Ernst Moritz Arndt (ship, 1943)
 In the Rostock overseas port
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The steamship Ernst Moritz Arndt was a merchant ship of the GDR from 1958 to 1968 - state shipping company VEB Deutsche Seereederei Rostock (DSR). On the journey from Rio de Janeiro to Stettin , it ran aground on January 8, 1958 in the Baltic Sea off Greifswalder Oie . After it was recovered, it was taken over by the GDR for a sum of 10,000 US dollars. These convertible currencies came from the Hobby Horse Movement initiated by the Radebeul company VEB Hobby Horse .
The ship was named after the German writer and member of the Frankfurt National Assembly Ernst Moritz Arndt .
The ship
This ship is a so-called Liberty freighter of the type EC2-S-C1. Liberty ships were built to make up for the Allied losses in World War II caused by the Submarine War. They were simply constructed and could be produced increasingly faster and more numerous over time. By 1944, a total of 2,751 of these ships with almost identical dimensions and technical data had been built in the USA and Canada.
History of the ship
The keel-laying of the ship was on June 20, 1943. Only 25 days later, the shipyard California Shipbuilding Corp. launched in Los Angeles under the name Vernon L. Kellogg with hull number 224. Only 13 days later, on July 28, 1943, the vehicle was operational and was taken over by the War Shipping Administration , Los Angeles, and taken over by Grace Line Inc. brought into motion. The ship survived the Second World War unscathed.
From February 12, 1947 it appeared in the register as Wilfred under the Norwegian flag for AS Awilco, Oslo Mgrs. Anders Wilhelmsen & Co. In 1949 the ship was renamed Folke Bernadotte for another Norwegian owner. During a layover in September 1949, it was named Archon Gabriel and the new home port Puerto Limón in Costa Rica . From then on, the owner was Faros Shipping Ltd. with headquarters in London . At the beginning of January 1958, the Archon Gabriel entered the Baltic Sea from Brazil . A full load of iron ore was on board with the port of destination Szczecin . On January 8, the ship ran aground off Greifswalder Oie ( 54 ° 15 ′ 18 ″ N , 13 ° 56 ′ 25 ″ E ) for reasons that have not yet been clarified . The crew did not succeed in getting the ship afloat again on their own.
The recovery
As a first rescue measure, the ship was lightened. Around 1,000 tons of ore were taken over by excavator barges and the Timmendorf coaster . With the help of three smugglers an attempt was made to get the liberated Archon Gabriel free. This first attempt with the tugs Warnow (500 PS), Uecker (500 PS) of VEB Schiffsbergung und Taucherei, and the salvage tug Wismar (1,440 PS) of the former naval forces of the GDR remained unsuccessful. Only with the help of other tugs such as Eisvogel (1,100 HP) and Recknitz (500 HP) could the ship be towed free for a short time on January 17, 1958. However, due to the shallow water, it stuck again. Five days later it was possible to get the ship free again. It was towed slowly towards Stettin. In an unexplained manner, it ran again on a sandbank in the entrance to Swinoujscie . The recovery there took six more days. On February 6, 1958, the ship docked in Stettin and the rest of the cargo could be unloaded. In the meantime, considerable salvage costs had been incurred, which the owner of the ship could not or would not pay.
The salvage company VEB Schiffsbergung und Taucherei Stralsund had the vehicle confiscated and handed it over to the Deutsche Seereederei Rostock on June 30, 1958. In the meantime, the ship was named after the German educator and philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte .
The naming
Unexpectedly, while the repair work was still being carried out, the DSR received a letter in mid-July from the head of department in the main shipping administration of the GDR Ministry of Transport stating that the name Johann Gottlieb Fichte should not be used for the former ship Archon Gabriel . The ship should be called Ernst Moritz Arndt . The steamer was given a new name for the sixth time, despite additional costs and bureaucracy. Protests by the shipping company were rejected. The then main department head Müller said rigorously when asked over the phone that “ there will never be a ship with the name Johann Gottlieb Fichte in the GDR merchant fleet”. The man was wrong. Just two years later, a teaching and cargo ship was christened with this name. Many years later this ship became known in the GDR through the television series of the GDR television " Zur See ".
Another story
The general repairs and test drives of the cargo ship dragged on at the Stocznia Remontowa Nauta shipyard in Gdańsk until January 1960. On January 31, 1960 there was another official handover to the DSR. Upon arrival at Rostock's city port in early February, the Ernst Moritz Arndt was the shipping company's fourth steamship. It was also needed to train machinists for the growing fleet. It was used in the apatite voyage from the Soviet Murmansk and for general cargo transport to socialist Cuba . In 1962 extensive renovation work was carried out on the ship. This included converting the safety and rescue facilities such as modernizing the boat davits and converting the chimney. It was restored to the original Admiralty top shape of the early Liberty ships . In the summer of 1968 the steamer was sold to Spiritath Cia. Navigation SA Famagusta in Cyprus. Under the name Kypros , the ship left Rostock on June 18, 1968. After a further three years of operation, it reached Taiwan in August 1971 to be scrapped.
Trivia
The years of operation under the direction of the Deutsche Seereederei Rostock remained without further major damage to the old ship, which was also affectionately called E M (M) A by the crew due to its sluggish sea behavior . During a crossing to the Polish port of Szczecin to pick up general cargo for socialist Cuba , there was almost a disaster. The ship's baker had been given the job of heating the galley stove and making preparations for breakfast. This old Liberty steamer had a modest power supply on board, but it wasn't enough for the galley, so this galley stove was traditionally oil-fired. The baker in charge turned on the fan for the burner nozzles and opened the oil supply. Now he only had to light the fuse and ignite the oil-air mixture. However, he had no matches and could not find any in the galley. He then left the galley area without turning off the oil supply to fetch the matches from his chamber. Back at last, a large amount of combustible mixture had accumulated in the furnace. He lit the fuse and pushed it into the burner hole. A huge explosion rocked the ship. Black billows of smoke showed the approaching crew the way. The galley was in ruins. The stove was a total loss, the skylights were destroyed. As if by a miracle, the baker was unharmed, except for scorched hair.
Such ovens were no longer used on ships and no longer manufactured. An electric stove could not be installed because of the low power supply. A workshop in the Netherlands took on the task of building a stove based on the old model. Lying in a Gdańsk shipyard, the replacement was awaited. That took almost four weeks. The supply of the crew was partially ensured with an improvised stove, which the storekeeper made available. In order to bring the new stove on board, parts of the ship, such as a piece of the side wall, bulkheads and handrails had to be dismantled.
Overall, the damage incurred was quite large, if you include the loss of transport, lost freight revenue, penalties for breach of contract, chartering another ship, costs for cargo cancellation, wages paid to the crew, shipyard costs and much more besides.
More ships of the Hobby Horse Movement
- Cargo ship Kap Arkona (date of handover to the DSR: November 12, 1958)
- Cargo ship Stubbenkammer (December 17, 1958)
- Hobby Horse Cargo Ship (January 5, 1959)
- Cargo ship Stoltera (February 26, 1959)
- Tanker Rositz (March 28, 1960)
- Tanker Schwarzheide (ship) (April 30, 1960)
- Tanker Lützkendorf (June 17, 1960)
literature
- German shipping companies Volume 23 VEB Deutsche Seereederei Rostock Author collective Verlag Gert Uwe Detlefsen ISBN 3-928473-81-6
- Gerd Peters: The purchase of old tonnage ships for the GDR merchant fleet. Poetry and truth about the hobby horse movement. In: Full ahead. For sailors and friends of seafaring. Issue No. 12, May 2007, pp. 4/5. Type IV drivers e. V. (Ed.), Rostock 2007
- Kpt. Horst Sachse: Now I'm unpacking the duffel bag. A sailor tells. Publishing house seventy-one Rudi Duwe 2008 ISBN 978-3-928905-66-4
Web links
- Zone bought "Archon Gabriel" ( Memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) in the Hamburger Abendblatt , November 28, 1958
- Images of Liberty ships
Individual evidence
- ↑ Full advance newspaper for drivers (PDF; 553 kB)
- ↑ The ship in the Miramar Ship Index
- ↑ (Engl.) Bauskizze and information on Liberty ships ( Memento of the original June 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
