ship, 1856)
 the Borussia
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The Borussia was a passenger ship put into service in 1855 , which originally belonged to HAPAG and from 1876 to the British shipping company Dominion Line . It carried passengers and cargo on the North Atlantic from Liverpool to the United States . On December 2, 1879, Borussia sank in the North Atlantic after a storm caused a leak in the hull . Water seeped in and flooded the engine room so that the ship could no longer be maneuvered. The ship sank before all of the lifeboats could be launched. 169 passengers and crew members perished. Only 15 people in two boats survived.
The ship
The 2,131-ton steamer Borussia was 1855 in Greenock ( Scotland ) on the shipyard by Caird & Company for the HAPAG built. She had a sister ship , the Hammonia (hull number 37) launched in May 1855 , which was later also sold to the Dominion Line and sank off the Bahamas in 1873 . The Borussia had a 89 m long from iron -built hull and the bow of a clipper . It had three decks and was divided into seven watertight compartments by six bulkheads . Its three masts were rigged with a barque . She was driven by a single propeller. Their passenger accommodations were designed for 54 passengers in the first, 146 in the second and 310 in the third class.
Before the ship was put to its intended purpose, the regular service , it served temporarily as a troop transport in the Crimean War . On June 1, 1856, Borussia cast off for its first Atlantic crossing from Hamburg to New York . The ship stayed on this route until April 1870. In 1871, the ship was modified, including new boilers and steam engines from CA Day & Company from Southampton . HAPAG then used the ship on the Hamburg – West Indies route .
In 1876 Borussia was sold to the Mississippi Steamship Company Ltd., better known as the Dominion Line . This was a British shipping company founded in 1870 and headquartered in Liverpool . This also became Borussia's new home port . Borussia was used in transatlantic passenger traffic for the Dominion Line and mainly transported emigrants from Liverpool to New Orleans. On September 9, 1876, the ship cast off for its first voyage on this route. The last expert inspection of the steamer took place in New Orleans in 1877 .
Downfall
On Thursday, November 20, 1879, the Borussia set sail under Captain Roberts in Liverpool for another crossing to New Orleans via A Coruña ( Spain ) and Havana ( Cuba ). In addition to the 54 crew members, there were 66 passengers on board. Most of them were English farmers who had made a small fortune and wanted to settle with their families in Texas on this basis . But there were also some Scots and Irish on board. On November 23, the northern Spanish port city of A Coruña was reached, where another 64 passengers boarded. This time it was Spaniards who wanted to emigrate to Havana, Cuba. After the upcoming Atlantic crossing, this should be Borussia's next port of call . A total of 184 people were now on board the steamer. The cargo included a lot of heavy goods, including a large amount of tin plates .
Four days after leaving A Coruña, Borussia encountered heavy winds and heavy seas coming from the south-southeast . This condition lasted until the evening of December 1st, when the wind shifted and came from the north-northwest. During the night the ship got a leak amidships , through which water continuously penetrated. On the morning of December 2nd, a Tuesday, the water was already eleven feet above the keel . The crew tried to pump out the water, but despite these efforts, it flooded the engine room and put out the fires in the boilers so that the ship could no longer be steered. The lifeboats were made ready for lowering, but only the first two got safely off the ship. The third boat, which had only two crew members on board, drifted away before it could take more people. At least one other boat capsized. Before more boats could be lowered, the Borussia sank about 350 miles southwest of the Azores island of Faial . Most of the passengers were still on board at this time.
In the dark and the stormy sea, the boats quickly lost contact with each other. One of the boats that had the ship's doctor and nine other crew on board was found on December 5th by the British sailing ship Mallowdale , which was taking the castaways to Queenstown . The German barque Fulda saved five more people. These 15 people were the only survivors of Borussia . 169 people, including Captain Roberts and almost all of the officers, were killed. It was the greatest loss of life in the sinking of a Dominion Line ship .
literature
- Charles Hocking: Dictionary of Disasters at Sea during the Age of Steam. Including Sailing Ships and Ships of War lost in Action, 1824–1962. Volume 1: A to L. Lloyd's Register of Shipping et al., London et al. 1969.
Web links
- Brief summary of the ship
- Overview of construction data and the last trip
- Borussia key data in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Tabular overview of the period of service of Borussia in Norway Heritage
- Entry in the ship directory Miramar Ship Index
- The Borussia in a listing on the Atlantic abortive ships
- FOUNDERED IN MID-OCEAN (Report of the sinking in the New York Times, December 24, 1879)