Frederik VIII (ship, 1914)
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The Frederik VIII was seized in 1914 Services Transatlantic - passenger ship of the Danish shipping company Scandinavian American Line ( Scandinavia-America Lines , SAL), the passengers, cargo and mail from Copenhagen on Christiania (Oslo 1924) to New York promoted. The Frederik VIII was in its commissioning the largest passenger ship in Scandinavia . In 1920 she was the world's first merchant ship to be equipped with an Anschütz gyro compass . With its last voyage in November 1935 and scrapping in 1936, SAL's transatlantic passenger service ended, the assets of which were transferred to DFDS .
The ship
The 11,850 GRT passenger steamer Frederik VIII , named after King Frederick VIII of Denmark (1906-1912), was commissioned from the German shipyard AG Vulcan Stettin in Stettin in December 1910 and laid down on September 27, 1912. The launch took place on May 27, 1913 and the test drives on December 17, 1913.
Consisting of steel -built steamship had two chimneys, two propellers and two masts . The two four-cylinder steam engines developed 11,000 hp and helped the ship to a maximum cruising speed of 17 knots . The Frederik VIII was the largest ship of the SAL, formed in 1898, and when it was commissioned, it was also the largest ship flying the flag of a Scandinavian state (until then, the United States , which was commissioned in 1903, was the largest SAL ship with 10,101 GRT). SAL served the transatlantic passenger and freight traffic of Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (DFDS), a shipping company founded in Copenhagen in 1866 . The Frederik VIII could carry 121 passengers in the first, 259 in the second and 881 in the third class. Their crew consisted of 245 men.
history
On February 5, 1914, the Frederik VIII sailed from Copenhagen on her maiden voyage via Kristiania and Kristiansand to New York. She stayed on this route throughout her service, including occasional stops in Philadelphia and Halifax . On February 17, 1914, she had to make a stopover in Ponta Delgada in the Azores because of a surprisingly high consumption of coal in order to stock up coal. Only then could the maiden voyage be completed. During the First World War , the Frederik VIII remained in civil passenger traffic.
In February 1917, the German economist Moritz Julius Bonn and his wife, as well as the previous German ambassador to the USA, Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff and his staff on board the Frederik VIII, returned to Europe after the USA had established diplomatic ties with the German Empire had stopped due to the war situation.
On November 23, 1918, the ship was chartered to the British government and then carried out five crossings between Warnemünde , Lübeck , Stettin and Kingston upon Hull , transporting a total of around 7500 prisoners of war . On March 18, 1919, the ship was returned to the SAL. In August 1920, the Frederik VIII was the first merchant ship ever to be equipped with an Anschütz gyro compass , an autopilot called "Iron Helmsman" and a course recorder. In October 1920, the Danish geographer Hans Peder Steensby died on board .
From 1924 the Frederik VIII stopped occasionally and from 1928 regularly in Halifax, Canada . In July and August 1924 she made two trips between Copenhagen and London as part of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley . On August 23, 1924, she collided with the passenger and cargo ship Royal Fusilier (2,187 GRT) of the London & Edinburgh Shipping Company near Leith on the Thames . There was no personal injury. On October 15, 1925, ran Frederik VIII to Copenhagen Mediterranean - cruise with stops in Lisbon , Barcelona , Monaco , Genoa , Naples , Palermo , Algiers and Gibraltar from. Among the passengers on this cruise was Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark .
In the further course of the 1920s, the ship was rebuilt and modernized several times. From November 1925 the ship only had a cabin and a third class and from October 1929 a tourist class was added. On November 21, 1930, the Frederik VIII scratched an underwater rock while leaving Copenhagen and suffered several leaks . The ship turned back and the passengers and mail were transferred to the Hellig Olav (10,085 GRT) of the same shipping company.
On November 22, 1935, the ship cast off on its last voyage from Copenhagen via Oslo to New York. The return journey began on December 7, 1935. This ended the transatlantic passenger traffic of the Scandinavian American Line, whose operation was discontinued. From that point on, the parent company, DFDS, concentrated only on its intra-European routes. On November 11, 1936, the Frederik VIII was sold to the demolition company Hughes Bolckow Shipbreaking Company in Blyth, Scotland for demolition and scrapped there.
