Cuxhaven (ship, 1864)

Cuxhaven

Ship data flag  United Kingdom of the German Empire   other ship names Herald Hattie Ship type Paddle steamer Shipyard Caird & Company , Greenock Launch 17th August 1864 Whereabouts Sunk on July 24, 1891

Ship dimensions and crew length 67.6 m ( Lüa ) width 6.8 m Draft Max. 3.15 m measurement 402 GRT   crew 14 men

Machine system machine 1 compound machine Machine performance 600 hp (441 kW) Top speed 15.0 kn (28 km / h) propeller 2 paddle wheels

Transport capacities Permitted number of passengers 800

The Cuxhaven was commissioned by the Confederate States of America at Caird & Company in Greenock built (Scotland). The side paddle steamer , which was quite large for the time , was to serve as a blockade breaker under the name Herald . The launch took place on August 17, 1864, the completion in the same year. With the end of the Civil War in North America, the independence of the American southern states also ended , so that the ship could not be delivered.

The steamship was initially bought by the Scottish shipping company Steward from Glasgow , which operated it under the name Hattie . In January 1866, HAPAG acquired the ship, renamed it Cuxhaven and used it in Heligoland service and as a tender until 1884 under the flag of the Hamburg-America Line . She then sold the paddle steamer to the Cuxhaven-Unterelbe'sche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , from which the Ballins Dampfschiff-Rhederei from Albert Ballin in Hamburg took it over in 1890 . The operation now took place for the Stettiner Seebäder shipping company Ballin & Braeunlich on the line from Stettin via Swinoujscie (as home port ), Misdroy , Ahlbeck , Heringsdorf to Zinnowitz . Trips to Rügen were also planned .

On July 24, 1891 (according to other information on July 27), the ship, whose captain was not sufficiently familiar with the Pomeranian Bay , hit the ground on the Vinetabank near Koserow . Water penetrated the forecastle. The Cuxhaven initially remained buoyant thanks to watertight bulkheads . In an accident while a boat was being set down, three crew members lost their lives. After rescuing the passengers, the crew tried to strand the ship, but it sank half a nautical mile offshore. As a result of the shipwreck, the captain's patent as a skipper was revoked and the shipowners Albert Ballin and Carl Julius Ferdinand Braeunlich ended their collaboration.

literature

• Claus Rothe: German seaside ships. 1830 to 1939. In: Library of Ship Types. transpress Verlag für Verkehrwesen, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-344-00393-3 , pp. 32–33

Footnotes

1. ↑ Rothe: Deutsche Seebäderschiffe p. 33.
2. ^ Joachim Neumann: marine casualty on the Vineta reef. 2005, archived from the original on October 12, 2007 ; Retrieved December 12, 2010 . 
3. ^ Reederei Braeunlich ( Memento from November 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )