Great Elector (ship, 1899)
.jpg) The former Great Elector as a US troop transport Aeolus
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The Reichspostdampfer Grosser Kurfürst des Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL), which was launched near Schichau in Danzig in 1899, was the largest ship built for the Reichspostdampferlinien. It was an enlarged version of the Barbarossa class . With this ship, the NDL wanted to become more attractive for passengers on the route to Australia.
Confiscated in the USA in 1917 , the ship was used under the American flag and named City of Los Angeles until 1932 .
Use for the NDL
The Grand Elector started her maiden voyage to New York on May 5, 1900 .
On November 7th she started her first trip to Australia in the Reichspostdampferdienst. At that time, she was the largest passenger ship to Australia and remained so until 1913, when the Blue Funnel liner Ulysses (14,449 GRT) came into service. However, the Grand Elector only made 9 tours to Australia in 13 years. The last round trip started on January 7, 1912 in Bremerhaven .
In addition, the ship was used on the line to New York. In 1910 it was probably also used on the Mediterranean line Genoa - New York.
To do this, she carried out several cruises. On March 8, 1904, she drove from New York to the Orient to enable 800 American Sunday school teachers to attend a convention in Jerusalem . From June 27 to July 25, 1908, she conducted a polar voyage, which was repeated in June 1910 and from July 18 to August 16, 1911. From February 11 to April 24, 1909, the Grand Elector made a 72-day trip to the Orient from New York and on February 20, 1913 the NDL's first four-week West India cruise also from New York.
On October 9, 1913, the Grand Elector under Captain Spangenberg was involved in one of the largest rescue operations in the Atlantic when she was one of the first ships to reach the Volturno , which was burning in the hurricane , and her volunteer boat crews managed to save 105 people. 1914 was big Elector in New York launched .
- Photochromatic recordings from the time shortly after the ship was completed, around 1899/1900
1st class dining room
Ladies salon
Promenade deck (not to scale photo montage)
Stairwell (not to scale photo montage)
War and post-war use
When the USA entered the war, the ship was confiscated and put into service by the US Navy (like most German ships under its own name) as the USS Grosser Kurfürst . The name was changed to Aeolus (ID-3005) while it was being prepared and repaired for use as a troop transport . From November 26, 1917, it brought 24,770 soldiers to France on eight voyages from Hoboken (New Jersey) to Saint-Nazaire or Brest and, after the armistice, 27,098 men back to the USA in seven voyages. For the last voyage, Aeolus left Brest on August 26th and reached New York on September 5th, 1919.
Decommissioned by the US Navy, it was overhauled in Baltimore for $ 3 million by November 20, 1920 , and brought into service by the Munson Line in South America to the La Plata ports. It is unclear whether it also received turbines during the conversion.
In August 1922 she was sold to the Los Angeles Steamship Company and took up service from Los Angeles to Honolulu on September 11, 1922 as City of Los Angeles . The Los Angeles Steamship Company bought two more half-sisters. The former Frederick the Great caught fire on her first voyage as the City of Honolulu and had to be scuttled on October 17, 1922. On June 4, 1927, the former Princess Alice made the first trip as City of Honolulu (II) with cargo and tourists to Hawaii, where she remained in service until May 1930. In January 1931, the City of Los Angeles was used to test a mail-night flight by flying a Ford Trimotor from Glendale out of the ship and throwing a bag of 12,527 letters on deck. In August 1932 the ship was launched in San Diego . At the beginning of 1937, the former Grand Elector was sold to Japan for scrapping. She arrived in Osaka on April 29, 1937.
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping. Volume 2: Expansion on all seas 1890 to 1900. Ernst Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-8225-0038-0 ( writings of the German Maritime Museum 19).
- Arnold Kludas: The ships of the North German Lloyd. Volume 1: 1857 to 1919. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1991, ISBN 3-7822-0524-3 .
- Christine Reinke-Kunze: History of the Reichs-Post-Steamers. Connection between the continents 1886–1914. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1994, ISBN 3-7822-0618-5 .
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Image in the polar region
- ↑ Aeolus in US service
- ^ Munson Line in the English language Wikipedia
- ↑ History of the Los Angeles Steamship and the use of formerly German ships ( Memento of the original from December 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Article on the City of Los Angeles with a picture in the Hawaii service ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Picture of the City of Los Angeles ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
