Cimbria (ship)

Cimbria

Drawing of the Cimbria by Jens Rusch

Ship data Ship type Passenger ship home port Hamburg Owner HAPAG Shipyard Caird & Co. in Greenock ( Scotland ) Launch January 21, 1867 Whereabouts Sank on January 19, 1883 after a collision

Ship dimensions and crew   crew 120

Machine system machine Steam engine Machine performance 1,500 PS (1,103 kW) Top speed 12.5 kn (23 km / h)

Transport capacities Permitted number of passengers 678

The Cimbria was a steamship of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag). The at & Co. Caird built in Greenock (Scotland) vessel arrived on 21 January 1867 by stacking and had 3,037 gross tons displacement . The indicated power of the steam engine was given as 1,500 PSi , which gave the Cimbria a maximum speed of 12.5 knots . The ship had passenger facilities for 678 people with a crew of 120 and was used as a transatlantic liner .

Fall of the Cimbria

Salvaged Porcelain - Figurines from the Cimbria Wreck

The Cimbria, led by Captain Julius Hansen, collided on January 19, 1883 with the English steamer Sultan (Captain: Cuttil) near the German North Sea island of Borkum . Both ships drove towards each other in the thick fog . Was heard on the Cimbria the foghorn of another ship, but could not locate it.

At the moment of visual contact, the steamers were only 30 meters away. The Sultan rammed the Cimbria on the port side. The side wall of the Cimbria was torn open below the waterline, which led to a violent, uncontrollable water ingress. The ship began to sink quickly. The Sultan was so badly damaged that she could not take care of the Cimbria or its passengers and crew.

Of the Cimbria , which had 402 passengers on board in addition to the crew, 437 people lost their lives. Hardly any of the 72 women and 87 children on board were rescued (there were many non-swimmers at the time ). The passengers were mostly emigrants from Russia , Prussia , Austria and Hungary ; and French sailors on the way to Le Havre and some in the United States back traveling Chippewa - Indians were on board. Well-known victims of their time were the siblings Kathinka, Auguste and Georg Rommer from Biberach, the "Swabian songbirds".

56 people were able to get into lifeboats and were rescued from the Bremen ship Diamant and the English barque Theta . A third boat reached the island of Borkum with nine survivors.

In 1974 the research vessel Wega discovered the wreck of the Cimbria . One of the ship's bells was recovered. It has been restored and is now in the headquarters of Hapag-Lloyd AG (Hamburg, Ballinhaus) on the Inner Alster in memory of all who died at sea.

In August 2001, the company Sea Explorer AG, based in Sasbach am Kaiserstuhl , began recovering equipment and luggage from emigrants. Furthermore, on her last voyage , the Cimbria had around 1500 t of cargo such as Carlsbad sparkling salt, sealed wine bottles, porcelain dishes, pipe bowls and much more on board. There were also particularly valuable raw materials such as elephant tusks for further processing in America on the ship, because with the beginning of industrialization in the 19th century, ivory was an important and lucrative commodity worldwide.

In May 2007, the Borkum-based Cimbria Operation Ltd. & Co. KG was commissioned to rescue the ship. The aim is to explore the wreck and to bring it closer to visitors to the holiday island as part of an exhibition. By the end of the project in 2008, 250 dives had been made.

In 2012, archaeologists from Terra Mare Excavation & Research, in collaboration with WWF, examined ivory from the cargo hold of the Cimbria for its country of origin. They determined that the ivory most likely originally came from southern Africa and here once from Botswana and once from the area around the Kruger National Park .

literature

• J. Ewersen, S. Ziegler: Torn from the sea? Determination of the origin of elephant ivory from the wreck of the Cimbria. In: Contributions to archeozoology and prehistoric anthropology, 9 (2013) pp. 177–189.

supporting documents

1. ↑ Schwäbische Zeitung online: The "singing birds" sang until they died
2. ↑ Passenger list and crew list of the last voyage of the Cimbria, published in the Hamburg Börsen-Halle on January 22, 1883: [1]
3. ↑ 'The Ballin House'. Brochure from Hapag-Lloyd AG, page 20 ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.0 MB) 
4. ↑ spiegel.de: Shudder through all limbs.
5. ↑ Treasure hunter on the wreck of the emigrant ship "Cimbria". Hamburger Morgenpost dated August 31, 2001.
6. ↑ J. Ewersen, S. Ziegler: Torn from the sea? Determination of the origin of elephant ivory from the wreck of the Cimbria. Contributions to archeozoology and prehistoric anthropology, 9 (2013), pp. 177–189.