Jan Wellem (ship)
 The Jan Wellem
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The Jan Wellem was the first whaling - factory ship under German flag. It originated at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg by conversion of the Kombi ship Württemberg of Hapag . Until the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Jan Wellem carried out three fishing trips in Antarctica .
The ship used by the Kriegsmarine in World War II was badly damaged in Narvik in 1940 . Last used by the Allies in Kiel as a breakwater for blasting , it was scrapped in a shipyard in 1947 .
prehistory
The later Jan Wellem was launched on August 8, 1921 as a cargo and passenger ship Württemberg at the Bremer Vulkan shipyard in Bremen-Vegesack and was put into service by Hapag on October 30, 1921 . She could take 746 passengers and initially drove mainly the route Hamburg - New York . From January 31, 1923, the ship was used in the La Plata service of the shipping company together with the sister ships Bavaria , Baden , Saxony and Hesse . From 1924 onwards, only up to 588 cabin guests of the III. Class transported.
Whaling mother ship
From 1935 to 1936, was Württemberg at the shipyard Blohm & Voss in Hamburg on behalf of in March 1935 in Bremerhaven , founded Society whaling mbH First German to whaling - factory ship rebuilt. The commissioning company was a subsidiary of the Henkel company . The name Jan Wellem refers to the Elector Johann Wilhelm II of Pfalz-Neuburg (1679–1716), whose equestrian statue in Düsseldorf , the company's headquarters of the investor, is affectionately known as "Jan Wellem".
After the reconstruction, the ship was 147 m long (previously 142.8 m), 21.76 m wide (17.8 m), the draft was 9.42 m (9.6 m), and it displaced around 17,500 tons. The Jan Wellem was measured with 11,776 GRT, compared to the 8,895 GRT of Württemberg . The piston steam engine , equipped with an exhaust steam turbine since 1929 , delivered 4500 PSw (previously 4250 PSw) and enabled the significantly enlarged ship to reach a speed of 11.5 knots compared to the previously possible 13 knots.
Meat, bacon and bone cookers, a meat meal system, cooling rooms and tanks for whale oil were installed. At the same time, the ship was increased by installing a slaughter deck above the main deck. The stern was given the square opening typical of whaling ships, the so-called slip , over the inclined plane of which the captured whales were pulled onto deck.
The fishing boats Treff I to Treff VI were built by HC Stülcken Sohn (four boats) and Deschimag Seebeck AG (two boats). They had a size of 330 GRT, were 36.6 m long, reached a speed of 12 knots with their 1260 PSi machines and had a crew of 15 men each. After the experience with these boats, the further developed boats Treff VII and Treff VIII with 350 GRT each were added later, also built at the Stülckenwerft.
The Jan Wellem was put into service on September 6, 1936 and left with her six fishing boats in the Southern Ocean. When the war broke out, she had made a total of three trips to the Southern Ocean under captain and fishing manager Otto Kraul . The first season 1936-37 yielded 920 whales; that made 61,992 barrels of whale oil. The writer Wolfgang Frank experienced one of the Antarctic whaling trips on the Jan Wellem . He processed his experiences in three books. He also wrote the script for the documentary Whalers in Antarctica by Gerhard A. Donner, also made in 1939 .
War effort
In the autumn and winter of 1939 the Jan Wellem was converted by the Navy into a so-called support ship and then sent from Kiel to Murmansk on January 20, 1940 , where it arrived on February 4. From there she finally moved to the so-called Base North in the fjord Sapadnaya Liza west of Murmansk. During the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 ( Operation Weser Exercise ) it served as a supply tanker and ran from Base North to supply the German destroyers to Narvik . On April 28, 1940, the Jan Wellem in Narvik was blown up by British troops during the retreat after the Battle of Narvik , the front two thirds of the ship burned out.
After the uplift in July 1940, the ship could only be reused as a fuel oil depot in Libau in 1943 . It was damaged in 1945 during the evacuation of the Memelland and was located in Kiel after the end of the war.
Final fate
In Kiel, the damaged ship was used as a breakwater when the local submarine bunker "Kilian" was blown up in order to protect the opposite bank from possible damage from a tidal wave triggered by the blast.
The Jan Wellem was sunk by the British occupation troops in Heikendorfer Bay on June 6, 1946 , later lifted and transferred to England in 1947 and broken up there.
See also
literature
- Wolfgang Frank : The resurrected German whaling. Depicted on the development history of the first German whaling company in connection with a travel report about the 2nd "Jan Wellem" expedition . Henkel & Cie., Düsseldorf 1939
- Wolfgang Frank: whale hunters. Whaling in the southern ice . H. Köhler, Hamburg 1938, 180 pp.
- Kurt Eisermann: You hunted the whale in Antarctica. Germany's participation in whaling in the 20th century . In: Men from Morgenstern , Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 799 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven July 2016, p. 2–3 ( digitized version [PDF; 2.4 MB ; accessed on July 27, 2019]).
Web links
- Jan.Wellen.html
- Article about the "Kilian submarine bunker", with a picture of Jan Wellem on geschichtsspuren.de (formerly lostplaces.de)
- Radio system u. History of Jan Wellem
Individual evidence
- ↑ The latter two were only used as freighters.
- ↑ Whalers. On whaling in the southern ice (1938), “Whale in Sight!” (1939) and The resurrected German whaling. Depicted on the development history of the first German whaling company in connection with a travel report about the 2nd "Jan Wellem" expedition (1939).