Russian volunteer fleet

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The shipping company's first office flag

The Russian Voluntary Fleet ( Russian Добровольный флот, Доброфлот , Dobrowolnyi Flot, Dobroflot for short) was a shipping company and existed from 1878 to 1925. It was launched during the Russo-Ottoman War to operate merchant ships for war service in the Far East could also be used as auxiliary cruisers , troop transports and hospital ships.

history

prehistory

The roots of the shipping company go back to the Crimean War , after which the Russian Society for Steam Shipping and Trade ( Russian Русское общество пароходства и торговли (РОПиТ) - ROPiT for short ) was founded on the instructions of Tsar Alexander II . It was supposed to promote the Russian sea trade and bring its shipping under the Russian flag. The company took control of most of the Black Sea trade , but did little in overseas trade and the growing tanker shipping from the Caucasus . With the founding of Vladivostok and the opening of the Suez Canal, there was also an urgent need for transport to the Far East, which ROPiT did not want to tackle despite lengthy negotiations with the government.

Foundation and development

Founding committee of Dobroflot

With the outbreak of the Russo-Ottoman War, the Tsar's advisers prepared a decree establishing a voluntary donation fund, which was signed on April 10, 1878. The fundraising campaign initially produced 3.5 million gold rubles, which were used to purchase the three Hammonia class steamers Hammonia, Holsatia and Thuringia from HAPAG in the summer of the same year . The ships arrived in Kronstadt on June 16 and were renamed Moskva, Rossija and St. Petersburg . This was followed shortly after by Saxonia, which was also acquired by the Hamburg-America Line and was renamed Nizhni Novgorod . None of the four ships was able to influence the Russian-Turkish conflict that ended in July of that year. Instead, the ships were used to repatriate the Caucasus Army, before they were overtaken and, from 1879, the liner service to the Far East was established with them. As early as 1880, the name of the shipping company as a volunteer fleet was established due to the voluntary nature of the donations. In the following years up to the turn of the century, the shipping company experienced a rapid upward development. Most of the numerous new buildings were ordered in Great Britain.

Turn of the century and the Russo-Japanese War

Departure of the Kherson at the turn of the century

The opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway , with which troops and supplies could be transported much faster, brought the first setback in shipping company development from 1902, which was intensified by increased competition from British shipping companies. The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904 fundamentally changed the shipping company's initial situation - for the first time, the ships were used as auxiliary cruisers . Since all Russian auxiliary ships were named after rivers under the flag of war, the ship names of the volunteer fleet, which previously all had city names, also changed. The largest ship in the fleet, the Moskva, built in England in 1898 and renamed Angara , was ordered to Port Arthur and sunk there. In search of Japanese contraband, two ships of the Volunteer Fleet stopped three British and three German ships at the exit of the Red Sea , whereupon the British press reacted indignantly and the German Kaiser protested in a letter to the Tsar. The named ships were therefore returned to the shipping company in August 1904. Other Dobroflot ships used as auxiliary cruisers gave up their missions due to a lack of bunker coal and repairs, were interned or captured by the enemy. The auxiliary cruiser Ural , the former German express steamer Empress Maria Theresia (ex Spree ), was sunk on May 27, 1905 in the sea ​​battle near Tsushima .

In the second edition of his bestseller The Imperial Russian Navy, its past, present and future, first published in 1904, the naval author Frederick T. Jane drew a devastating conclusion of the military quality of the volunteer fleet. (Quote: “There is no Russian 'Bogey' that is quite so really harmless as the Volunteer Fleet” - in German, for example: “There is no Russian specter that is more harmless than the Volunteer Fleet ”).

After the end of the war, the shipping company quickly started rebuilding its liner service with the remaining ships. From 1906 the shipping company tried to set up a transatlantic service in order to be able to participate in the emigration business, but this failed and was given up again in 1908. Before the beginning of World War I, Dobroflot ordered six new steamers for their Far East service from the Nevsky Shipyard.

First World War and dissolution

Dobroflot stander from the 1920s

At the beginning of the First World War , the shipping company had 45 ships. The revolution and Lenin's decree on the nationalization of the merchant fleet of January 26, 1918 resulted in the expropriation of all Russian shipping companies without replacement - only the Voluntary Fleet was taken over as a practically state shipping company. On July 18, 1924, the Soviet merchant fleet (Sovtorgflot) was founded, to which the Dobroflot was assigned without formal dissolution with all ships and properties.

literature

  • William Melwille: 100 Years of the Russian Volunteer Fleet. In: Ship & Harbor / Command Bridge. Vol. 31, No. 2, February 1979, pp. 174-176.
  • William Melwille: 100 Years of the Russian Volunteer Fleet. In: Ship & Time. No. 13, Koehler Verlag, Herford, pp. 33-40.

Web links