Herrsching (ship, 1956)
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The Herrsching was a passenger ship on the Ammersee .
history
The Herrsching was supposed to replace the Andechs , one of four old paddle steamers on the Ammersee, as they wanted to switch to ships with diesel engines in the 1950s. It was built on behalf of the state government at the Deggendorfer shipyard and launched and christened on May 9, 1956. The consecration was carried out by Hugo Lang, abbot of the Andechs monastery . During the subsequent maiden voyage, in which the Bavarian Minister of Economics Otto Bezold and the Minister of Finance Friedrich Zietsch took part, however, the ship swayed seriously. It turned out that the Herrsching had not yet been accepted by the responsible Deutsche Bundesbahn and approved for traffic at that time .
The previous history was processed in an article in the Spiegel from August 1, 1956: The director of the shipyard, together with a ministerial director and an architect, “from whom one”, as the article reads, “had never heard of him also felt connected to shipbuilding ”, undertook a study trip to Lake Como to find out more about modern Italian shipbuilding. In December 1955, the hull of the future passenger ship was transported from Deggendorf in Lower Bavaria to the Ammersee by a special truck and launched in the port in Stegen , where the final assembly was to take place. After the diesel engines were installed and the deck superstructures completed, the ship sank on the night of January 13, 1956.
Four days later it was lifted, craneed ashore and examined. It turned out that the bottom valve had been designed incorrectly. The ship was not examined for further defects, but was put back into the water after this error was rectified. Shortly before Easter 1956 the ship was ready and should now be accepted by the experts of the Deutsche Bundesbahn. However, they found that the ship was not suitable for 240 passengers, as planned, but only for 160. It also drove at 20 km / h much slower than expected - a speed of 24 km / h was planned. In addition, the Herrsching was top- heavy and therefore not fully seaworthy. In addition, the wheelhouse did not allow the master a sufficient overview for berthing maneuvers. The acceptance was therefore rejected and it had to be improved.
Nevertheless, the ship was christened. Bundesbahn-Oberbaurat Stadlinger still refused to accept the ship. The Ministry of Economics and the shipyard blamed each other for the ship's defects; The latter stated that the Ministry had constantly expressed requests for changes and thus prevented a sensible construction of the ship. The ship now received 30 quintals of ballast in the stern and two additional windows in the wheelhouse and further test drives were carried out. After the budget committee of the Bavarian state parliament had dealt with the 260,000 DM expensive ship, the misery, which had become public after the ship was christened, was picked up again by the press. Bezold was even accused by participants of the maiden voyage of having put them in danger by being invited. But he explained that he himself did not know anything about the calculation errors and that neither the Ministry of Economic Affairs nor the shipyard could be held responsible for them: a ship like this was difficult to build. He promised an opinion from a shipbuilding expert who should decide whether the Herrsching should return to the shipyard and be extended or stay on the Ammersee. You could not litigate with the shipyard for the time being, as it is in need of support as a borderland operation. However, one will not pay the full amount of 260,000 DM either.
What was not mentioned in this debate was that the Utting , which was built in 1950 at the same shipyard, was top- heavy and had additional ballast added later. A writer with the initials WL said in June 1956 in Die Zeit : “The 'Herrsching' is at a standstill. The swallows nest in their stern, and due to the fact that it is already "officially certified unseaworthy", the Ammersee population will hardly trust this ship. "
The ship then existed for 50 years. In 2002 it was replaced by a new building of the same name and scrapped in 2006, now under the name Ammersee . The Andechs , which it once replaced, has been preserved in the form of the clubhouse of the Bavarian Sailing Association in Utting.
Web links
- Details and pictures of the ship . accessed on February 26, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Data on the ship
- ↑ The figures, as well as the reason for the decline, are not given consistently in the individual sources. The information from the Spiegel article from August 1, 1956 was adopted here.
- ^ Studies on Lake Como . In: Der Spiegel , August 1, 1956, p. 23 f. ( PDF )
- ^ WL, The Care Ship . In: Die Zeit , June 28, 1956, online at www.zeit.de , accessed on February 24, 2017.
- ↑ How the moss cow became the tiger . In: Augsburger Allgemeine , June 29, 2008, online at www.augsburger-allgemeine.de , accessed on February 24, 2017.