Dorpat (ship, 1920)
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The Dorpat was a 1920-built, former British cargo ship that in World War II by the German navy was confiscated and used as an auxiliary ship. The ship survived a total of four sinkings caused by the war and continued to sail after the war until it was dismantled in 1963.
Construction and technical data
The ship was on 27 September 1920 with the hull number 315 on the shipyard inch Yard of Dunlop, Bremner & Co. in Port Glasgow , Scotland , as Dido for the British shipping company Ellerman's Wilson Line of Hull from the stack . It was 95.7 m long and 13.8 m wide, had a 6.7 m draft and 8.73 m side height and was measured with 3554 GRT and 2175 NRT . The carrying capacity of the steel ship, each equipped with a mast with loading gear in the front and aft, was 5050 tdw . The drive system consisted of a triple expansion steam engine built by Dunlop, Bremner & Co. with an output of 240 PSnom or about 1440 PS , which enabled a speed of 10.5 knots via one screw .
fate
The Dido (callsign GDTM), the shipping company's third of this name , entered service in October 1920 and had a career of almost 20 years without any notable events - apart from the fact that it was sold to Ellerman Lines Ltd. on February 26, 1930 . in London , parent company of Wilson Line since 1916 , was sold and then managed by its subsidiary Ellerman Line, Liverpool , from 1932 by the subsidiary Ellerman & Papayanni Line.
This changed with the outbreak of World War II. On the evening of September 17, 1939, when the British aircraft carrier Courageous was sunk in the North Atlantic about 200 nm west - southwest of Ireland by the German submarine U 29 with two torpedoes , the Dido took part , as did the Dutch passenger ship Veendam and the British Freighter Collingworth , participated in the rescue of the surviving crew members and took on more than 200 castaways .
In May 1940, the ship , which has since been chartered by the British government , ran aground in the fog near the island of Ouessant . It could be recovered and towed to Brest in the dry dock for repairs. There it was blown up and abandoned in front of the advancing German troops on June 18 - one day after the new French President Philippe Pétain had requested an armistice with the German Reich . When filling Brest it fell into German hands and was on 24 June 1940 by the newly established German port inspection agency Brest to pinch explained. In August, in preparation for the planned invasion of England (" Operation Sea Lion "), a renovation began in the Brest Naval Arsenal , but this was stopped on September 10th when the Dido was declared a reserve of materials . After the start of the "Sea Lion Company" on October 15, 1940, had been postponed to spring 1941, the Hamburg Prize Court released the ship for use on November 12. It was then unused in Brest until May 1941 and was ready to drive again at the end of February.
On April 25, it was confiscated as a prize from the Hamburg Prisenhof and set off for Hamburg in May. During the transfer, it was recorded on May 12 by the Kriegsmarine-Dienststelle (KMD) Hamburg for urgent network blocking tasks. After arriving in Hamburg on June 8th, Dido was assigned to the Hamburg shipowner and ship broker Leth & Co. on June 11th for care and on June 13th for ship management, and on June 24th she ran, provisionally prepared and now under the Reich Service flag driving, to Netzsperrverband I in Kiel . He returned it to KMD Hamburg on August 8th. On August 13, the ship was renamed Dorpat (callsign DKGF) and two days later it was placed under the control of the blocking test command in Kiel-Wik for tests and trials on mine detonators . In the first week of January 1942, the Dorpat was briefly deployed to the demagnetization group in Kiel, on January 8th again to the KMD Hamburg and finally on January 22nd to the detachment test command in Aarhus as a test ship.
On April 11, 1943, the Dorpat ran in the roadstead of Aarhus on a mine dropped by the Royal Air Force and went aground; only the superstructures were still sticking out of the water. The ship was lifted on May 12th, converted into a target , workshop and depot ship from July during repairs in Aalborg and put back into service on September 1st, 1943.
It was sunk again on February 11, 1944, when Danish resistance fighters succeeded in detonating explosive charges on the ship's hull in the port of Aalborg. It was recovered immediately, emergency repairs started in Aalborg on February 22nd and then moved to Szczecin in March for final repairs . It was not until October that the Dorpat was back in service in the Great Belt and Langelandsbelt.
On May 3, 1945, the ship was sunk again. British Beaufighters attacked it in the Langelandsbelt with rockets and aerial bombs and sank it near Nyborg . There were several dead among the crew.
After the end of the war, the wreck of the Dorpat was lifted on behalf of the British, brought to Kiel as spoils of war and repaired there by the Howaldtswerke . On August 3, 1945, the ship was moved to the Heikendorf wreck collection point . Since Ellerman Lines, as the previous owner, was no longer interested in withdrawing the ship, the ship remained laid up there until August 1948 . Then it was sold to Finland to the Rudolf W. Rostedt shipping company in Turku . On April 2, 1949, it arrived in Turku in tow, where it was repaired and then put back into service under the new name Leila (callsign OFPA). From 1952 W. Rostedt was the ship owner. From November 1959, the old ship was then only used as a storage ship, and from November 20, 1963, it was scrapped in Matildedal on Hummelfjärden, about 50 km south-east of Turku.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945, Bd.3: U-boats, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Volume 9: Historical Overview. Collective chapter landing craft, mine ships, minesweepers, speedboats, training ships, special ships, tenders and escort ships, torpedo boats, supply ships . Mundus Verlag, 1999, OCLC 247353137
Web links
- Dido (III) at shipsnostalgia.com
- Hvem husker Dido på Aalborg Værft
- Dido at Scottish Built Ships (with photos of Dido)
- marine archive
Footnotes
- ↑ Data mostly from clydeships.co.uk
- ↑ A total of 741 men were saved, 519 lost their lives.