Carola class
Carola and Olga in dry dock in Singapore
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The Carola- class was a class of six smooth-deck corvettes that were built for the German Imperial Navy in the 1870s and early 1880s . The four ships were SMS Carola , SMS Olga , SMS Marie and SMS Sophie . The ships were all named after the wives of the rulers of German states. The corvettes of the class were ordered to replace older steam corvettes and were intended to serve on extended mission trips in areas of interest overseas of the German Empire.
The ships had a battery of ten 15 cm ring cannons as their main armament and were equipped with a full set of sailing equipment to supplement the steam engine that was also available on long missions overseas. The ships were outdated even before construction began. In 1884 the ships were reclassified as cruiser frigates.
history
After the Franco-Prussian War , the Imperial Navy started a general expansion program, the so-called "Fleet Plan of 1873", to strengthen and modernize the fleet, mainly in order to be prepared for a possible renewed conflict with France . At the same time, however, German trade interests also expanded in the overseas markets in Asia, Central and South America and the Pacific, while other European powers began to exclude German companies from activities in their overseas areas of interest. In order to better protect these German interests and to further project power overseas, a need for warships for long journeys and overseas stays was identified. In the mid-1870s, the previous capacities of the conventional sailing corvettes of the Imperial Navy were too small and also out of date. Accordingly, the naval command decided that modern steam corvettes were required for reconnaissance purposes and for service overseas. The technical innovation of steam power in shipping was only available for a short time and had already replaced the sails of the armored ships of the modern navy. The long trips abroad, which were necessary to safeguard German economic interests, on the one hand required a much larger radius of action than that of the armored ships, and on the other hand, steam engines were not yet reliable and efficient enough to rely on them alone. For the intended task, the German naval command therefore decided that traditional sailing systems had to be retained.
Accordingly, six Carola class ships were initially ordered in 1875 as part of this program to modernize the fleet. The last two ships that were intended for the class, however, had already been modified in the draft and subsequently formed their own, the Alexandrine class . The design was created in the late 1870s and was similar to that of the slightly larger Bismarck class built a few years earlier . The ships were already considered obsolete at the start of construction and were therefore only used overseas, where an encounter with modern enemy armored units was considered unlikely.
The ships of the class were deployed overseas for several years during their entire service, often also in order to protect German interests by means of power projection in the sense of a gunboat policy and to promote the expansion of the German colonial empire from the 1880s. The ships were in the process of taking possession of the African colonies of Togo , German South West Africa and German East Africa , the German New Guinea colony in the Pacific and later the concession for the Kiautschou lease area . They were also used to fight local uprisings against German rule. On several occasions ships of the class have been badly damaged in accidents. Marie ran aground off Neumecklenburg , Sophie was rammed by a merchant ship in 1884 and Olga stranded in 1889 because of a cyclone , but none of the ships was lost.
Overall, the Carola- class corvettes and the other available ships managed to perform their duties and expand the German colonial empire, particularly in the central Pacific, in the 1880s and 1890s.
By the 1890s, all Carola- class ships were no longer eligible as warships and were withdrawn from active service at the end of the decade. The Sophie was used as a training ship as early as 1884 , while the Carola and Olga were used as special artillery training ships . When Marie the conversion was too expensive and was no longer active in their Reserve training session.
general characteristics
The four ships of the Carola class were 70.6 m long at the waterline and a total of 76.35 m long, with a width of 12.5 m and a draft of 4.98 m. The design displacement was 2,147 t, with a full load the ships displaced 2,424 t.
The hulls were constructed with iron frames that formed the structure for the wooden planks. A zinc layer was applied to the planks to prevent biocorrosion during longer missions overseas, where shipyard facilities were not readily available. The hull consisted of nine watertight compartments. The keel and stern post were also made of iron. All four ships had a double floor under the engine room to protect the steam engine.
The nominal crew of the ships consisted of 25 officers and 244 men . As training ships, the crew of Sophie and Marie was reduced to 13 officers and 135 men, which left space for 150 cabin boys on board each ship. The Carola had 10 officers and 246 men, while Olga had 10 officers and 265 men. Each corvette carried several smaller boats. Carola and Olga had two watch boats, two cutters , two dinghies and a dinghy , while the other ships each had a watch boat, a launch, two cutters, two dinghies and two dinghies.
drive
Carola and Olga were propelled by a single horizontal 3-cylinder steam engine with double expansion by means of a 2-blade propeller with a diameter of 5.02 m. Steam was supplied by eight coal-fired boilers , and the exhaust gases were fed into two chimneys . Marie and Sophie had a 2-cylinder steam engine with a propeller 4.7 m in diameter, six boilers and only one chimney. Each ship had a coal supply of 340 to 350 tons. The power supply was provided by a generator that produced 2 kilowatts (2.7 hp) at 55 volts .
The four ships had a planned speed of 13.5 knots (25.0 km / h) under steam with an indexed output of 2,100 hp (1,600 kW), although they surpassed all of those numbers. Carola , the slowest ship in the class, reached a top speed of 13.7 knots (25.4 km / h) while Marie and Sophie both reached 14 knots (26 km / h). The range of action was 3,420 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots (19 km / h).
The ships were a Dreimast- Bark - rig equipped with a sail area from 1134 to 1230 square meters, to complement their steam engines in their long missions abroad, where coal could be scarce. After they had been converted into artillery training ships, the sailing rig at Carola and Olga was removed and they were given heavy battle masts with mast cages for light weapons. The ships were steered with a single rudder and maneuvered well under steam and even better under sail. However, the corvettes tended to roll and pitch and lost a considerable amount of speed in the Gegensee, although they did well in bad weather.
Armament
The Carola-class ships were armed with a battery of ten 15 cm ring cannons of caliber length L / 22, for which a total of 1,000 rounds of ammunition were carried. The guns had a range of 5,000 m. Furthermore, two 8.7 cm L / 24 cannons with 200 rounds of ammunition and six Hotchkiss - 3.7 cm revolver cannons were carried.
For the Carola , which was converted into an artillery training ship in the early 1890s, the 15 cm cannons were later reduced to six and then to four cannons and the 8.7 cm cannons by two 10.5 cm Sk L / 35, eight 8.8 cm Sk L / 30 and two 5 cm Sk L / 40 replaced. The Olga was converted as an artillery training ship for automatic weapons and later carried only two 8.8 cm cannons and ten 3.7 cm automatic cannons of an unrecorded type.
Ships
| ship | Shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | Commissioning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SMS Carola | AG Vulcan , Szczecin | 1879 | November 27, 1880 | September 1, 1881 |
| SMS Olga | December 11, 1880 | January 9, 1882 | ||
| SMS Marie | Reiherstieg shipyard , Hamburg | 1880 | August 20, 1881 | May 1, 1883 |
| SMS Sophie | Imperial Shipyard , Danzig | January 1880 | November 10, 1881 | August 10, 1882 |
literature
- Gröner, Erich / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .
- Hildebrand, Hans H. / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . 10 volumes. Mundus Verlag, Ratingen (licensed edition by Koehler's Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, approx. 1990).