Gil Eannes (ship, 1914)
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Gil Eannes 1940
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The Gil Eannes was a Portuguese cargo ship built in 1914 , the former Lahneck of the DDG Hansa . In 1916 Portugal confiscated the steamer and used it as an auxiliary cruiser , troop transport and hospital ship for the Frota Branca . Sold to Italy in 1956, it was scrapped in 1960 .
Construction and technical data
Before the First World War, the shipping company DDG Hansa ordered two cargo ships for its Spain-Portugal service, which were to receive diesel engines for the first time . After the first of the two ships, the Rolandseck , had problems with the engines, the second ship was ordered as a conventional steamer. The keel was laid at the Seebeck shipyard in Geestemünde under construction number 337, and on March 24, 1914 it was launched as Lahneck .
The name Lahneck after Lahneck Castle near Koblenz was first given in 1882 to a small steamer for the North and Baltic Seas. The 746 GRT ship delivered from Schichau in 1883 stranded at Schiermonnikoog on December 23, 1894 . It was not until the following summer that the first Lahneck was declared unworthy of repair and sold to the Netherlands. Repaired there, the ship sank as a Norwegian Freidig on October 24, 1918 after a collision in the North Sea.
The length of the second Lahneck was 84.6 meters overall, it was 12.5 meters wide and had a draft of 5.0 meters. It was measured with 1775 GRT or 786 NRT and had a load capacity of 2670 tdw. The drive consisted of a three-cylinder triple expansion machine with an output of 1600 PSi . This acted on a screw , the steamer reached a speed of 11.5 knots .
history
German cargo ship Lahneck (1914–1916)
With the commissioning of the ship on May 31, 1914, the Lahneck began service between Germany and Spain and Portugal for DDG Hansa. The First World War began just two months later . The Lahneck was in neutral Lisbon and was interned there on August 9, 1914. She stayed there for nearly two years interned . On February 23, 1916, like all German ships in Portugal and its overseas possessions, she was confiscated by the Portuguese government under British pressure. At the start of the war, 72 German and two Austro-Hungarian ships were in Portuguese ports, 35 of them in Lisbon alone. This led to the German Reich declaring war on Portugal.
Portuguese cargo ship Gil Eannes (1916–1927)
The Portuguese government placed the ship under its navy, which armed it and classified it as an auxiliary cruiser . The armed steamer was named NRP Gil Eannes after the Portuguese navigator and explorer of the same name from the 15th century, Gil Eanes . At the same time, the government founded the state company Transportes Maritimos do Estado to bring the confiscated German ships back into circulation - including the Gil Eannes . The Gil Eannes was armed with two 76-mm guns, one 65-mm and one 47-mm. The crew now consisted of 114 officers and men. During the war, the navy initially used the steamer for troop transports from Portugal to France and back, after the war it served the navy as a transport and drove on the route to the Azores.
Portuguese hospital ship Gil Eannes (1927–1956)
The preliminary planning for its own Portuguese escort and hospital ship goes back to 1922, when the Portuguese fishing fleet on the Newfoundland Bank complained about the lack of an escort ship with medical treatment options. Only occasionally could the fishermen use the help of a French hospital ship or of doctors on land. After preliminary considerations about equipping such a ship and the experimental use of the sloop Carvalho Araújo , the government decided to convert the Gil Eannes into an escort and hospital ship. In 1927, the renovation took place at a Dutch shipyard: It received an infirmary, pharmacy, post and telegraph station, chapel, cattle sheds and storage rooms for food and supplies such as water, oil, coal, salt and fishing supplies. Before the Gil Eannes left for the Newfoundland Bank , the government used it for transporting prisoners to Guinea , Angola and Timor , and for transporting troops to Macau .
She then served the fishing fleet on the Newfoundland Bank as a hospital ship, supplier and freighter until 1956: On a typical voyage, the fishing season began in April / May of a year, when she brought a load of 2000 tons of salt to Newfoundland. On site she looked after the 3,000–4,000 Portuguese fishermen medically and with supplies. She repeatedly ran to the Canadian provincial capital St. John's to load fresh groceries. At the end of the season, she loaded the salted cod to be transported to Portugal. During the winter, while the fishing fleet was at rest, it continued to haul the salted fish to Portugal until the fishing season started again in the spring. The ship was jointly financed by the Portuguese government and the Grémio dos Armadores dos Navios da Pesca do Bacalhau (Shipowners' Guild of Cod Fishermen).
The Portuguese Navy sold the ship in the 1940s - according to various sources in 1942 or 1946 - to the "Sociedade Nacional dos Armadores do Bacalhau". There were no changes to the tasks of the ship. In 1956, the ship, which had meanwhile been used up, was decommissioned and replaced by the new Gil Eannes (2) that had been launched the year before . In the same year the old steamer was sold to Italy to be scrapped.
Italian cargo ship Tetide (1956–1960)
The buyer of the steamer was Vulcania SrL in Genoa , which did not scrap the ship, but instead put it into service as Tetide after repairs . No further information is available about the last few years of the ship. It was not until May 1960 that the shipping company sold the steamer to the ARDEM scrapping yard in Vado Ligure for final scrapping .
literature
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa - from liner services to special shipping. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1976, ISBN 3-7822-0105-1 .
- Jean-Piere Andrieux: The White Fleet. A history of Portuguese handliners , Flanker Press, St. John's 2013, ISBN 978-1-77117-236-3 .
Web links
- Ship history on the website of the "Gil Eannes" foundation (Portuguese), accessed on October 20, 2019
- D / S Lahneck (2) at ddghansa-shipsphotos.de , accessed on October 20, 2019
- Forum post : Portuguese warships at forumdefesa.com (Portuguese), accessed October 20, 2019
- José António Rodrigues Pereira: The Navy in World War I at revistamilitar.pt (Portuguese), accessed October 20, 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Prager, p. 36
- ↑ a b c Prager, p. 156
- ↑ a b c D / S Lahneck (2) at ddghansa-shipsphotos.de
- ↑ History of the ship on the website of the "Gil Eannes" foundation
- ^ Forum post : Portuguese warships at forumdefesa.com
- ↑ José António Rodrigues Pereira: The Navy in the First World War at revistamilitar.pt
- ↑ Andrieux, p. 27f.
- ↑ Antonio Trabulo: Navio Gil Hospital Eannes at historinhasdamedicina.blogspot.com
- ↑ on the Carvalho Araújo cf. Carvalho Araújo at navypedia.org
- ↑ Andrieux, p. 28f.