Columbus California
 General plan of Columbus California
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The Columbus California as the Columbus Canada (ex Valkyrie ) from the shipyard Orenstein & Koppel from the cargo ship Rheingold to a refrigerated container ship rebuilt. The sister ships Columbus Coromandel , Columbus Caribic and Columbus Capricorn of Cosima Reederei, on the other hand, were created as a container ship and were chartered out to Hamburg-Süd after delivery.
description
The semi-container ship Rheingold of the Orenstein & Koppel shipyard of the type MPF-12 was originally built as an intermediate deck at the beginning of 1972, had a length of 143.8 m, width of 21.5 m, an empty weight of 4,700 t and was 8,350 GRT measured. As a full-decker with a draft of 8.32 m, the Rheingold had a deadweight of 12,478 dwt.
The loading gear was designed for general cargo, containers and heavy goods, and heavy goods up to 70 t could be moved with the Stülcken 35t harness. It was installed in front of the superstructures that were arranged at the very back. The ship was classified by Germanischer Lloyd with GL + 100 A 4 + MC 16/24 "reinforced for heavy cargo".
Conversion to reefer container ships
In this early period of container shipping, container ships with a refrigerated container capacity of more than 50 TEU were referred to as refrigerated container ships. The conversion took place due to the chartering out to Hamburg-Süd and the full container ship Columbus California for the Columbus line from Australia / New Zealand to the US east and west coast was created from the semi-container ship Rheingold . The Columbus California needed around 55 days for this round trip . The special thing about this service were the cooling rods from Grünzweig + Hartmann (G + H) for 132 porthole refrigerated containers, which were subsequently installed in the cargo holds. For this purpose, the tween deck hatches were removed and cell guides were installed in all hatches. The existing folding hatch covers had sufficient strength for the containers on deck. In addition, the ship-mounted container cooling system (porthole system) with the cooling machine systems, cold air generation and distribution system (cooling rods), the movable couplings between the containers and cooling rods, as well as the control equipment and data processing system for recording the cooling temperatures were installed. The Conair system with a vertical arrangement of the cooling rods was chosen as the container cooling system. It is a decentralized direct evaporation system with evaporators in the cooling rods and decentralized installation of the refrigeration machines and condensers in the sub-stowage areas between the hatches.
literature
- H. Thode, O. Lorenz: Refrigerated container ships "Columbus Canada" and "Columbus California". In: Hansa. Issue 7/1978.