Giers cable ferry

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Scheme of a yaw ferry
Yaw ferry across the Elbe in Rathen
Roller ferry in Polle / Weser in operation
Gierponte on the Rhine near Düsseldorf , colored copper engraving, 1729

A yaw ferry (also called yaw ferry or flying bridge ) is a type of ferry that uses the flow of the river to be crossed to move.

The technology of the yaw ferry (from yaw in the sense of a turning movement around the vertical axis of the ship) was invented by the Dutchman Hendrick Heuck from Nijmegen in 1657 to facilitate traffic across the wide Waal .

functionality

A Gierseilfähre or Gierponte , as this ferry was also called, hangs on a long wire rope that splits just before the ferry. One end of the rope is attached to the bow and one to the stern of the ferry. If the length of the ends changes to one another, the angle of attack of the ferry to the river also changes. This adjustment of the rope ends is done today with motor power, otherwise the ferry is motorless. The pressure of the incoming water pushes them to the bank. The wire rope is anchored in the river and marked with buoys for shipping . So that the fairway remains free, the anchor for the wire rope is not in the middle of the river.

Another technique - the roller ferry - uses two separate ropes instead of a Y-yaw rope, which run on trolleys or pulleys on a steel cable stretched high above the water with the help of two pylons on the banks , so that river navigation is not hindered. The ferry from Polle on the Weser works according to this principle . There are also yaw-rope roller ferries with only one rope, such as the Danube ferries in Matting (built in 1854) and the solar fleet in Ulm . In Polle it is driven by two rudders, in Matting and Ulm by just one rudder, which by turning them into the flow of the river generate the desired forces.

Mathematical and physical basics

By correctly setting the angle α of the ferry relative to the flow, it is first ensured that the forces - more precisely: the vector sum of rope forces plus flow forces - do not exert any torque on the ferry . This happens largely autonomously, i.e. with minimal support from the ferryman, as well as only through the auxiliary motor mentioned above: until the correct angle is set, the ferry rotates slowly enough independently around the vertical axis under the influence of the above-mentioned torque.

The vector of the resulting force can now be  broken down into two perpendicular components, the longitudinal component K y  = K sin α and the transverse component K x = K cos α. The longitudinal component is compensated by the rope forces. Due to the remaining transverse component, the system ensures that the river can be crossed without a motor using the pressure of the current.

distribution

One reason for the spread of yaw ferries on the Elbe , Saale , Main and Neckar at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was chain shipping . Chain tugs pulled themselves and attached cargo ships upstream along a chain lying lengthways in the river. The chain was lifted from the bottom of the river by the chain boats at the front, pulled over the deck and lowered back into the river at the back. It was not possible to cross this chain with the rope of existing rope ferries . Therefore, with the introduction of chain shipping, these ferries were converted to yaw-rope ferries. The changeover had to be paid for by the chain towing companies.

Germany

There is a high density of yaw ferries in Germany on the Elbe and Weser rivers .

Elbe

The two Elbe ferries in Barby and Breitenhagen are connected to the Saale ferry in Groß Rosenburg by the 3-ferry tour, a 24 km long circular route.

Saale

trough

Weser

Until after 2000, two other ferries were in operation: the greed rope ferry between Hehlen and Daspe was taken in 2004 for a new bridge out of service and in Bodenwerder launched . In Hajen (Emmerthal) the ferry last operated in 2011 to the opposite bank near Grohnde, it was scrapped without replacement.

Danube

On the Danube there are fully hand-operated yaw ferries in:

The Danube ferry Mariaposching – Stephansposching went out of service after an accident on April 19, 2016 and was replaced by a free motor ferry at the beginning of 2019

Rhine and victory

Yaw ferry Altrip, Rhine (1958)

Further yaw ferries exist on the Sieg between Bonn and Geislar and Troisdorf and Bergheim. This type of ferry was also used on the Rhine between the 17th and 20th centuries to cross the river. Initially referred to as "flying bridges", such ferries were initially available at the Mannheimer Rheinschanze (1669) and in Cologne (around 1670), later also in Düsseldorf (from 1689), between Bonn and Vilich , Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein (see Flying Line Brücke (Koblenz) ), Neuwied and Weißenthurm (1817) and between Altrip and Mannheim (1891). Today there are only a few yaw ferries left on the Rhine, for example in Basel and Plittersdorf (Rastatt) . The Basel ferries can only be used by pedestrians and because of the nearby Rhine bridges they are of little importance in terms of traffic. They are preserved mainly for historical and tourist reasons. As a special feature, the ferries in Basel do not have any yaw ropes, instead the tether is placed on the other side of the boat with a handle to reverse the flow. Otherwise, there are simplified roller ferries in which the tether moves by means of a runner on a support rope. This is stretched high above the Rhine so as not to hinder navigation on the Rhine .

Austria

There are four roller ferries operating across the Danube in Austria :

Switzerland

The cable ferries, which are mostly equipped with a handle and rarely with a V-shaped yaw rope, have been preserved as pedestrian crossings in various places in Switzerland. Often they are operated or supported by the municipalities in local recreation areas. Driving a ferry requires special approval tests to ensure safety. There are still the following cable ferries with regular ferry service:

Netherlands

gallery

literature

  • Hans Wolfgang Kuhn: Early Greed Ponts. Flying bridges on the Rhine in the 17th and 18th centuries. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 6 (1983), pp. 25–64.

Web links

Commons : Rope Ferries  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Gierponte  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matting Ferry
  2. ↑ A raft for the Weser. (No longer available online.) ARD , archived from the original on January 25, 2017 ; Retrieved on January 25, 2017 (film scene from 00:21:35).
  3. ↑ The days of the Weser ferry are numbered. Hehlen municipality, accessed on September 3, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Hajen ferry is scrapped. DeWeZet , accessed September 3, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Signature campaign for the receipt of the ferry ( Memento from October 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ The new Danube ferry "Posching" is finally here. Bayerischer Rundfunk , accessed on September 3, 2019 .
  7. ↑ The "flying bridge" near Mannheim. LEO-BW , accessed on January 6, 2020 .
  8. ^ JF Wilhelmi: Panorama of Düsseldorf and its surroundings . JHC Schreiner'sche Buchhandlung, Düsseldorf 1828, p. 11