Gejser (ship, 1844)

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The Gejser (occasionally also Geiser ) was a wheeled corvette of the Royal Danish Navy rigged as a schooner brig , which took part in the naval battle near Heligoland on June 4, 1849 .

Construction and technical data

The ship was built on the Orlogsværftet (war shipyard) in Copenhagen with hull number 36 according to plans by Andreas Schifter . It was the first paddle steamer built in Denmark . The keel was laid on April 13, 1844, the launch on October 29, 1844. The Gejser was 49.4 m (157.3 Danish feet ) long and 8.1 m (25.9 feet) wide, had 3.6 m (11.5 feet) draft and displaced 666 tons . Two 4-cylinder steam engines from Maudslay, Sons and Field in London with a total of 160 nominal horse power , fed by two boilers with three furnaces each, enabled a steam speed of 9 knots via the two side paddle wheels . The armament consisted of two 60 pounders (about 20 cm caliber) and six 18 pounders (about 14 cm caliber).

Mission history

The Danish corvettes Valkyrien (front) and Gejser (left) in a naval battle near Heligoland
The Gejser in the North Sea, 1888

The ship was delivered on April 25, 1845 and was initially used by the Navy in the mail service on the Copenhagen- Stettin - Swinoujscie route, and subsequently also on the Copenhagen- Kiel and Copenhagen- Travemünde routes . After the outbreak of the Schleswig-Holstein War in 1848, the ship was used as a troop transport and then in the blockade of the German North Sea ports. They came on June 4, 1849 under the command of Kaptajnløjtnant Jørgen PF Wulff at the naval battle at Helgoland the Segelkorvette Valkyrien under Kaptajn Andreas C. polder to help at Helgoland from a small German Reich fleets -Geschwader consisting of the steam frigate Barbarossa and the steam corvettes Lübeck and Hamburg under Captain Karl Rudolf Brommy had been attacked. When the Gejser , coming from the mouth of the Elbe , appeared on the battlefield, followed shortly afterwards by two Danish frigates, Brommy broke off the battle, since he was now outnumbered. The Danish ships pursued Brommy's formation as far as the vicinity of Cuxhaven and then resumed their blockade service.

After the end of the war in 1851, the Gejser was used again in the postal service until 1860. After that she served mainly as an auxiliary ship and tender for the Danish navy. The old ship was demolished in 1891. His ship name was transferred to the protected cruiser Gejser, launched in July 1852 .

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1779–1852, Danish ship designer, “Master Shipbuilder” in the Danish Navy from 1814 to 1846, lastly Vice Admiral.
  2. ↑ Eric Nielsen: Danish Warship Procurement in the Early Steamship Age 1824-1862 , at Dansk Militærhistorie
  3. ↑ One Danish foot = 0.3138535 meters.

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