CA Larsen

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CA Larsen
The CA Larsen in Wellington
The CA Larsen in Wellington
Ship data
flag United KingdomUnited Kingdom (trade flag) United Kingdom Norway German Empire
NorwayNorway 
German EmpireGerman Empire (Reichskriegsflagge) 
other ship names
  • San Gregorio until 1926
  • Antarctic from 1945
Ship type Tanker
whaling - factory ship
Callsign LCGD
home port Sandefjord , Tonsberg
Owner Eagle Oil Transport Company
1926: A / S Rosshavet
1936: A / S Blaahval
1945: A / S Antarctic
Shipyard Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd ,
Wallsend on Tyne
Build number 923
Launch June 5, 1913
Commissioning 1913 as a tanker
1926 as a whale factory ship
Whereabouts Demolition from 1954
Ship dimensions and crew
length
160.7 m ( Lüa )
width 20.3 m
Draft Max. 10.6 m
measurement 12,093 GRT as a tanker
13,246 GRT as a factory ship
Machine system
machine 2 triple expansion machines
Top
speed
12 kn (22 km / h)
Transport capacities
Load capacity 12,936 dwt tanker than
17,250 dwt

The whaling factory ship CA Larsen was created in 1926 by converting the tanker San Gregorio . The only factory ship with a tow for whales in the bow survived the Second World War and was used again as a whaling mother ship with the name Antarctic from 1945 . In 1952 she was rebuilt into a tanker and demolished from 1954.

Building history

The ship was built as the second tanker of the San Fraterno class in 1913 at the Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend . The ten ships of the class were considered the largest tankers in the world when they were completed. They had 24 cargo tanks, which were divided with longitudinal and transverse bulkheads. The tanks could be heated with heating coils so that viscous oils could also be transported. The ships built for the Eagle Oil Transport Company were primarily intended to transport fuel oil from Mexico to Europe for the Royal Navy, which was in the process of converting from coal to oil . The San Gregorio , launched in July 1913, entered service in July 1913 as the second ship of the class.

After the war the San Gregorio was used like her surviving sister ships for the Royal Dutch Shell .

Conversion to a whaling factory

As the first large oil tanker, the San Gregorio was converted into a whaling factory ship in 1926 at the Norwegian shipyard Fredrikstad MV. She had a cargo capacity of 60,000 barrels of whale oil and all facilities for processing whales into whale oil on board. In the bow she had a lift to take the whales hunted by her fishing boats on board and then to carry out the processing on board. All the whaling factory ships used so far except for the Lancing (1898, 7866 GRT), which came into service in 1925 for the company A / S Globus in Larvik , had carried out the cutting of the whales (the Flensen ) outboard, which required a calm sea for the processing of the whales was still very dangerous even then. The lift was installed in the bow to circumvent existing patents for a rear lift like the one used for the lancing . This installation turned out to be less than optimal and was therefore not repeated on any other whaling factory ship.

The conversion at Fredrikstad MV was carried out on behalf of A / S Rosshavet by Johan Rasmussen and Magnus Konow from Sandefjord. Upon completion, the former San Gregorio was named CA Larsen after Carl Anton Larsen , one of the founders of A / S Rosshavet, who died on December 8, 1924 as captain of Sir James Clark Ross in the Ross Sea .

Four other sister ships of the San Fraterno class were converted into factory ships from 1928 onwards. The San Lorenzo and the San Nazario went to whaling companies of the Thor Dahl group and were renamed Ole Wegger and Thorshammer , the San Jeronimo and San Patricio were converted into the factory ships Southern Empress and Southern Princess of the Southern Whaling Company, part of the Unilever group.

Mission history

The Sir James Clark Ross
in
Hobart in 1923

The CA Larsen was used with a British license together with the company's other mother ship, the Sir James Clark Ross (1905, rebuilt in 1923, 8173 GRT) in the area of ​​the Ross Sea. The company used the New Zealand Bay Paterson Inlet from Stewart Island as its base , where a small base was maintained and the fishing boats were left for overhaul in the southern winter, while the factory ships marched back to Norway to sell the whale oil produced . The procurement of new fishing boats began with the new ship, but for the 1926 fishing season, only one boat, the Star VIII, was completed at Nylands. Therefore you catch boats from other, also controlled by Rasmussen whaling companies put on a rented boats and other companies, such as the 1912-built at Akers whalers Karrakata and Pagodroma society Ocean, at the time pads .

On February 21, 1928, the fully loaded CA Larsen ran aground on a rock in Paterson Inlet with a record yield of 78,400 barrels of whale oil within 15 weeks while marching back. She managed to get out on her own and was temporarily repaired in shallow water under the shelter of Ulva Island . She had lost very little whale oil. She handed her cargo over to the motor tanker Spinanger and went to the dock in Port Chalmers for repairs in April . On the next fishing trip, the CA Larsen was accompanied by a scientist who accompanied the expedition as a representative of the Australian government and made scientific surveys on the occurrence of the whales. At the end of the fishing season, the expedition lost the whaler Pagodroma on February 28, 1929, whose hull had been badly damaged in the ice of the Ross Sea and which sank on the march back to Steward Island. The mother ship was able to take the entire crew on board. This was the only ship lost by society in peacetime.

The
Skytteren, also rented

As a result of the 1935 ban on selling Norwegian whaling factory ships abroad, two such ships were leased in 1936, the Skytteren and the CA Larsen . The CA Larsen and its six fishing boats were first sold pro forma to the new whaling company A / S Blaahval under managing director Jørgen Krag, which then rented this fleet for four years to the German margarine raw material procurement company (so-called bare boat carter), which to the operating company owned a 40% stake. Until the 1938/1939 season, the CA Larsen remained in action for the Germans, who coordinated the use of the two rented factory ships and the Südmeer and Wikinger factory ships bought in 1938 as well as the four fishing fleets through the Hamburg whaling office (GmbH) founded in 1936.

The preserved Rau IX ,
sister boat of Wal 8 and Wal 9

The whalers Hval 1 to Hval 7 of the CA Larsen were the former Star X , Star IX , Star XI , Star II , Star XII , Star XV and Star XVII . The Hval 1 was given to de A / S Kosmos as KOS III in 1938 and replaced by the Hval 7 . In addition, two German newbuildings of 340 GRT were built by the Seebeck shipyard : Wal 8 and Wal 9 .

War effort

While the Norwegian whaling fleet mostly marched to Antarctica for the new fishing season in autumn 1939, despite the outbreak of war, the ships rented by the Germans stayed in Norway.

In May 1940 the German seized the Navy in Norway launched C.A. Larsen and then used it as a depot tanker in Norway. In November 1941 she moved to Kirkenes as a base ship . From February 1942 to July 1944 the ship was in Tromsø and in the Altafjord before moving to Trondheim . There the CA Larsen lay in the Lofjord at the end of the war .

The whaler Hval 2 was seized by the Norwegian Navy in autumn 1939 and used as a guard ship in the outer Oslofjord and in the Skagerrak . The Germans captured the boat in Tønsberg in 1940 and used it as an outpost boat for Lorraine in Norway until the end of the war . Similar fates had Hval 3 , which is also used already by the Norwegian Navy Hval 4 , the Hval 6 and Hval 7 that were captured by the Navy in the occupation of Norway in 1940 and as patrol boats under the name Hval 3 , Husar , hunters and Warthegau were used until 1945. All five boats survived the war and were then used again as whalers, but without being used again in the Southern Ocean.

Only Hval 5 , taken over by the Norwegian Navy, escaped to Great Britain and reached Rosyth on June 18, 1940. Used as a mine sweeper, this boat also survived the war.

Again whaling mother ship as Antarctic

The CA Larsen survived the Second World War and in June 1945 was transferred to the new Norwegian company A / S Antarctic based in Tønsberg with manager Anton von der Lippe, who used it under the name Antarctic after a major repair in the Framnæs MV shipyard in 1945 . The factory ship was used in the Southern Ocean under its new name until 1952. Its first post-war voyage began on December 5, 1945, and it returned to Norway from its last fishing trip on April 21, 1952.

Since no more profits could be made as a whale factory, the former CA Larsen was converted into a tanker of 10,776 GRT and 15,993 tdw in 1952 by the Howaldtswerke in Kiel , but it was demolished in Hamburg as early as 1954.

literature

  • Joh. N. Tønnessen, Arne Odd Johnsen: The History of Modern Whaling , University of California Press (1982), ISBN 0-520-03973-4
  • Ian B. Hart: Whaling in the Falkland Islands Dependencies 1904-1931: A History of Shore and Bay-based Whaling in the Antarctic . Pequena, 2006, ISBN 0955292409
  • RK Headland: Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events , Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-15868-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Newspaper clipping from The Mercury of August 5, 1913 (English)
  2. Whaler Star VIII , 240 GRT
  3. Whaler Karrakatta , later Star III , then Polar IV , 179 GRT
  4. History of the Karrakata and Pagodroma whalers, who were initially borrowed .
  5. Tønnessen, p. 352.
  6. MT Spinanger , 12.1927 by F.Schichau , Danzig, 7429 BRT, 11 070 tdw, 134.1 m long, 17.4 m wide, 3200 hp diesel, 11 kn
  7. History of the Company Rosshavet support point (Engl.)
  8. ^ Headland, p. 282.
  9. Whaler Pagodroma , 179 GRT
  10. Tønnessen, p. 443.
  11. Tønnessen, p. 444.
  12. The whaler Star X (then Hval 1 ) 1927, Kaldnæs MV, Tønsberg, 223 GRT
  13. The whaler Star IX (then Hval 2 ) , 1927, Jarlsø Værft, Tønsberg, 223 GRT
  14. Der whaling Star XI (then Hval 3 ), 1928, Nylands MV, Oslo, 246 GRT
  15. The whaler Star II² (then Hval 4 ), 1929, Nylands MV, Oslo, 248 GRT
  16. Jump up ↑ The whaler Star XII (then Hval 5 ), 1929, Nylands MV, Oslo, 248 GRT
  17. ^ The whaler Star XV (then Hval 6 ), 1929, Nylands MV, Oslo, 248 GRT
  18. The whaler Star XVII (then Hval 7 ), 1930, Nylands MV, Oslo, 249 GRT
  19. From 1928 to 1934 the reefer ship Opawa, converted into a whale factory ship, had this name, which was sold to Japan in 1934 as the first whaling factory ship and was there under the names Antarctic Maru and Tonan Maru until 1940 and was sunk in 1943 by an American submarine . ( 1928 factory ship Antarctic (1) )