Peace ship

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Peace ships , also Friedekoggen ( Low German Vredekoggen ), were called the warships in the time of the Hanseatic League , which were mainly used against piracy . With this name, which reveals some of the Hanseatic attitude towards the war, the essential task of these ships was indicated: They were supposed to ensure peace on the seas and thus enable undisturbed trade.

Hanseatic ship in the 13th century , oil painting by Christopher Rave

Requirements

The Hanse merchant ships were always armed and not completely defenseless against isolated attacks by pirates. They also sometimes voluntarily joined together to form smaller fleet units, which have been handed down from the 13th century, in order to be able to defend themselves better in the event of larger attacks. But when organized piracy began to emerge and trade became more and more insecure, individual Hanseatic cities had to put additional peace ships into service. Especially in the days of the notorious Vitalienbrüder , when sea trade had come to a complete standstill in places, this measure was inevitable if the Hanseatic League did not want to lose any noticeable substance.

financing

The costs for the peace ships were borne by the community of individual cities or city groups, for which the so-called pound duty , a kind of Hanseatic sales tax, was occasionally levied. In detail, it was mostly the owners and charterers of the merchant ships in the convoys who paid. The Hanseatic League itself never had peace ships. Only on their Hanseatic days were the measures that appeared necessary in so-called matriculations, which the cities then had to carry out under their own responsibility and effort.

Warfare

Hanse merchant and war ship in the 16th century

Until the introduction of cannons on ships (generally from around the second half of the 15th century), war at sea was fought like a land war and the peace ships in it were something like floating fortresses . The aim of the fight at the time was to board the enemy ship and take possession. For this, the cogs (and this made them peace ships) were provided with high front and aft forts, from which soldiers fought. They used crossbows and longbows as weapons . Occasionally, throwing machines, called bliden , were also used for long-range combat , or the so-called driving work , a large spear thrower that could have a devastating effect on the crew and on the rigging of the enemy ship. The strength of the crew on the peace ships could be up to a hundred men, of whom about a third belonged to the seamen and the rest to the soldiers . The nautical crew was always chosen from the own population of the cities involved, the military also had recruited servants, sometimes called riders at sea , who had to board the enemy ships and fight their crews face-to-face. With the advent of firearms in naval warfare, the long-range duel with heavy ship artillery began to play a larger role instead of boarding. The Hanseatic League introduced this new technique at sea around the middle of the 16th century.

Calls

The missions of the peace ships were varied: they gave escort to naval units, carried out patrols on the sea routes, monitored and temporarily blocked certain coastal areas and islands as so-called outsiders and repeatedly carried out operations against the pirates, of whom the well-known at the beginning of the 15th century against the Vitalienbrüder in the North Sea were just a few of many. They were also used in pirate wars that were waged by the Hanseatic League from time to time.

Others

The names of the peace ships were sometimes a bit bizarre. Names like Vlegender Geyst or Mariendrache should, as Walther Vogel writes, announce their devastating purpose “promisingly”.

In order to get the costs under control, a freelance entrepreneur was commissioned with measures to satisfy the sea in 1385: Wulf Wulflam , son of a Stralsund mayor, who did not achieve much in the process.

Associations of the peace ships in larger enterprises were mainly led by the mayors or councilors of the Hanseatic cities. (See Commander of the Lübeck Fleet .)

literature

  • Burkhard Werner: The position of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck in the Hanseatic League up to the Stralsund Peace in 1370, GRIN Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-638-92262-3
  • Walther Vogel: History of German shipping: From prehistoric times to the end of the XV. Century . Second volume, Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 1973 (reprint from 1915)
  • Karl Pagel: The Hanseatic League, Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1965
  • Friedrich von Raumer : Historical paperback, FA Brockhaus publishing house, Leipzig 1841