Cleveland (ship, 1909)
.jpg) The Cleveland as a US troop transport mobile
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The Cleveland of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag) was a passenger ship built by Blohm & Voss for the North Atlantic traffic . Chartered by an American tourism company, she was the first ship to make two cruises almost around the world. The Cleveland was at home in 1914 and had to be delivered in 1919.
After the war, the ship was briefly in service as the USS Mobile (identification: ID-4030) as a troop transport , then as King Alexander in liner service. From 1923 it was used by an American line flying the Panamanian flag in a shared timetable with Hapag under its old name between Hamburg and New York. Hapag bought the ship back in July 1926 and used it on the North Atlantic until 1931 .
Building history
In 1908, Hapag awarded construction contracts for two twin screw steamers to the German shipyards Blohm & Voss in Hamburg and F. Schichau in Danzig . The more than 16,000 GRT two-chimney steamers should not only have about 500 passengers in the two usual classes but also up to 500 passengers in a III. Can accommodate cabin class and thus take account of the increasing prosperity of broader social groups who could afford more comfort for the crossing. In addition, these ships should also be able to transport over 1,800 travelers on the tween deck. The two steamers came into service in 1909 as Cleveland and Cincinnati .
In the service of Hapag
The Cleveland started as the first of the sister ships on March 27, 1909 on her maiden voyage from Hamburg to New York , where the steamer arrived on April 8. On the first voyages of the new ship, the second class was so popular that the third class cabins had to be converted for the next voyages.
The first world trips
The Cleveland was chartered in her first year of service by the American tourism company Frank C. Clark , which had taken up Hapag's plans for a world tour. With 618 passengers it left New York on October 15, 1909 and ran via Madeira through the Mediterranean to India and then via the Dutch East Indies to East Asia. A total of 21 ports (including Gibraltar , Naples , Port Said - with an excursion to Cairo -, Suez , Bombay - with excursions into the interior of India - Colombo , Calcutta , Rangoon , Singapore , Batavia , Labuan , Manila , Hong Kong - with an excursion to Canton - , Nagasaki , Kobe , Yokohama ) were called on the voyage before the Cleveland reached the end of the voyage in San Francisco on January 31, 1910 via Honolulu . There the ship was partially released for inspection and 20,000 Americans are said to have visited their lounges in one day. On almost the same route, the Cleveland then started the return voyage in February, with calls to Great Britain and Ireland after the Mediterranean. For the guests, the cruise ended either in Genoa on May 13th or in Southampton on May 20th with the transition to a liner steamer to New York while the ship went to Hamburg to be overtaken.
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On the world tour organized by Hapag from November 1911, the Cleveland collided with the cruiser Colorado lying at the pier on January 12, 1912 when she entered Honolulu . The cause was the sudden death of the harbor pilot Milton P. Sanders on the bridge of the Cleveland , which ran uncontrolled for a moment. The damage to the American cruiser was not very significant.
Another line service
The Cleveland was used in liner service between her cruises and the existing third class was widely accepted. On May 24, 1913, she ran for the last time from Hamburg via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York. On July 10, 1913, she was used for the first time on the line from Hamburg via Boulogne-sur-Mer and Southampton to Boston , on which her sister ship Cincinnati had been in service since May. For both ships this line became the main line of their operations in the regular service and the Cincinnati was in Boston at the outbreak of war while the Cleveland was in Hamburg. Their deployment on a five-month first real world tour through the Panama Canal was to begin on December 30, 1914.
During the First World War , the ship was in the port of Hamburg, as there was no use for a ship of her size and speed. A formal sale of the ship to Sweden in 1917 was not recognized by the Allies at the end of the war and she had to be delivered as part of the reparations .
Use under foreign flags
The ship was delivered in March 1919 and used by the United States Navy under the name Mobile as a troop transport for the repatriation of American troops from France. By the time it was decommissioned in November, it had brought over 21,000 soldiers back to their homeland.
After this assignment she was assigned to Great Britain and chartered by the White Star Line, for which she made two tours between Liverpool, Queenstown and New York as an emigrant ship as a mobile in 1920 . Then the Byron Line bought the ship and named it King Alexander . The King Alexander began her first voyage on December 18, 1920 in Piraeus, still used as an emigration ship to the USA . The twelfth and last trip started on June 4, 1923 in Constanza and led via Constantinople and Piraeus to New York.
After this voyage, the ship was sold to United American Lines , which had had a very close relationship with Hapag since 1920, which renamed it Cleveland again. At their Hamburg shipyard, the ship was converted to oil firing and the passenger facilities were modernized in order to carry up to 600 passengers in the cabin class and up to 1,000 in the third class. From October 1923 to June 1926, the Cleveland made 25 round trips for the American shipping company on the Hamburg - Southampton - New York route in the timetable network with Hapag. On departure from February 28, 1924, Halifax was included in the shipping companies' timetable for the first time . The most prominent guest on this trip was the former world chess champion Emanuel Lasker with other players who traveled to New York for a major tournament. The ship sailed for United American Lines under the Panama flag to circumvent American prohibition laws.
Again under the German flag
In July 1926, Hapag dissolved the shared timetable with the American line, bought back its former ship and continued to use it between Hamburg and New York. In 1929 the Cleveland's machinery was overhauled again and equipped with exhaust steam turbines, although the replacement motor ships St. Louis and Milwaukee came into service in the same year. On August 30, 1931, her last mission began, which took her from Hamburg via Boulogne, Halifax and Boston to New York and then back to Hamburg via Boston, Galway and Cherbourg. After this voyage, the ship was launched in Hamburg and handed over to the shipyard for demolition in April.
literature
- Alfred Dudszus, Alfred Köpcke: The big book of ship types . Weltbild Verlag (licensed edition, transpress, Berlin), Augsburg 1995, ISBN 3-89350-831-7 .
- Arnold Kludas: The History of the German Passenger Shipping Volume III Leap growth 1900 to 1914 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 20.
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 21.
- Hans Georg Prager: Blohm & Voss Koehler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-78220-127-2 .
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1896 to 1918 . Steiger Verlag, 1986, ISBN 3-921564-80-8 .
- Eberhard Urban: Dampfschiffe, Komet Verlag, Cologne, ISBN 978-3-89836-812-4 .
Web links
- Postcards with views of the Cleveland
- John G. Sayers: THE FIRST CRUISE AROUND THE WORLD
- Pictures from Hapag cruises
- USS Mobile at the Naval Historical Center
- Pictures of the Cleveland ( Memento from October 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- Pictures of the Cleveland at navsource.org
- Pictures of the Cleveland with picture of the ship after 1926
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Rothe, p. 127.
- ↑ a b Kludas, Vol. III, p. 194.
- ↑ Kludas, Vol. III, p. 196.
- ↑ Newspaper article on the collision
- ↑ Kludas, Vol. III, p. 198.
- ↑ After the sale, the Byron Line renamed the Constantinople , the former Bremen of the NDL, to King Alexander , so that two formerly German ships bore this name.
- ^ Kludas, Vol. IV, p. 59.
- ↑ The super tournament New York 1924 ( Memento of the original from June 19, 2008 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.
- ↑ Kludas Vol. IV, pp. 62 and 69.
