Huascaran (ship, 1938)
 Huascaran
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The Huascaran was a German combi ship that had an eventful fate as a workshop ship, combi ship, emigrant ship , passenger ship , student ship and cruise ship during and after the Second World War with various modifications and under different flags .
history
Hapag combined ship Huascaran
In 1937, the Blohm & Voss shipyard received the construction contract from Hapag for two combination ships with diesel-electric propulsion , the sister ships Huascaran and Osorno , which were to be used in the west coast service to South America . (They were named after the mountain Huascaran in Peru and the volcano Osorno in Chile .) The Huascaran ran on 15 December 1938, the shipyard number 518 in Hamburg from the stack and was delivered on 27 April 1939. The ship was 149.32 m long and 18.2 m wide, had a draft of 6.7 m and was measured at 6951 GRT . The machine location consisted of three MAN - marine diesel engines (two 8-cylinder, 6-cylinder) with a total of 6350 HP to the vessel via a screw speed of 16 knots imparted. The Huascaran had lavishly equipped cabins for a total of 39 passengers , exclusively in first class.
Her maiden voyage began on April 29, 1939 and led to Genoa . On the return trip to Hamburg in May, Hermann Göring , who (at least according to the official language) was returning from an "inspection" by the Condor Legion in Spain , was on board. On June 1, 1939, the Huascaran began its regular service from Hamburg to the South American Pacific coast and back, but only made one round trip before the Second World War began.
Workshop ship Huascaran of the Kriegsmarine
After the beginning of the war, the ship was requisitioned by the German Navy and initially used as a troop and supply transporter. It was then converted into a workshop ship and put into service as workshop ship 1 in 1940 . In early June 1940, in connection with the planned company Juno , it moved from Wilhelmshaven to Trondheim or to the Lofjord east of Trondheim , where the Navy maintained an important naval base until 1945 . The ship then served until the end of the war in Norway , mostly in the Lofjord and in the bow bay , where it mainly carried out maintenance and repair work on the many smaller units of the Kriegsmarine operating there. His presence already paid off on June 9, 1940, when the battleship Scharnhorst came in after a torpedo hit by the British destroyer Acasta with a 12 m × 4 m leak below the eighth triple tower in the Lofjord and the necessary first repairs with the help of the Huascaran on site could be carried out before the Scharnhorst then on 20. – 23. June moved back to Kiel . Just a few days later, on June 20, the battleship Gneisenau was severely damaged by a torpedo hit by the British submarine Clyde and had to be provisionally repaired by the Huascaran in the Lofjord before it could be relocated to the shipyard in Kiel on July 25 . The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was also made emergency repairs by the Huascaran's technicians after it was torpedoed by the British submarine Trident on February 23, 1942 off Trondheim and lost its stern and rudder.
The special leader Kapitänleutnant (Ing.) Jacob Koepke ( Crew VI / 18), workshop manager on the Huascaran from April 19, 1940 until the end of the war , was awarded the Knight's Cross with Swords of the War Merit Order on January 28, 1945 on behalf of the ship and its crew excellent.
Canadian emigrant ship Beaverbrae
At the end of the war, the Huascaran was in the arched bay near Narvik . On May 15, she went in a convoy with four other ships and 15 submarines from Narvik to Trondheim. The convoy was intercepted on May 17th by the 9th Escort Group of the British Royal Navy , and the German ships capitulated in all forms. The submarines and the tanker Carinthia were directed to Scotland, while the four other surface vessels were allowed to continue to Trondheim. There the Huascaran was interned , together with other units, in the Lofjord , a tributary of the Åsenfjord .
In November 1945 it was given as war compensation for the Beaverbrae, which was sunk in 1941, to Canada and the Canadian War Assets Corporation and the Park Steamship Company operated by this . The ship was overhauled from April 1947 in Liverpool and dismantled as a combi ship, then sailed to Montreal in June 1947 , and was assigned to the shipping company North American Transports Inc. At the time it was the largest ship in the Canadian merchant fleet .
On September 2, 1947, the ship was sold to the shipping company CP Ships (Canadian Pacific Steamship Co.) and then rebuilt in Sorel-Tracy near Montreal, with cabin seats for 74 passengers and double-decker dormitory beds for a further 699 people. Outwardly, its appearance remained essentially unchanged, apart from a second mast and the additional lifeboats on the boat deck and the boats that were doubly hung on top of each other aft . After the conversion, the ship, renamed the Beaverbrae on February 7, 1948 , was measured at 9034 GRT. The ship, made available by the Canadian government to the Canadian Christian Council for the Resettlement of Refugees (CCCRR), now served as an emigrant ship for so-called displaced persons between Germany and Canada, with a round trip about every 28 days. A special feature of the Beaverbrae was that it brought passengers from Germany to Canada, but was used in the opposite direction as a pure cargo ship : one of the large holds was only made up as a bedroom for the journey to Canada, and then again as a bunker on the journey to the east Cargo hold used.
On February 8, 1948, the Beaverbrae began her first voyage with cargo from Saint John with cargo to London and then on to Bremerhaven , the starting point of her emigrant voyages until 1951. On all subsequent voyages Antwerp was usually the destination port for the cargo, and from 1951 it was Bremen the port of departure for emigrants. The shipping company worked with the International Refugee Organization and the CCCRR, who collected the displaced persons, selected them and brought them to Bremerhaven. There, the potential immigrants were checked by Canadian officials for health and safety risks and provided with the necessary documents. Between 500 and 700 people were carried on each journey, around a fifth of whom were children. Before arriving in Canada, every immigrant, few of whom spoke English, was given an identification card with their destination. Two passenger trains with baggage carts usually took arrivals to Montreal and Toronto or Winnipeg and destinations further west, with practically each carriage heading to a different area. Each train was provided with three special wagons, a kitchen car and two dining cars, one of which served the train crew as a sleeping car at night.
On July 28, 1954, the emigrant ship Beaverbrae took off the lines for the last time in Bremen. On a total of 52 voyages in six years, she had brought 33,259 passengers from Bremerhaven and Bremen, some also from Rotterdam and Antwerp to Saint John or Quebec City .
Italian passenger ship Aurelia
The ship was sold to the Italian shipping company Compagnia Genovese d'Armamento ( Cogedar ) on November 1, 1954 . It was renamed Aurelia and converted into a passenger ship in Monfalcone near Trieste in order to be used in the profitable emigrant traffic from Italy to Australia and New Zealand . The bow and stern sections were changed, as a result of which the ship was lengthened by about 6.7 meters to 139.9 m Lüa . The superstructures were modernized and lengthened fore and aft, and additional lifeboats were installed. 238 cabins with two, four, six or eight beds or bunks , most of which were built into the former cargo holds, offered space for a total of 1,124 passengers, almost all of them in the tourist class. Only 13 cabins on the Lido Deck had their own toilet and shower or shower that was shared with the neighboring cabin. The entire ship was air-conditioned . After the conversion, the Aurelia was measured at 11,022 GRT. The crew now consisted of 285 people.
On May 13, 1955, the Aurelia set off from Trieste on her first Australian voyage to Sydney . From November 15, 1955, all further voyages to Australia and New Zealand began, four per year, in their new home port of Genoa . The route went via Naples , Messina , Malta , Piraeus , Port Said and Aden to Fremantle , Melbourne and Sydney. In the winter of 1958/59, further modernization modifications were carried out and the machinery was replaced by new MAN diesels; this increased the tonnage to 10,480 GRT. After completion of the work, the Aurelia was relocated to Bremerhaven and other northern European ports. She left Bremerhaven - Suez - Sydney on June 12, 1959 for her first voyage. In the years 1960 to 1970 the ship sailed on various routes, some under charter , for example between Rotterdam and Bremerhaven and Australia / New Zealand and from Southampton to Sydney. On December 9, 1964, she went from Rotterdam on the first of her three circumnavigations of the world via the Panama Canal to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia and back through the Suez Canal . In 1967 she went on a four-day “cruise to nowhere” from Auckland to the volcanic island of White Island in the Bay of Plenty .
An important charter user was the US Council on Student Travel , which chartered the ship for the first time in the summer of 1960 for a round trip from Bremen to New York and back and then chartered it three or four times a year every summer up to and including September 1969, a total of 34 times, between New York and the English Channel ports in England ( Southampton ) and France ( Le Havre ) to bring schoolchildren and students to and from the USA.
With the closure of the Suez Canal in 1967 and the decline in ship passenger traffic to Australia, the end of the Cogedar liner service became inevitable. The Aurelia ran again from Rotterdam to Sydney on September 23, 1968 and left Sydney for the last time on October 29, 1968, both times taking the route around the Cape of Good Hope . After her return she was converted into a cruise ship for only 470 passengers. On February 5, 1969, she began her new service with a trip from Southampton to Madeira , but the planned series of additional trips to Madeira was canceled in May due to a lack of customer interest. In 1969 and 1970 cruises followed from Southampton to the Canary Islands , Morocco , the Mediterranean , Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea . The voyages were unprofitable and the ship was finally sold in 1970.
Greek cruise ship Romanza
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In September 1970 the Greek shipping company Chandris bought the ship. She gave it the new name Romanza , had it completely modernized in Perama near Piraeus and managed it through its Panama- based cruise subsidiary Chandris International Cruises SA The ship, which is now designed for 650 passengers, was only measured at 8,891 GRT after the recent conversion. It started its Mediterranean cruises in 1971 and was very popular and successful. In 1977 the Romanza was registered in Panama, and in 1979, although still in the colors of Chandris, it was transferred to Armadores Romanza SA, Panama. Soon afterwards she suffered her first major accident . On October 17, 1979, she ran aground off the island of Donousa in the Cyclades ( Aegean Sea ) and damaged her hull considerably. Her passengers were picked up by another Chandris ship, The Victoria , and the Romanza was towed to Piraeus for lengthy repairs.
The following decade spent the ship partly under charter to various users, including the Lloyd Brasileiro in 1983 , but also as a semi-trailer for long periods of time . When it wanted to leave Piraeus in 1988 after two years in dry dock, again modernized, this was delayed because mussels had clogged the toilet drainage pipes in the lower decks.
Cypriot cruise ship Romantica
In 1991 the ship, which now had space for 707 passengers, was sold to New Ambassador Cruises in Cyprus and renamed the Romantica . It made excursions from Limassol to Israel and Egypt . The trips were popular and well booked , but competitive pressure from Louis Cruise Lines forced New Ambassador Cruises into bankruptcy in 1995 . The Romantica was assigned to one of the creditors , the Amnesty Shipping Co. from Limassol, and reissued in Piraeus .
In 1997 she was bought by the Cypriot cruise line Paradise Cruises and again overhauled and refreshed. Then, like the Atalantea of the same shipping company, she made two and five-day cruises in the Mediterranean.
In the early morning of October 4, 1997, about 60 nautical miles from Limassol, a fire broke out in the engine room, which quickly seized almost the entire ship. The approximately 490 passengers and 186 men of the crew consisting of Greeks, Filipinos and Egyptians went into the boats or were fetched from the burning ship by two British military helicopters ; there were no deaths. They were picked up (again!) By the rushed Princesa Victoria (formerly The Victoria ), who meanwhile drove for Louis Cruise Lines, and brought to Limassol. The still burning ship had almost 20 degree list . To prevent it from sinking, it was dragged into shallow water outside the port of Limassol by three tugs on October 6 and set aground. There it was finally possible to extinguish the fire on October 8th.
In April 1998 the wreck was towed to Alexandria (Egypt) for scrapping.
literature
- Arnold Kludas: The world's great passenger ships. A documentation. Volume V: 1950–1974 , Stalling Verlag; Oldenburg, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-7979-1844-5 , p. 74.
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 4: Auxiliary Ships I: Workshop Ships, Tenders and Support Ships, Tankers and Suppliers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1986, ISBN 3-7637-4803-2 , p. 30.
Web links
- http://www.ssmaritime.com/aurelia.htm
- http://www.nzmaritime.co.nz/aurelia.htm
- http://www.theshipslist.com/pictures/beaverbrae.shtml
- http://www.cruiseshipodyssey.com/romantica.htm
- http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?145643
- Side cracks Huascaran, Aurelia, Romanza
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Orsono came as a blockade breaker from Japan to Bordeaux in December 1943 , but on December 26th it collided with a wreck in the Gironde and had to be beached to save its cargo.
- ↑ On May 10, 1939, he sent a radio telegram to his wife Emmy from aboard the Huascaran . ( http://www.briefmarkenverein-berliner-baer.de/vereinszeitung/241-3-seefunktelegramme.htm ).
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-06.htm
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2013 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.
- ↑ Heavy cruiser "Prinz Eugen" ( Memento from September 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.deutsches-marinearchiv.de/Archiv/1935-1945/Personen/RKzumKVK/koepke.htm
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/rk.htm
- ↑ The Aviso Grille with the staff of the “Leader of U-Boats, Norway”, the fleet tanker Carinthia , the workshop ship Cameroon and the barge Stella Polaris .
- ↑ U 278 , U 294 , U 295 , U 312 , U 313 , U 318 , U 363 , U 427 , U 481 , U 668 , U 716 , U 968 , U 992 , U 997 and U 1165 .
- ↑ The approximately 10,000 GRT Beaverbrae , built in 1928 for the Canadian Pacific Ships shipping company, was sunk on the morning of March 25, 1941 on the way from Liverpool to Saint John (New Brunswick) by two aerial bombs from a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 . ( http://ww2today.com/25th-march-1941-canadian-pacific-railway-ship-beaverbrae-sunk )
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2012 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.
