Bucentaur (ship, 1665)
 Model of the bug
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The Bucentaur was a splendid ship of the Bavarian electors on Lake Starnberg . It was the largest rowing ship on a German inland waterway and was in the tradition of the ships of the Bavarian rulers maintained on Lake Starnberg since the middle of the 15th century. The model for the Bucentaur , built between 1662 and 1664, was the state ship of the Doge of Venice, the Bucintoro . The Bavarian Bucentaur served baroque splendor with sea festivals and hunts that lasted for days, which the Wittelsbachers staged in competition with the other great royal houses of Europe. The water festivals of Electors Max Emanuel and Karl Albrecht against the background of their great power politics are the highlight .
Idea and use
The water-loving Elector Ferdinand Maria and his wife Henriette Adelaide commissioned a magnificent new fleet to celebrate the birth of the heir to the throne Max Emanuel in 1662, which was to sail the then Würm Lake . This included kitchen, sommelier and music ships. The Bucentaur was designed and built in Starnberg as the prestigious new "electoral body ship" of the ruling couple . The flagship could hold around 400 people and was sometimes used as a floating dance hall. The festivities reached their climax at dusk, when the castles around the lake were illuminated and fireworks were held at various points on the lake shore at a late hour. In addition to Starnberg Castle, which has been used by the Wittelsbach family since 1541 , Elector Ferdinand Maria acquired the Possenhofen (1668), Berg (1676) and Kempfenhausen (1678) castles located directly on the lake shore . This enabled boat trips with splendid interruptions.
Furnishing
The design of the Bucentaur was made by the Venice builder Francesco Santurini, who also took over the construction management. In addition to Francesco Mauro and Pietro Renner , local carpenters were at his side. 450 frames formed the skeleton of the ship's hull. The launch took place in June 1663. After that, equipment such as oil paintings, furniture, lanterns were attached and pumps, anchors, and rigging were installed. The richly decorated ship was decorated and furnished by local artists such as Mathias Steinhart , Balthasar Ableithner , Wolfgang Leitner , Johann Spillenberger and Kaspar Amort the Elder . They decorated the ship according to the Venetian model with two lion-headed spurs on the bow, a Neptune and a painting with dolphins and mermaids. However, they refrained from completely gilding the ship, instead using the Bavarian colors white and blue for the design. Paintings adorned the hull along the lower floor.
Technical
At 29 meters long and around 8.4 meters wide, the Bavarian ship was the same length as its Italian model, but significantly wider. It had three floors. The rowers sat in the bottom one. Above that was the main floor for the passengers with two cabinets, which were adjoined by the elector's room. One stepped through a table room onto the open foredeck, which was adorned by an ornamental fountain with a high fountain. Two flights of stairs led from there to the open upper floor, which was intended for musicians, sailors and the helmsman. At the sides and at the stern, balcony-like arbors served as a viewing point. Without masts, the ship was around 5 meters high. In the basement of the two-masted rowing and sailing ship there was space for 64 rowers. The ship had a flat design with a draft of around 0.9 meters. With the installation of 16 cannons in the lower deck an attempt was made to increase the seaworthiness, which could also fire salutes. The use of the two sails was forbidden in stronger winds. 120 rowers were used for this. In the course of time the Bucentaur was repeatedly overhauled.
Escort ships
The prestigious trips of the Bucentaur always took place with an escort fleet, with the ships of various sizes, designs and times of origin. The largest and most elegant was the red galley , built by Santurini in 1668, with a length of 23.5 meters. She was the only escort ship to be equipped with cannons, a mast with a square sail and initially 40 oars. One of the two smaller boats was the chamberlain ship (17.5 m long and 3 m wide), which was equipped with a sail and originally 30 oars. The ship originated from the time of Elector Maximilian I and was rebuilt several times before it was renewed in 1716. Finally, it was given a figurehead in 1760 and was used until the middle of the 19th century under the name of Löwe . Another ship, built in 1665, was 15.5 m long and 2.5 m wide. After the Bucentaur was demolished , it served as a body ship. Until the middle of the 19th century it was known as the Hirsch on the lake. Both hulls were painted with a diamond pattern in the Bavarian national colors of white and blue and had cabinets in the stern area.
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Another type of ship in the escort fleet were gondolas in various colors with a length of 10 to 12 meters and a width of 1.5 to 1.8 meters, with a mostly unglazed cabinet in the middle. Only a few had a mast, rather they were operated by two to three pairs of oars in the bow and a helmsman in the stern.
Later, so-called fisalers in the form of an enlarged Venetian gondola were added. The utility ships were similar in design, but much simpler. They were painted red or reddish brown and covered with clapboards. Kitchen ships were sometimes considerable lengths of up to 20 meters and 3 meters wide and had a smoke outlet in the roof. The cellar ship carried barrels with wine and beer, a silver ship carried electoral tableware. So-called farm ships rounded off the fleet as unpainted pure transport vehicles, e.g. for firewood. Nothing is known about the appearance of the lavatory .
Dugouts were used as a connection between the ships and during sea hunts for the hunters and drivers.
Accommodation of the electoral luxury fleet
Where the Georgenbach flows into the lake in Starnberg, a work hut for the Bucintoro was built in the autumn of 1662 in ten weeks of work . It was expanded into a boat shed while the magnificent barge took shape: 32 meters long, 20 meters wide and eight meters high. Later five spacious boat huts were built on the site to accommodate the fleet. In 1803 the boathouse for the Bucintoro , which was extended to 60 meters in length, was replaced by a new building. The ship master's house built in 1724 still exists.
Scrapping and the last relics
High repair costs, less interest from Elector Maximilian III, who ruled from 1755 . Joseph and a heavy debt burden on the state budget led to the scrapping of the Bucentaur and the Red Galley in 1758 . The ruling house held on to the smaller escort ships and continued to use them for festivities. Only two ceiling paintings and a huge lantern that was carried by two Bavarian lions to illuminate the stern have survived from the luxurious furnishings of the "Bucentaur". A gilded statue of Minerva made of limewood survived as a showpiece of the former furnishings . It is attributed to the electoral court sculptor Balthasar Ableithner . The larger than life goddess was originally placed on a plinth on the stern side of the main deck. In her right hand she held a lance, the left leaned on a shield.
model
A 1:20 scale model of the ship from 1909 has been preserved. It is usually located in the Starnberger See museum and was exhibited on the occasion of the state exhibition “Bavaria - Italy” 2010 in Füssen .
literature
- House of Bavarian History (Hrsg.): Bavaria - Italy . Augsburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-937974-27-9 , pp. 195 .
- Heidrun Kurz: Baroque splendor and pleasure ships at the electoral court in Munich . In: Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia . tape 163 . Munich 1993, ISBN 3-87821-289-5 (also Diss. Univ. Munich, 1992).
- Kleinschroth, A. (1986). The journeys of the Bavarian regents on inland lakes from the 15th to the 19th century. German Shipping Archives, 9, 97-116. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-52572-8
- Gerhard Schober: Magnificent ships on Lake Starnberg . 2007, ISBN 978-3-923657-88-9 .