Schiller (ship, 1873)
 The Schiller in Hoboken
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Schiller was a passenger steamer of the German Transatlantic Steamship Company. On May 7, 1875, on his way home from the United States , he got caught in a storm, ran aground in the fog near the Isles of Scilly and sank.
The Adler Line and its ships
The German Transatlantic Steamship Company, which was named Adler-Linie after its shipping company flag , was founded by a large number of financially strong partners, including the Mendelssohn & Co. bank , in competition with the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag). It used the most modern ships under the German flag in passenger service on the North Atlantic. Their constituent founding meeting on January 16, 1872 in Hamburg decided to order eight modern steamers in Scotland . The ships should have a size of just under 3,500 GRT and be able to transport around 1,000 passengers to the USA. They should be technically up-to-date, powered by composite steam engines with an output of 3,000 hp and reach a cruising speed of 13 knots . Two rahge takelte masts were present for a Notbeseglung. All ships were to be designed in a similar way and to carry 190 cabin passengers in two classes. The tween deck system for 800 passengers differed considerably from the ships of the competition, as these passengers were not accommodated in large dormitories but in smaller compartments. The construction contracts went to the shipyards Robert Napier & Sons in Govan , Alexander Stephen & Sons in nearby Linthouse and James & George Thomson in Clydebank . The young engineer Ernst Voss , later a co-founder of the Hamburg-based shipyard Blohm & Voss, was entrusted with the construction supervision .
The Schiller was the second of the two ships built by Napier. The previous Goethe was the first ship in the entire series and carried out the shipping company's first transatlantic voyage on September 12, 1873. The Schiller made her first transatlantic crossing on February 5, 1874 as the third ship of the Adler Line. Before her, the Stephen-built Herder had started service in January. This shipyard delivered the largest share of the newbuildings with five ships. The Lessing , Wieland and Gellert were delivered until February 1875, but only the Lessing was actually put into service. Thomson only built the Klopstock , which actually entered service with the Adler Line in November 1874 as the fifth and last ship. The two steamers built by Napier differed from the other ships in that they were the only ones to have two funnels.
From March 1874, the Adler-Linie began looking for a merger with Hapag under its chairman of the board of directors, Sloman , as the ships could no longer be operated economically. The number of emigrants had fallen drastically and the prices for the crossing had fallen considerably in competition. When the Adler-Linie entered the competition, the price for the between deck passage was 55 thalers. At the beginning of 1874 it fell to 45 and in autumn was only 30 thalers. In April 1875, the shareholders of Hapag decided to buy up the competing shipping company and its ships for 12.5 million marks, as they wanted to prevent third parties from buying up the modern ships if the Adler-Linie went bankrupt. The takeover was to take place on May 7, 1875.
The Schiller and, since May 4th, also the Lessing were on their way home from the United States at this time.
The catastrophe
The Schiller left New York on April 27, 1875 with Hamburg as her destination. As usual, it was to call at Plymouth and Cherbourg on the journey home . She had a crew of 101 men and 254 passengers and a valuable cargo on board, which included machines as well as a large amount of gold coins.
On May 7, 1875, the ship had already been slowly approaching the Isles of Scilly for three days in thick fog in order to orientate itself by their lighthouses. Due to a navigation error , they were too far east and ran aground at the Retarrier Ledges at 10 p.m. The point is 0.7 nautical miles east-southeast of Bishop Rock , an island with a lighthouse at the western end of the Isles of Scilly, which had not been discovered and was now passed incorrectly.
In the panic shortly after the run-up, 27 men and one woman were able to save themselves with the two smaller lifeboats in the stern area, which could have taken even more people with them. The ship's management decided that using the six large lifeboats during the night and given the position of the ship was not promising. On the right side of the ship, the 3rd officer cleared a lifeboat, which, however, was fully occupied by a falling chimney of the ship. Attempts were made to blow off steam and to draw attention to the stranded ship with regular shots from a small on-board cannon. This has been misinterpreted, if recorded at all, as many ships fired joyful shots upon reaching the canal and sighting the Bishop Rock beacon. On the Schiller the women and children had been brought to the large deckhouse, since they were better protected there. Heavy breakers, however, first destroyed the roof and then washed away those seeking protection to the horror of their relatives. Returning fishermen discovered the wreck in the morning hours, and a pilot boat and lifeboats were sent to the scene of the accident. It was only possible to save ten more men.
In total, only 37 people survived. With 335 deaths, it was one of the most serious accidents in the canal , whereby it was particularly tragic that only one of the 92 female passengers survived and none of the 52 children on board could be saved. In the days that followed, over 100 bodies drove onto the islands and were buried together. 15 bodies could not be identified. The German consul in Havana Friedrich Wilhelm Zach was among the dead.
The further fate of the sister ships
Due to the sinking of the Schiller on the day Hapag took over the Adler Line, only six almost identical ships and the Hoboken tender of 413 GRT used on the Elbe came into the possession of Hapag. In addition, the company refused to accept the eighth transatlantic ship that had been ordered, as it had too large a fleet of ships. On May 26, 1875, the Gellert was the first former Adler ship to sail to New York under the flag of Hapag. Herder , Klopstock and Wieland then followed . The Lessing was only used under the Hapag flag in 1876.
The Schiller's sister ship , the Goethe , was deployed to New York only once in May 1876 and then came on the South American service, in which she was lost shortly before Christmas. The Klopstock was sold to France in May 1876. In the years 1880 to 1882 the remaining four ships were rebuilt and all got two chimneys.
| Launched in service |
Surname | tonnage | shipyard | fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 28, 1873 August 2, 1873 |
Goethe | 3494 GRT | Napier & Sons building no. 322 |
September 12, 1873 Maiden voyage to New York, taken over by Hapag in April 1875, first voyage for this in May 1876 to New York, stranded and lost on December 23, 1876 in the La Plata estuary near Lobos Island |
| 10/22/1873 12/18/1873 |
Herder | 3531 BRT 3494 BRT after conversion '80 |
Stephen & Sons building no. 169 |
January 8, 1874 Maiden voyage to New York, taken over by Hapag in April 1875, first voyage for this on June 9, 1875 to New York, 1880 conversion (2 chimneys), stranded and lost at Kap Race on October 9, 1882 |
| 02/22/1874 04/13/1874 |
Lessing | 3460 BRT 3718 BRT after conversion '82 |
Stephen & Sons building no. 170 |
May 28, 1874 Maiden voyage to New York, taken over by Hapag in May 1875, first voyage for this only on March 1, 1876 to New York, 1882 conversion (2 chimneys), sold to Messageries Maritimes in June 1888 , renamed Nerthe , 1897 demolished |
| 06/16/1874 07/15/1874 |
Wieland | 3439 GRT 3504 GRT after conversion '82 |
Stephen & Sons building no. 171 |
not used by the Adler Line, taken over by Hapag in April 1875, first trip for this on July 7, 1875 to New York, 1882 conversion (2 chimneys), first trip from Naples to New York on October 6, 1894, 1895 sold to Lieder, burned out in Shanghai on October 15, 1895 , then demolished |
| 06/30/1874 10/25/1874 |
Klopstock | 3439 GRT 3504 GRT after conversion '82 |
J. & G. Thomson building no. 131 |
November 18, 1874 Maiden voyage to New York, taken over by Hapag in May 1875, first voyage for Hapag on June 23, 1875 to New York, sold to Compagnie Générale Transatlantique in May 1876 , renamed Saint Germain , demolished in 1907 |
| 11/25/1874 02/10/1875 |
Gellert | 3465 BRT 3533 BRT after conversion '81 |
Stephen & Sons building no. 173 |
not used by the Adler Line, taken over by Hapag in April 1875, first trip for this on May 26, 1875 to New York, 1881 conversion (2 chimneys), first trip from Naples to New York in November 1893, sold to in 1895 Lieder, demolished from 1896 |
| 03/30/1876 1876 |
Nepaul | 3550 GRT | Stephen & Sons building no. 174 |
planned name Körner , order canceled, construction stopped until Peninsular & Oriental found a buyer, accumulated and sunk on December 10, 1890 on the return journey from Calcutta near Plymouth |
literature
- Keith Austin: The Victorian Titanic: The Loss of the SS Schiller in 1875 . Neck Grove. 2001, ISBN 1-84114-133-X .
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping . Volume I: The pioneering years from 1850 to 1890 . Writings of the German Maritime Museum, Volume 18
- One of the failed "Schiller" . In: The Gazebo . Issue 27, 1875, pp. 459–462 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - eyewitness account of the accident).
Web links
- The fall of the Schiller (French)
- Technical data of the Schiller (French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Kludas, Volume I, p. 88.
- ↑ a b c d Kludas, Volume I, p. 90.
- ↑ Kludas, Volume I, pp. 90f.
- ↑ Numbers fluctuate between 248 and 282 passengers, 59 of them in class I and 80 in class II
- ↑ Johannes Rink - On the shipwreck of the Schiller - 1875.
- ↑ The French website mentioned above names 43 survivors (same number for Kludas); 28 of them belonged to the crew; of the 15 surviving passengers, three were class I and class II; of the nine survivors on the tween deck, the only woman who survived was.
- ↑ Information taken from the existing article, Kludas, p. 90ff. gives 254 passengers, 101 crew members and a total of 43 survivors.
- ↑ Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871-1945 . 5. T – Z, supplements . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 347.
- ↑ clydesite.co.uk
- ↑ clydesite.co.uk
- ↑ Fall of the Nepaul