Rivers class
As rivers class designated ship class was a series of eleven North Atlantic express steamers of the Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL). It represented an important step in the development of the shipping company, as the NDL was one of the first shipping companies in the transatlantic service to rely on the use of fast steamers. The class consisted of different types of ships , of which nine units were built in Glasgow , five of them at the shipyard of John Elder & Co., four more were built at the same shipyard, which was called Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company from 1886 . The two last ships built, the Spree and Havel , were built at the German Vulcan shipyard in Stettin .
Building the class
In 1879, the Guion Line high- speed steamer Arizona had made the fastest crossing of the Atlantic to date at a speed of almost 16 knots. The ships of HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd were running at around 13 knots at that time. In August 1881 the director of the NDL, Johann Georg Lohmann , ordered an equal ship, the Elbe, from John Elder & Company, the Glasgow shipyard that had also built the Arizona . Although the Guion Line had meanwhile ordered even faster ships from Elder, the success of the Elbe was quickly followed by further orders for the Werra and Fulda , two somewhat larger replicas that could offer weekly departures from 1883. The Fulda was able to adorn itself with the title of being the second German ship with electric light. The Elbe and Werra were soon retrofitted. After the number of ships in the river class with the two larger and faster ships, the Eider and Ems , had been increased to five, the NDL was even able to offer the densest express steamer schedule across the Atlantic.
With a loan of 15 million marks in 1884, Lloyd ordered the first three high-speed steamers in the world to be equipped with the more modern and more powerful triple expansion steam engines from Elder's successor, Fairfields. These first steel- constructed and slightly larger ships of the NDL, Aller , Trave and Saale were now around 17.5 knots and enabled Lloyd to offer two departures per week. The fastest British competitors had meanwhile reached ships with a speed of around 19 knots, but Lloyd did not want to make a decision to build such fast ships, especially since the number of tween deck passengers had to be reduced in favor of the large machinery when the last three ships were built. In 1886 Lohmann ordered another, but one node faster, replica of the last ships, the Lahn , with which up to three weekly departures were now possible. Since the dimensions of the old Bremerhaven Kaiserschleuse did not allow larger ships at that time, Lloyd held on to this ship size, although the competition was now offering much larger and faster ships.
From 1887, HAPAG ordered the Augusta Victoria, the first twin screw steamer, and from 1888 the British operated twin screw steamers with 10,000 gross tonnes and a speed of 20 knots, which finally made the ships of the river class look outdated. In the same year, Hermann Henrich Meier , resigned the chairmanship of the NDL board of directors because he no longer agreed with Lohmann's construction policy. Despite the resistance at the top of the company, in 1889, against the backdrop of the economically still very successful ships, Lohmann ordered another two 7000 gross register-ton single-screw ships from the Szczecin Vulcan. These ships, christened the Spree and Havel, were also supposed to reach 20 knots, whereby the additional space of the larger ships was therefore almost completely required by the even more voluminous machinery.
Further use and whereabouts
The first ship of the class was the Eider , which ran aground on January 31, 1892 in the fog at Atherfield on the south coast of the Isle of Wight . After the passengers had been disembarked, the Nordic salvage association from Hamburg salvaged the ship on March 29th. He demanded one million marks for mountain wages, but the NDL was only willing to pay 400,000 marks due to the severe damage to the wrecked ship. Ultimately, both parties could not come to an agreement and the Eider was auctioned on January 10, 1893 in Southampton for 116,000 marks and then scrapped in London.
The Elbe sank on January 30, 1895 after a collision with the British steamer Crathie . 332 people were killed.
The highlights of the Fulda’s career were two rescues of passengers and crews of the sunken Cunard Line steamer Oregon and the sinking full ship Luise M. Fuller in 1886. From 1891 she sailed the Genoa-New York route. In February 1899, after a charter as a Spanish troop transport and before being handed over to the Canadian Steamship Company (Beaver Line), it was to be repaired in the dock of Birkenhead. There, however, the supports in the dock broke on February 2nd, whereupon the Fulda slid off the pallet and was so badly damaged that it had to be scrapped. The demolition took place in Liverpool.
The Werra initially ran on the Bremerhaven-New York route. From 1891 to 1898, she operated the Genoa-New York route for Lloyd. In 1899 she was to be sold to the Canadian Steamship Company, but this was prevented by the insolvency of the British. Instead, it was chartered out as a Spanish troop transport until the summer of 1899 and sold to a Genoese scrapping yard in September 1901 .
The Aller overran the British fishing cutter Willie on June 15, 1887 , which went down with six men. The ship was used by Lloyd on the Bremerhaven-New York route until 1897, after which it switched to the Genoa-New York route. On October 27, 1898, the ship rescues the 23-man crew of the British steamer Dago, which was sinking in the Atlantic . In 1902 the Aller in Genoa was scrapped.
In 1899 the Ems and the Werra were to be sold to the Canadian Steamship Company, but this was prevented by the insolvency of the British. On August 20, 1901, the former Ems began her second career as Lake Simcoe for the British shipping company Elder Dempster . It was launched in 1904 and canceled in Genoa in 1905.
The penultimate ship of the river class, the Spree , suffered a break in the drive shaft in November 1892 and again in July 1897 and had to be towed. At the beginning of 1898 she started up her yard again to be converted into a twin-screw ship. The ship was lengthened by 19.8 meters and equipped with additional boilers, an additional chimney and two new quadruple expansion steam engines. During the test drives in June 1899, the newly converted Empress Maria Theresia ran aground twice and both times had to be towed free again. She was so badly damaged that she had to run back to the shipyard at low speed and be repaired again. The ship could not be used again until March 1900. Four years later it was sold to Russia. As the Ural , the ship was sunk by Japanese warships on May 27, 1905 in the sea battle near Tsushima .
In 1904, the Lahn steamer was sold to Russia through the Hamburg brokers Henning and Herlessen. After renovation work in Bremerhaven and Libau, it served as the Rus reconnaissance cruiser and returned to Hamburg in 1907 for demolition.
The steamer of the class that had remained in the service of Lloyd the longest was the Trave . On June 13, 1889, the ship collided with the Russian schooner David , which then sank. Three years later, on June 21, 1892, the Trave collided with the full-rigged ship Fred B. Taylor , which also sank. Two members of the sailor's crew were killed. The Trave switched to the route between Genoa and New York in 1901 and was launched in Bremerhaven in May 1903. But she made nine more trips between Bremerhaven and New York from March 11, 1906 and November 1907. In 1908 it was sold for demolition and was scrapped the following year.
The Saale burned down on June 30, 1900 in front of Hoboken. 109 people were killed. After the salvage and repair, the ship served as a cargo steamer in the USA until it was demolished in 1924. See the main article Saale (Schiff, 1886)
The last ship of the class to be built, the Havel , sank the Italian barque Mascotta in a collision off Long Island on February 18, 1892 under the leadership of the compulsory pilot Connor . Later it was initially intended for the same conversion as the Spree , but from 1898 after being sold to Spain it served as the auxiliary cruiser Meteoro in the Spanish Navy. Then she was dismantled again to the passenger ship Alfonso XII and served with the shipping company Cia. Trasatlantica. The history of the rivers class finally ended with its demolition in 1926.
The ships
| The North Atlantic express steamer of the river class | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Construction year | Surname | length | width | measurement | drive | Shipyard | Whereabouts |
| 1881 | Elbe | 127.46 m | 13.72 m | 4510 GRT | 4 cyl. Compound steam engine | John Elder & Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Sunk after collision in the English Channel in 1895 (332 dead) |
| 1882 | Werra | 131.06 m | 14.02 m | 4815 GRT | 4 cyl. Compound steam engine | John Elder & Co. Ltd., Glasgow | 1901 sold for demolition |
| 1883 | Fulda | 131.06 m | 14.02 m | 4814 GRT | 4 cyl. Compound steam engine | John Elder & Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Sold for demolition in 1899 after severe damage |
| 1884 | Eider | 131.00 m | 14.35 m | 5129 GRT | 6 cyl. Compound steam engine | John Elder & Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Stranded off the Isle of Wight in 1892 |
| 1884 | Ems | 131.00 m | 14.35 m | 5129 GRT | 6 cyl. Compound steam engine | John Elder & Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Sold in 1901 |
| 1886 | All | 133.58 m | 14.67 m | 4,964 GRT | 6 cyl. 3-fold exp. Steam engine | Fairfield SB & Eng. Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Broken down in 1904 |
| 1886 | Saale | 133.60 m | 14.68 m | 4,967 GRT | 6 cyl. 3-fold exp. Steam engine | Fairfield SB & Eng. Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Burnt out in Hoboken in 1900 , sold in 1901, freighter |
| 1886 | Trave | 133.58 m | 14.67 m | 4996 GRT | 6 cyl. 3-fold exp. Steam engine | Fairfield SB & Eng. Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Sold for demolition in 1908 |
| 1887 | Lahn | 133.60 m | 14.74 m | 5097 GRT | 6 cyl. 3-fold exp. Steam engine | Fairfield SB & Eng. Co. Ltd., Glasgow | Sold in 1904 |
| 1890 (1899) |
Spree 1899 Empress Maria Theresia |
140.83 m 160.33 m |
15.11 m 15.86 m |
6963 GRT 8276 GRT |
10 cyl. 3-fold exp. Steam engine | AG Vulcan , Szczecin | 1899 converted to a twin-screw steamer, sold to Russia as an auxiliary cruiser in 1904 |
| 1891 | Havel | 140.83 m | 15.86 m | 6963 GRT | 10 cyl. 3-fold exp. Steam engine | AG Vulcan, Szczecin | Sold to Spain as an auxiliary cruiser in 1898 |
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the North German Lloyd . 1857 to 1970. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-86047-262-3 .
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping . Volume I - The Pioneering Years 1850 to 1890. Ed .: Detlev Ellmers; Wolf-Dieter Hoheisl; Gert Schlechtriem. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-821-X .
- Armin Wulle: The Szczecin VULCAN . A chapter in German shipbuilding history. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford, ISBN 3-7822-0475-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Woodcut of the Elbe ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Information on the Elbe with postcard
- ↑ Information on the Werra and postcard
- ^ Postcard der Aller
- ↑ Information on the Ems with postcard
- ↑ Information on the Spree and postcard
- ^ Postcard from Empress Maria Theresa
- ↑ Information on the Lahn with postcard and crack
- ↑ Information on the Trave and postcard
- ↑ Information on the hall and postcard
- ↑ Information about the Havel with postcard
- ↑ Information on the purchase of the Havel
Web links
- History on the website of Hapag-Lloyd
- Rivers class postcards
- Articles and postcards for almost all vapers
- From near and far. The pleasure trips with the steamer "Kaiserin Maria Theresia". In: Badener Zeitung , No. 88/1903 (XXIV. Volume), November 4, 1903, p. 5, center left. (Online at ANNO ).