Frédéric Mistral (ship)
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The Frédéric Mistral is an Austrian steamship that is currently on the Danube in Vienna and is being restored to a museum ship .
Proven history
The ship was built in 1914 by the Schippers & Van Dongen shipyard in Geertruidenberg, the Netherlands, as the Columbia steam tug for the Hungarian River and Shipping Ltd. (MFTR) and sailed on the Danube under their flag until 1918.
In 1918 Columbia was transferred to France as a reparation payment and in 1920 it was handed over to the Societé française de Navigation danubienne (SNFD). That is why the letters "SFND" are still emblazoned on the chimney today. In 1930 the ship was named Frédéric Mistral after the Provencal poet of the same name . From 1943 to 1945 the ship was managed by the DDSG , after the end of the war in 1945 it went back to France and was in service in Romania until 1997, partly also in the charter of the Romanian state shipping company Navrom.
From 1914 to 1918 the steamer was in service with the Imperial and Royal Navy on the Danube and in the Black Sea. It was also used as a minesweeper . Emperor Franz Josef I used the ship for inspection trips. For this purpose there was an unusually large saloon which the emperor used for such trips.
During the Second World War, German troops captured the ship in one stroke. With the help of the Frédéric Mistral, the Allies wanted to block the Danube at the Iron Gate by blowing it up . In 1943 the DDSG took over the Frédéric Mistral , its operational area was the Black Sea and the Greek coast.
Another fate
In 1998, Captain Franz Scheriau decided to buy the Frédéric Mistral , together with the second of the so-called imperial ships, the Pascal ( Wiemann brothers , 1907), and to transfer it to Vienna for restoration. Franz Scheriau also tried to take over the former SFND flagship DZS Pasteur (Linz, 1914), but failed - the ship has been in Strasbourg since 1998.
At the end of the 1990s, Captain Scheriau towed the two wrecked steamers with the help of his almost 50-year-old diesel tug Josef from Romania over the Danube to Vienna. Around the restoration of the Frédéric Mistral , the association "Friends of Historic Ships" was founded.
In 2002 the Mistral drove for the first time on its own with its steam engine in the port of Vienna. Further trips took place in 2003 and 2004, but the expired boiler deadlines and the poor general condition of the boiler prevented further steps. Since then, the ship has served as a residential ship and dock.
Today the Frédéric Mistral is being converted into a museum ship. She is anchored in Freudenau at the Buddhist Peace Pagoda in Vienna .