Equity (ship)
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The Equity was a British cargo ship that was confiscated as an embargo ship in Hamburg when the First World War broke out and was later used as a transport ship in the Imperial Navy . In addition, two operations of the intelligence service of the Admiralty ( naval intelligence service ) with weapons transports for bourgeois insurgents in Finland were carried out ( Finnish civil war ). In addition to the Rubens , the Marie and the Libau , the Equity was the fourth auxiliary ship that was used by the naval intelligence service for such operations.
Use as a cargo steamer
In 1906 the equity was taken over by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in Goole , which also had a liner service to Hamburg. Here the steamer was confiscated by the German authorities as an embargo ship on August 4, 1914.
In the Imperial Navy
In the "advance department special association Baltic Sea"
Apparently the equity was only taken over by the Imperial Navy in 1917 and was presumably in the port of Hamburg until then. She was commissioned as His Majesty's Support Vessel (SMH) Equity . At the beginning of October 1917 she was under Oberleutnant zur See Gustav Pezold, the pilot's ship of the advance division, Special Association Baltic Sea , which consisted of the steamers Equity , Corsica and Ammon . The special unit was used as part of Operation Albion and landed on October 12, 1917 in Tagga Bay on Ösel 2000 infantry and 20 motor boats , with the Corsica running on a mine . However, the embarked troops could be picked up by accompanying torpedo boats and the Corsica itself was beached . During the disembarkation, the advance division was taken under fire from the Russian side, but suffered no losses.
The first trip to Finland, October 27th to November 6th, 1917
On October 19, 1917, Equity arrived in Danzig , where it was equipped at the Imperial Shipyard Danzig for a special company to Finland . The operation was led by Kapitänleutnant d. R. Friedrich Hagedorn of the naval intelligence service, which however did not take part in the trip itself. The Politics Section of the General Staff , which, like the Naval Intelligence Service, resided in Berlin , was also involved in the planning of the company . Here a Captain von Hülsen was in charge of the operation.
The aim of the company was the state separation of Finland from Russia. As a result, the Russian naval forces should be enclosed in the Gulf of Finland , the capital Petrograd besieged and the Anglo-American supply for Russia via the Murman Railway cut off.
Members of the Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion 27 , which consisted almost exclusively of Finnish volunteers, were also supposed to serve this purpose. Therefore, eight Finnish hunters were embarked on the Equity as well as the Finnish pilot Karl Rönnholm, who was supposed to guide the Equity to the target locations. Of weapons and ammunition, the steamer invited 6,500 rifles Mosin-Nagant , 1.85 million. Cartridges , 30 machine guns with 700,000 cartridges, 500 Mauser pistols with 70,000 cartridges, 35 boxes of explosive ammunition and eight motorcycles and accessories. If the equity is discovered by Russian guards or British submarines , the steamer should be sunk so as not to let the material fall into the hands of the enemy. Like the Libau during the arms transport for the Easter Rising in Ireland in April 1916, Equity did not have a radio telegraphy station due to its small size and its relatively old age , so that after leaving the port there was no longer any connection between the ship and its superior offices or German naval forces.
On 28 October 1917, the left equity Libau with quote Northwest in Sweden . On the high seas, the cover name Adolph Andersen was adopted; a real existing, 783 GRT Danish steamer built in 1898. However, Pezold did not yet have any legendary identification papers for this steamer on this voyage , as the naval intelligence service was unable to produce them for the company in time for unknown reasons.
The journey led past Gotland into the Åland Sea and from here into the Bottenwiek just below the Swedish coast . On October 30, 1917, the Danish flag was lowered and the Russian flag was hoisted, as the old legend no longer seemed plausible due to the route. The equity now took the legend of the Finnish-Russian steamer Mira from Helsinki to.
On the evening of October 31, 1917, the steamer arrived off the island of Vesterö, where a so-called action committee was waiting for him. In Storsandviken Bay, part of the cargo was unloaded in fishing boats and a small fishing trawler . While four of the eight Finnish fighters were being disembarked, Equity picked up a number of men from the Action Committee to escort them to the second landing site. The following day, the steamer ran on island Tolvmansgrund where the remainder of the charge with the help of motor and fishing boats and a barge was deleted. All Finns on board also left the steamer here, which returned to Libau on November 4, 1917.
The second trip to Finland, December 3-16, 1917
A second weapon charge for Finland consisted of 310 tons of material, 20,000 guns Moisin-Nagant, 50 machine guns, 600 Mauser guns, 6 Mill. Cartridges 250 grenades and accumulators for a radio station with which a permanent contact with German military authorities in occupied Baltic countries prepared should be. The Equity was due to arrive in Finland on December 5th and unload its cargo in three locations. This time there were 22 Finnish fighters on board , led by platoon leaders Asplund and Petrelius.
On December 3, 1917, Hagedorn brought the mission order in Danzig, but the second trip was not a good star from the start. The pilot Rönnholm, who was urgently needed for the voyage, was inexplicably in Germany , the general visibility was sometimes catastrophic due to the seasonal weather conditions with sometimes heavy snowstorms. In addition, as it turned out during the journey, the plumb ruler , which is absolutely necessary for navigation, had supposedly been forgotten. The first anchorage point should be the position 61 ° 45.75 'north 21 ° 17.20' east near Björneborg on the island of Reveli. There the Equity was supposed to take on Finnish personnel to guide them. This time legendary papers such as the measurement certificate , the ship's certificate, insurance documents, etc. were available for the trip . Then the Adolph Andresen sailed from Karlskrona with the aim of calling at Swedish and Finnish-Russian ports. The real Adolph Andersen , on the other hand, was sunk by SM UC 77 six nautical miles off Brest near Ouessant (Uschant) on November 17, 1917 . It is unclear whether this fact was known to the naval intelligence service.
On December 6, 1917, Equity was apparently near the island of Reveli, but Pezold's light signals were not responded to from the land side. Due to the time delay, Pezold decided to bypass the second point of contact Edvainen near Nystad and to go straight to the third point Vesterö. Since no contact was made here either, Pezold headed for Reveli again, where contact was finally made with the pilot. In the meantime, however, the fairway between the island and the mainland was icy, so that no boats could be sent from land to unload the Equity . Only the batteries for the radio station, a few pistols, hand grenades and rifles were loaded into a fishing boat and 12 of the Finnish hunters were deposited on the island. On a second tour, two machine guns and the rest of the hunters were transported, but then the weather prevented a third tour. The Finns were provided with food for 20 days because it was unclear when the connection between Reveli and the mainland could be re-established.
In spite of this, and also in spite of the danger of ice that threatened to block Equity 's way back to the southern part of the Baltic Sea, Pezold tried again to call at Vesterö. According to Pezold, while navigating a snowstorm, an explosive cartridge was found in the coal bunker , which the stokers discovered at the last moment . An explosion in the ship's boilers would presumably have resulted in the immediate demise of Equity . Pezold suspected that the bomb came from a neutral steamer in Danzig and could have been brought on board by Russian prisoners of war when the Equity was being loaded with coal. On December 12, 1917, it turned out that the steamer's coal supplies were running out to such an extent that they were just enough for the journey home. So Pezold decided to return the next day in view of violent storms and the hopelessness of delivering the cargo. Equity returned to Libau on December 15th . In April 1918 the Equity was used as a normal transporter in Transportflotte II / Sonderverband Ostsee ; Details are not known. She was decommissioned on December 17, 1918.
Returned to the UK, continued use
Apparently in February 1919 the equity was returned to Great Britain and used again as a freighter. She suffered a marine accident in May 1920 when she was stranded on the east coast of England on a trip to Hull. However, she was able to be recovered by using the rescue steamer Ranger and remained in service. Apparently it was scrapped in Grangemouth in December 1931 .
See also
literature
- Gustav Pezold: The weapon ship. Secret weapons rides with SMH "Equity" for Finland's struggle for freedom in autumn 1917 , Hamburg 1943.
- Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815-1945 , Vol. 7: Landungsverbände (II): Landungsfahrzeuge i [m.] E [igentlichen]. Sense]. (Part 2), landing ferries, landing support vehicles, transporters; Ships and boats of the army, ships and boats of the sea pilots / air force, colonial vehicles , Koblenz 1990, p. 91.
- Gert Sandhofer: The tradition of the Imperial Navy as a source for general history . In: Heinz Boberach and Hans Booms: From the work of the Federal Archives , Boppard am Rhein 1977, pp. 299–309.
- Ernst Freiherr von Gagern: The War in the Baltic Sea , Vol. 3 From the beginning of 1916 to the end of the war , Berlin 1964.
- Johannes Öhquist: The lion banner. The Finnish people's rise to freedom , Berlin 1923, 2nd edition, ibid. 1942.