SMS Cap Trafalgar
 The Cap Trafalgar at sea (painting by Willy Stöwer)
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SMS Cap Trafalgar was a passenger ship of the Hamburg-South American Steamship Company (Hamburg Süd) , which was requisitioned by the Imperial Navy during World War I and converted into an auxiliary cruiser .
Pre-war deployment
The ship was launched in July 1913 at Werft AG Vulcan Hamburg . The maiden voyage took place in March 1914. The Cap Trafalgar was 186 meters long and a good 22 meters wide, had two steam engines with four cylinders each and ran 17 knots with 15,000 hp. Until the outbreak of war, it provided liner service between its home port of Hamburg and ports in South America.
Use as an auxiliary cruiser
In August 1914, the Cap Trafalgar was in South America when it was requisitioned by the Imperial Navy. All passengers and non-war crew members were disembarked in Montevideo , while additional stokers and other nautical personnel were taken over by other German merchant ships anchored in port. The ship then met near the Brazilian island of Trindade with the German merchant steamer Steiermark of the Hamburg-America Line and the gunboat Eber , from which naval officers and crews as well as guns and ammunition were taken over. The main armament consisted of two 10.5 cm guns and six 3.7 cm revolver cannons . As a trade disruptor, the Cap Trafalgar ( auxiliary cruiser B ), under the command of Korvettenkapitän Wirth, was supposed to seize and sink British merchant ships. The ship then crossed the east coast of South America for ten days in search of opposing merchant ships.
After an unsuccessful search, the Cap Trafalgar drove again to the island of Trindade, 450 nautical miles east of Vitória, where the Imperial Navy had set up a small supply depot. There she was discovered, together with the supply ships Pontos (Hapag, 5,703 GRT) and Eleonore Woermann ( Woermann Line , 4,624 GRT) in the early morning of September 14, 1914 by the British auxiliary cruiser Carmania , a former passenger steamer of the Cunard Line .
Battle with the Carmania
To gain space for maneuvering, both ships first drove several nautical miles into the open sea, and the Cap Trafalgar radioed an encrypted message stating the position of the upcoming battle at 35 degrees west and 26 degrees south on course NNW. When the two ships turned towards each other to take up combat, the Carmania fired too early so that the Cap Trafalgar could score the first hits. The Carmania received 79 hits during the next two hours, several of them below the waterline , and her bridge was completely destroyed. As the distance decreased, however, she also scored numerous hits on Cap Trafalgar . Fires broke out on both ships, and both sides were firing machine guns at each other from the deck as the distance between the combatants shrank to a few hundred meters.
When it seemed that the fires on the Carmania were going to get out of control, the Cap Trafalgar abruptly turned off and launched her lifeboats. The ship listed in a very short time and began to sink, as a hit below the waterline had caused several bulkheads to collapse. The suppliers recovered 279 men from their crew; 51 men were killed in the battle or in the sinking, including Corvette Captain Wirth. The survivors were brought to Montevideo by Eleonore Woermann .
The Carmania was not in much better shape - with a heavy list, water in the ship, on fire, and with nine dead and many wounded. The German auxiliary cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm , who appeared shortly afterwards on the scene , brought in by the radio information about the position of the Cap Trafalgar , could have put an end to the badly ailing Carmania , but feared a trap, as the radio messages from the Carmania had probably also summoned British warships. The Crown Prince Wilhelm therefore turned away without firing a shot and ran away. The Carmania was directed to Pernambuco by other Royal Navy ships the next day .
literature
- Bernard Edwards: Salvo! Epic Naval Gun Actions. Cassell, London 1995, ISBN 0-304-35171-7 ( Cassell military classics ).
- "Cape Trafalgar". In: Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz : The cruiser war 1914-1918. The cruiser squadron. Emden, Koenigsberg, Karlsruhe. The auxiliary cruisers. Stalling, Oldenburg i. O. 1931, pp. 188f. ( Naval Archives 2, ZDB -ID 1157553-0 ).
- Alfred von Niezychowski: The Cruise of the Crown Prince Wilhelm. Selwyn and Blount, London 1928.
- SM auxiliary cruiser "Cap Trafalgar". In: The War at Sea 1914–1918. Part 3: The Cruiser War in Foreign Waters. Volume 3: Eberhard von Mantey : The German auxiliary cruisers. Mittler, Berlin 1937, pp. 26-38.
- Colin Simpson: The Ship That Hunted Itself. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1977, ISBN 0-297-77337-2 .
- Fedor von Zobeltitz : "Cap Trafalgar". A German auxiliary cruiser Glück und Ende . Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1915.
- John Walter: Cap Trafalgar , in: ders .: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914-1918 . Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1994, pp. 47-51. ISBN 3-613-01729-6 .
Footnotes
- ↑ John Walter: Cap Trafalgar , in: ders .: Pirates of the Emperor . Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1994, pp. 47-51.