Friedrich Hegemann (captain)

Friedrich Hegemann, 1869

Paul Friedrich August Hegemann (born August 26, 1836 in Hooksiel , † June 14, 1913 in Goslar ) was a German captain , whaler and polar explorer . On the second German north polar expedition in 1869/70 he was the captain of the schooner brig Hansa .

Life

Friedrich Hegemann was one of five sons of the harbor master JF Hegemann. In 1851 he began his maritime career on the Galiot Gesine , of which his brother was the captain. With two other brothers on board, he drove to the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Oldenburg in the Gulf of Mexico in 1853 , to Cuba in 1854 and to Brazil in 1855 . As the second helmsman, he was shipwrecked off the Chinese coast in 1856 with the Bark Texas , which in turn was run by his brother . On August 31, 1859, Hegemann passed his senior tax man examination in Elsfleth . He bought himself free from military service for 550 thalers and hired the whale catcher German from Oldenburg Visurgis AG . The ship was shipwrecked off Japan in 1862. From 1863 he sailed - again for the Visurgis - as chief helmsman on the Julian in the Pacific . From 1867 he was the ship's captain. Two years later, however, the Visurgis gave up whaling and sold the Julian .

When the “Comité for the German North Polar Voyage” bought the Fulton as an escort ship for the Germania led by Carl Koldewey , Friedrich Hegemann offered it in April 1869 the command of the ship, which was now renamed Hansa . Hegemann, who had gained extensive experience in arctic waters during his time as a whaler , accepted. After the two expedition ships left Bremerhaven on June 15, 1869, a serious misunderstanding arose on July 20 at the edge of the pack ice drifting off the Greenland coast . Hegemann wrongly interpreted a signal given by Germania as an invitation to advance further into the pack ice belt, which permanently separated the ships. On September 14th, the Hansa got stuck in the ice. As a precaution, Hegemann had the crew build a house out of coal briquettes on a large ice floe and store provisions there for an initial two months. When the situation of the ship became hopeless in mid-October due to the constant ice pressures, the crew removed everything that was of value to them. On the night of October 23, the Hansa sank at 70 ° 52 ′ north and 21 ° west off the coast of Liverpool Land . Within 200 days, the fourteen men drifted on their floe some 1500 km along the coast of East Greenland. Finally they continued the journey in their three dinghies. After another 36 days of hardship, they reached the Moravian mission station in Friedrichstal on the southern tip of Greenland. From Frederikshåb they were able to return to Europe on the Danish sailing ship Constance and were back in Germany in September 1870. Through his prudent action, Hegemann had avoided the loss of human life.

From 1871 Hegemann drove as an officer on various steamers of the North German Lloyd until the West India Line was discontinued in 1874. On April 4, 1875, he was appointed to the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg, where he initially worked as a "helper" and from 1889 as an assistant in Department I (maritime meteorology ). He retired in 1901. Hegemann died in a hospital in Goslar in 1913 and was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg .

Hegemann had been married since 1871. His wife Helene was the daughter of the shipbuilder Chr. Schwoon. The couple remained childless.

Honors

Friedrich Hegemann was an honorary member of the Natural Science Association of Hamburg-Altona. Cape Hegemann ( 67 ° 4 ′  N , 33 ° 26 ′  W ) in Kong-Christian-IX-Land on the east coast of Greenland is named after him.

Fonts

During his time at the Deutsche Seewarte, Hegemann published 16 articles on nautical or meteorological topics in the annals of hydrography and maritime meteorology , among others. a .:

• Winter travel between Europe and North America . Volume 6, 1877, p. 214.
• Notes on wind conditions in the vicinity of the Bering Strait . Volume 5, 1877, pp. 14–44.
• The ice and the flow conditions of the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean to the north of it . Year 18, 1890, pp. 401–414 and 425–435.
• Wajfang in the Pacific and north of the Bering Strait during the 1960s . Volume 21, 1893, pp. 65–67.

In 1912 his book was published in an edition of 50 copies

• My memories . Koch, Hamburg 1912, 240 pages.

literature

• Reinhard A. Krause: Two hundred days in pack ice. The authentic reports of the "Hansa" men of the German East Greenland expedition 1869–1870 , Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1997 (= writings of the German Maritime Museum , Volume 46), ISBN 3-8225-0412-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Negotiations of the Natural Science Association of Hamburg-Altona, New Series . Volume 6, 1882, p. 20 (PDF; 1.22 MB).