Helgoland (ship, 1919)

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The Helgoland was originally built as a minesweeper type minesweeper in 1916 by the German Imperial Navy , but was no longer completed as such. After the end of the First World War it was completed as a passenger ship and used in the East Prussian sea service .

Construction and technical data

The ship was still during the First World War in 1918 at the shipyard Joh. C. Tecklenborg in Geestemünde ( Bremerhaven ) and M 139 for the Imperial Navy to put Kiel . It was not completed until the end of the war in November 1918, but since construction was already very advanced, it was allowed to continue building. The launch took place on March 12, 1919. The ship was 59.60 m long (over all, 56.1 m in the waterline ) and 7.30 m wide and had a draft of 2.15 m . It displaced 533 tons. Two 3-cylinder triple expansion steam engines with a total of 1850 HP and two screws enabled a top speed of 16.0 knots . The bunker capacity was 160 tons of coal.

history

As early as June 1919, the still unfinished ship was sold to HAPAG , which had it completed as a passenger ferry and renamed it Helgoland . After its completion, the Helgoland began service in the spring of 1920 as the second ship of the East Prussian Sea Service. Her sister ship Hörnum , which was also laid down in 1918 by Joh. C. Tecklenborg in Geestemünde as a minesweeper M 140 , was the first ship of the sea service to set sail from Swinoujscie on January 30, 1920 .

However, both ships turned out to be unsuitable for the long journey of 15 hours between Swinoujscie and Pillau. They were too small and not very comfortable and could not be used for night trips due to the lack of sleeping cabins. In 1922, both were therefore sold, the Hörnum to Liverpool , the Helgoland to Norway , where she served as Tönsberg I drove.

In 1932 the Colombian Navy bought the ship, renamed it Bogotá and had it converted into a gunboat in France . At the same time, the French Dixmude , the former and also no longer fully built minesweeper M 158 , was bought in France, renamed Cordova and also rebuilt. The armament consisted of a 8.8 cm L / 45 gun, two 7.5 cm guns and two 13.2 mm MG , the crew of 40 men. The steam boilers were modified to be able to burn both coal and wood. The water displacement of the converted ship was 508 t standard and 630 t maximum. The two ships went with French crews to Belém in Brazil , where they arrived on February 24, 1933 and were taken over by the Colombian Navy. They then served as patrol and river gunboats .

The Bogotá sank in 1946 after a collision .

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literature

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ The naval service was East Prussia in January 1920 by the Ministry of Transport of the Weimar Republic set up after the First World War to the exclave become province of East Prussia through the Baltic Sea to link to the heartland of the German Reich.