Heimdal (ship, 1892)
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|---|---|
 The Heimdal in Horten in 1914 |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Gunboat |
| Shipyard | |
| Launch | 1892 |
| delivery | 1892 |
| Namesake | Heimdall , from Norse mythology |
| Commissioning | 1892 |
| Decommissioning | 1946 |
| Whereabouts | Sold in 1946, sunk in 1947 |
| Technical specifications | |
| In 1946 it was converted into a cargo ship Rovena | |
| displacement |
578 ts |
| length |
55.0 m |
| width |
8.2 m |
| Draft |
4.5 m |
| crew |
62-65 men |
| drive |
Triple expansion machine , 650 iPS , 1 propeller |
| speed |
12 kn |
| Armament |
From 1892: 4 × 65 mm guns, |
The Heimdal was a Norwegian warship that served in various functions in its long career from 1892 to 1946, including a long time as a royal yacht . She was the first Norwegian naval ship to carry the so-called “pure flag” of the now independent Kingdom of Norway, designed by Frederik Meltzer (May 29, 1905). The ship was sold in 1946 and converted into a cargo ship; it sank on August 18, 1947 about 80 nm east of Langanes ( Iceland ).
Construction and technical data
The ship was built in 1892 with hull number 137 at Akers mekaniske Verksted in Christiania (Oslo). It was named after the god Heimdall of Norse mythology . At 55 m long, 8.2 m wide and 4.5 m draft , the ship displaced 578 ts . A triple expansion machine with 650 iPS enabled a top speed of 12 knots via a propeller . The armament consisted of four 65-mm guns and two 37-mm guns, from 1921 four 76-mm guns and two 37-mm guns. The crew numbered 62-65 men.
career
The Heimdal , armed as a gunboat , was designed as a surveillance and rescue ship to patrol the sea areas around northern Norway. Over the decades, however, she served in a variety of roles: 1896–1905, 1905–1908 and then occasionally as a royal yacht, briefly in 1905 as a flagship , 1892–1940 as a fisheries protection and rescue ship, 1940–1943 as a staff ship and tender ( 1940–1943), 1945–1946 as a barge and finally 1946–1947 as a cargo ship. Starting with her first cruise on September 30, 1892, and her first Arctic patrol in April and May 1893, she spent most of her service time off the coasts of Finnmark , the North Sea and the Barents Sea .
Royal yacht
The Heimdal was best known as a royal yacht. Her first important voyage in this capacity took place from July 6 to August 4, 1896, when King Oskar II of Sweden and Norway took her on a cruise along the Norwegian coast. However, the brilliant highlights were November 25, 1905 and June 19, 1906:
- On November 25, 1905, the Danish Prince Carl , who sailed from Copenhagen on the Danish state yacht Dannebrog on November 23, boarded the Heimdal with his wife Maud and their son Alexander in Oscarsborg on the Drøbak Narrows in the Oslofjord . He had been elected King of Norway on November 18 after the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian personal union and had already adopted the traditional Norwegian name Haakon. On board he was greeted by Prime Minister Christian Michelsen and his cabinet , and then the Heimdal took the royal family to the Vippentangen pier in Christiania .
- For the coronation of the royal couple on June 22, 1906 in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim , Heimdal brought the couple to Trondheim on June 19.
Although the ship returned to its original role as a guard and rescue ship in northern Norwegian waters by 1908 at the latest, it was subsequently used repeatedly by the royal family. a. during the fourth international sailing regatta “Europe Week 1914” organized by the International Yacht Racing Union in Horten ( 14-21 July 1914) and when King Haakon visited the western Norwegian town of Molde after its catastrophic fire on January 21, 1916.
Fisheries protection
When Norway regulated fishing in its territorial waters in 1908 and subjected it to fisheries supervision, the Heimdal set sail on March 12, 1908 for the first voyage of a Norwegian fisheries protection vessel . Three years later she was also the first Norwegian fisheries protection ship to be arrested by a foreign ship for illegal fishing: on March 11, 1911, she stopped the British trawler Lord Roberts off the coast of Finnmark and escorted him to Vardø , where a court caught the British confiscated and fined.
Arctic ventures
The Heimdal provided the honor guard and fired their cannons at the Salut , when Norway based on the Spitsbergen Treaty on 14 August 1925, the archipelago of Svalbard took possession.
As early as May 1925 and again in May 1926, the ship was involved in a supporting role in Roald Amundsen's two flight expeditions to the North Pole :
- the Amundsen / Ellsworth expedition in May / June 1925, two flying boats of the type Dornier Wal ;
- the Amundsen / Ellsworth / Nobile expedition in May 1926 with the airship Norge .
Second World War
From October 1939 the Heimdal lay in Tromsø , where she served as a guard ship and tender for the three Heinkel He 115 -A seaplane bombers stationed at the Skattøra water airport.
When the German invasion of Norway began on April 9, 1940, the ship was assigned to the fishery protection service in the 3rd sea defense section and stationed in Narvik , but was at sea during the German occupation of Narvik and thus escaped sinking or confiscation. During the following two-month fighting in the Narvik area , it was stationed in Karlsøy near Tromsø and carried out security and escort tasks from there. Among other things, it escorted troop transports ( Prins Olav , Ariadne , Dronning Maud and Kong Haakon ) from the Tromsø area to the Narvik front on April 17 . On May 29th, the Heimdal in Grøtsund north of Tromsø escaped an attack by a German bomber .
When King Haakon VII was evacuated with the Crown Prince and most of the cabinet, avoiding the German invaders to the north, on April 29, 1940 on the British cruiser Glasgow from Molde to the Rystraumen near Tromsø, he rose there with his entourage the Heimdal , which brought him to Tromsø. From there he and his government were evacuated to England on June 7, 1940 on board the heavy cruiser Devonshire . On the same day all remaining ships and planes of the Norwegian armed forces received orders to go to Great Britain, and this was partly successful. a. the Heimdal , who left Norway in the early morning hours of June 8th with the watchboat Thorodd and arrived in Lerwick in the Shetland Islands on June 14th . After two days in the port there, the two ships moved to Rosyth in Scotland , where they arrived on the evening of June 17th.
Due to her old age and her slow speed, the Heimdal was only used as headquarters, barracks and tender by the Norwegian Navy in Rosyth and Port Edgar from June 30, 1940. It was placed and on October 29, 1943 decommissioned in Burntisland on the Firth of Forth launched .
post war period
After the war in Europe, Heimdal was reactivated and moved back to Norway in May 1945. There she served as a residential ship until 1946.
Then it was decommissioned and sold, converted into a cargo ship and renamed Rovena . On August 18, 1947, she sank with a load of 2,800 barrels of herrings about 80 nautical miles east of the Icelandic peninsula Langanes .
Footnotes
- ↑ When the Norwegian side feared a Swedish sea attack when the personal union with Sweden was dissolved.
- ↑ Tor Berre: "Kroningsfesten i 1906". Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, June 14, 2006 (Norwegian). Retrieved January 4, 2017
- ↑ Hansard, June 20, 1911: Trawlers Arrested (Compensation Claims)
- ^ "NORWAY: Formal Annexation". In Time , August 24, 1925.
- ↑ http://niehorster.org/022_norway/navy_03.htm
literature
- Frank Abelsen: Norwegian naval ships 1939-1945. Sem & Stenersen, Oslo, 1986, ISBN 82-7046-050-8 (English & Norwegian)
