Drachenfels (ship, 1921)
.jpg) The Drachenfels (1921)
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The Drachenfels was one of twelve cargo ships of the Sturmfels class put into service by the German steam shipping company "Hansa" (DDG "Hansa") from 1921 onwards . She was the third of her name at DDG "Hansa".
Construction and technical data
The ship was launched in June 1921 at the Howaldtswerken in Kiel with the hull number 594 from the stack and was delivered on 13 September 1921, the DDG "Hansa". It was 133.95 m long (L.ü.a.) and 17.21 m wide, had a draft of 8.04 m and a side height of 10.01 m. In a survey of 6342 BRT and 3879 NRT it had a load bearing capacity of 9479 dwt. At Cargo was the Drachenfels with a 30-t-derrick, a 20-t-derrick, fourteen 5-t-derricks and two 3-t-derricks fitted. In addition to the cargo, up to four passengers could be carried. A three-cylinder, triple expansion machine with 3200 psi enabled a speed of 12 knots via a shaft . The crew consisted of 25 nautical and 47 technical personnel.
fate
The Drachenfels was used in the shipping company's liner services to the Middle East .
In order to obtain funds to finance imports of foodstuffs and industrial raw materials from what was then the Dutch East Indies during the foreign exchange shortage after the First World War , the DDG "Hansa" pledged at least five of its ships used in the East India trade as security for Dutch guilder loans in early November 1923 to the Tredefina ( trust management for the German-Dutch financial agreement ): the Lauterfels on November 2nd and the Bärenfels , the Drachenfels , the Frauenfels and the Goldenfels on November 6th. It was not until November 8, 1929, that the Drachenfels came back into the unrestricted possession of its shipping company.
In August 1935, a Bauer-Wach exhaust steam turbine was installed at AG Weser in Bremen , which increased the total output of the machine system to 4,000 PSi.
At the end of August, a few days before the start of the Second World War , the Drachenfels ran to Mormugao in what was then Portuguese India , today's Goa , to avoid being seized by British or French warships, and was interned there . On March 9, 1943 around 1:00 a.m., a British commando attempted to board the Ehrenfels , which was also in the roadstead of the neutral port . Their crew fended off the attack with the loss of nine men, but then sank their ship, as there was fear of a British occupation of the Portuguese colony and thus also of the German ships. Thereupon the captains of the Drachenfels and the Braunfels, also lying in the harbor, and the Italian Anfora arranged for their ships to be set on fire and sunk. This meant that all Axis ships still in the Indian Ocean that would have been considered for supplying submarines were lost.
The ships sunk in the roadstead of Mormugoa remained visible at least at low tide ; the wrecks were only lifted after the war and demolished in Goa; that of the Drachenfels in 1948.
literature
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa - from liner service to special shipping , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford, 1976, ISBN 3-7822-0105-1
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945 , Pawlak, Herrsching, 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919-1939 , Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X