Count of Paris (ship)

**Count of Paris**
	Painting of the Count of Paris
Ship data
flag	Prussia German Empire;
other ship names	Roland;
Ship type	Smooth deck steamer for people and goods
home port	Cologne
Owner	Prussian-Rhenish Steamship Company
Shipping company	PRDG
Shipyard	Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen , Ruhrort
Build number	6th
building-costs	63,000 thalers
Order	1837
Launch	1838
Commissioning	October 5, 1838
Decommissioning	1880
Whereabouts	Broken down in 1903
Ship dimensions and crew
length	42.70, after reconstruction 49.68 m ( Lüa )
width	11.88 m
Draft	Max. 0.92 m
displacement	192 t
Machine system
machine	Two-cylinder low-pressure composite steam engine
indicated ; performance	270 hp (199 kW)
propeller	2 × paddle wheels, 4.04 m diameter, 12 paddles
Transport capacities
Load capacity	66 dw

The paddle steamer Graf von Paris was the first iron-built paddle steamer in a Rhenish shipyard and the nineteenth ship of the PRDG ( KD ).

The ship

In the foredeck of the paddle steamer was the sailor's apartment with a staircase to the deck, followed by a small cabin , also with stairs to the deck. Behind it was the front cargo hold. The engine and boiler room was arranged midships. In the stern there was a large cabin, the aft hold, the toilet and in the stern the pavilion. These rooms were accessible via a companionway from the main deck. The front main deck had a mast with a loading boom and was used for cargo handling. The kitchen, cabins for waiters, a changing room for women and the designer's cabin were housed in the port structure above the paddle wheel. On the starboard side there was a storage room, a toilet, the helmsman's cabin, the restaurateur's cabin and a smoking room above the paddle wheel.

The aft deck was partially roofed over with an awning and equipped with another cargo boom. At the stern there was an elevated open rowing chair. The chimney was behind the wheel cases.

history

After the transfer trip from the shipyard to Cologne on November 4, 1838, the commissioning took place on the following day under the name of ship no . From December 31, 1838 to February 27, 1839 the ship was in the shipyard to process warranty services. On March 27, a festival trip with the Russian heir to the throne Alexander Nicolajewitsch was carried out from Wiesbaden-Biebrich to Koblenz , which ended on March 30th in Nijmegen after further overnight stays in Cologne and Düsseldorf .

In April 1839 a test voyage was undertaken from Mainz to Basel to prove that larger ships with the appropriate propulsion power could travel this route without towing assistance. The pure driving time was 25.5 hours. On May 1, 1839, operations began on the Strasbourg - Mannheim route together with the ship Crown Prince of Prussia .

From February to mid-March 1840 there was another stay at the GHH shipyard to repair the paddle wheels and to improve the cabins and the helm. From November 1840 there was another layover period until April 2, 1841. A new, 15.29 m long forecastle was added, the boiler system was overhauled, new wheel arches were added and the deck planks above the boiler room were renewed. In addition, the rooms below deck were converted. The ship was now 49.56 m long. On May 1, 1841, the ship was baptized in Strasbourg in the name of the Count of Paris .

In 1845 the ship was temporarily rented to the Kölnische Dampf-Schleppschiffahrts-Gesellschaft (DSSG) as a tug and used on the Waal . Due to the poor general condition, the ship was only kept ready in 1847 as a reserve ship. During the civil revolution of 1848/49, the Count of Paris was temporarily confiscated and used for the transport of military material between Cologne and the Upper Rhine and was shut down in the Rheinauhafen Cologne at the end of 1848. Thereafter, up to the spring of 1851, there were several visits to the shipyard with major repairs and then regular transport service again.

In 1859 the ship was sold to the Steamship Company for the Lower and Middle Rhine (DGNM), with which the PRDG had founded a joint venture in 1853, for 35,000 thalers. During the German War in 1866, the steamer was used from May to September as a transporter for troops and wounded on the Upper and Middle Rhine. This was followed by a major overhaul and renaming to Roland . From July 1873 to the end of 1874 it was used in regular services between Mannheim and Strasbourg.

In 1880 the ship was decommissioned and converted into a workshop ship, and from 1884 it was stationed as a storage ship in Düsseldorf. In May 1903 the Roland was sold to a scrap dealer in Duisburg and scrapped.

literature

Georg Fischbach: The ships of the KD (a detailed list on over 1000 pages with many historical and current photos of all ships of the KD from 1826 to 2005). Publisher: Self-published, available from KD Cologne.
Hans Rindt, The ships of the Cologne-Düsseldorfer then and now , publisher Gunter Dexheimer