Detached division

Detached division in the port of Rio de Janeiro in 1914. Painting by Alexander Kircher (1857–1939). Center of the picture liner SMS KAISER, right in the background small cruiser SMS STRASSBURG, left in the background liner SMS KÖNIG ALBERT

The Detached Division was a naval association of the Imperial Navy that visited West and South Africa , St. Helena , South America , Cape Verde , Madeira and Spain from December 9, 1913 to June 24, 1914 . The purpose of the trip was to test modern ship technology , to safeguard German interests in the context of gunboat policy and to exert military pressure on the population in the German colony of Cameroon , where property expropriations by the governorate had triggered unrest. During the journey from the starting point Wilhelmshaven to the destination Kiel , the division covered a distance of around 23,500 nautical miles .

composition

The division consisted of the ship of the line Kaiser as the flagship as well as the ship of the line King Albert and the small cruiser Strasbourg . The total strength of the division consisted of around 2,300 men under the command of Rear Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz .

Itinerary

Africa in the Economic Atlas of the German Colonies (1906)

South America in the Quart Lexicon (1888)

Outward journey

The division met on December 8, 1913 in Wilhelmshaven , where von Rebeur-Paschwitz set his admiral flag on Kaiser . On December 9th, the division left the naval port. Stops on the trip included:

• Lome ( Togoland ): December 29-31, 1913
• Victoria, today Limbe ( Cameroon ): January 2, 1914
• Duala (Cameroon): January 5-15, 1914; the show of force against the African population a 500-strong landing party held a parade from
• Swakopmund ( German South West Africa ): January 21, 1914
• Lüderitz Bay (German South West Africa): January 22-28, 1914
• Jamestown , St. Helena ( British Crown Colony ): February 2, 1914
• Rio de Janeiro ( Brazil ): February 15-25, 1914; Visit of the President, Marshal Hermes Rodrigues da Fonseca
• Mar del Plata ( Argentina ): March 1914 including a visit to Buenos Aires on March 6 by Rebeur-Paschwitz in Strasbourg
• Montevideo ( Uruguay ): March 7, 1914; Visit of the President José Batlle y Ordóñez
• Valparaíso ( Chile ): April 2-11, 1914

Return journey

• Bahía Blanca (Argentina); April 25-28, 1914
• Santos (Brazil): May 7-12, 1914
• Rio de Janeiro: May 16, 1914

In Rio de Janeiro, Strasbourg was detached to the Caribbean to protect German interests in the Dominican Republic during the civil war . The two ships of the line returned to Kiel via Cape Verde, Funchal (Madeira) and Vigo (Spain), where the division was disbanded on June 24, 1914.

Results

According to naval historians, the trip was a complete success:

The cruiser division's experience had been extremely positive. Apart from the excellent results itself, the trip had brought success from a propaganda point of view for the German shipbuilding industry and beyond that for the German Reich as a whole.

See also

• Reichsgeschwader
• Cruiser squadron of the Imperial Navy

literature

• Albert Röhr: Handbook of German naval history , Oldenburg (Oldb) / Hamburg (Gerhard Stalling Verlag) 1963.
• Entry: ship of the line Kaiser , in: Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Ratingen o. J. (One-volume reprint of the seven-volume original edition, Herford 1979ff.), Volume 3, pp. 123–125.
• Walter Nuhn : Colonial Policy and Navy. The role of the Imperial Navy in the founding and securing of the German colonial empire 1884-1914 , Bonn 2002. ISBN 3-7637-6241-8

Footnotes

1. ↑ Hildebrand / Röhr / Steinmetz: The German warships . P. 125.