Javanese Prince
 The Javanese Prince
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The Javanese Prince and her four sister ships formed a series of general cargo ships for the worldwide liner service of the shipping company Furness, Withy & Co. The series was built in 1925/1926 at the Deutsche Werft in Hamburg .
As the first ship in the series, the Asiatic Prince was lost in 1928 when she disappeared without a trace in the Pacific. Three other ships were lost during World War II . The surviving Malayan Prince was scrapped in Inverkeithing from July 1950 .
Two British replicas delivered in 1929 were sunk by German submarines during the war.
history
The five ships were originally ordered in early 1925 by the Prince Line, a subsidiary of the British shipping company Furness, Withy. Despite the change in delivery to the Rio Cape Line, another subsidiary of Furness, Withy, the originally chosen Prince ship names were retained. The German shipyard in Hamburg-Finkenwärder received the construction contract for the series, among other things, because it was the only one to promise delivery of the first ship after ten months of construction. The shipyard had specialized in the construction of motor ships, but delivered the Prince ships with Danish Burmeister & Wain diesel engines instead of the mostly installed AEG engines.
The series consisted of the following ships:
Javanese Prince
The Javanese Prince , the lead ship of the series was on 10 November 1925 by the German shipyard with hull number 82 launched in and asked in January 1926 by the Rio Capeline into service. On the journey from Cardiff to New York, she was driven in convoy OB-332 and sunk by a torpedo on May 20, 1941 by the German submarine U 138 at position 59 ° 46 ' N , 10 ° 45' W. One sailor died, 58 people survived the sinking.
Malayan Prince
The launch of the Malayan Prince with hull number 83 took place on December 12, 1925. She entered service in March 1926 and was the only ship in the series that still existed after the end of World War II . On July 21, 1950, the Malayan Prince arrived in Inverkeithing for demolition .
Asiatic Prince
The Asiatic Prince was launched on January 27, 1926 and commissioned in April 1926 with the hull number 93. The Asiatic Prince left Los Angeles on March 16, 1928 on her way to Yokohama . After a last unclear radio contact on March 24, 1928, she and 48 men went missing. She was the first ship in the series to be lost at sea. Since she had a cargo of gold bars valued at ₤ 260,000 on board, it was early speculated that she might have been hijacked by pirates .
Japanese Prince , most recently Indian Prince
The Japanese Prince was launched on March 5, 1926 with the hull number 94 and put into service in May 1926. It was sold to Butler Wang's Rederi A / S in 1937 and renamed Wang . Since the sale could not be properly processed, the Prince Line took over the ship again in 1938 and used it under the name Indian Prince . On November 11, 1943, the Indian Prince was sunk northeast of Oran in convoy KMS 31 at position 36 ° 13 ' N , 0 ° 5' W by a German aircraft by a torpedo. The convoy lost four ships in the attack of the I / KG 100 ( Do 217 ), I / KG 26 ( He 111 ) and III / KG 26 ( Ju 88 ).
Chinese Prince
The Chinese Prince , the last ship in the series, was launched on March 31, 1926 with hull number 95 and put into service in June 1926. On the journey from Port Said via Cape Town to Liverpool , she was sunk by a torpedo as a solo driver on June 12, 1941 by the German submarine U 552 under the command of Erich Topp at the position 56 ° 12 ′ N , 14 ° 18 ′ W . 45 sailors died, 19 survived the sinking.
British replicas
In 1929, the Blythswood Shipbuilding Co. in Glasgow delivered two replicas under construction numbers 23 and 24 as the Cingalese Prince and Siamese Prince . The ships equipped with engines from Richardson, Westgarth & Co in Hartlepool were, at 14 knots, slightly slower than the ships built in Germany.
On February 17, 1941, the Siamese Prince was lost west of the Faroe Islands when she was torpedoed by U 69 . None of its 57-strong crew could be saved.
The Cingalese Prince had already suffered serious bomb damage off Piraeus in April 1941 during the Greece campaign . On September 20, 1941, she was torpedoed and sunk southwest of Freetown by U 111 . 57 men died on her, 20 men could be saved.
literature
- C. Kielhorn: The first fast motor cargo ships for liner services around the world. Part I, In: Werft * Reederei * Hafen. Vol. 8, Issue 3, February 7, 1927, pp. 58-61.
- E. Gramoli: The first fast motor cargo ships for liner services around the world. Part II, In: Werft * Reederei * Hafen. Vol. 8, Issue 4, February 22, 1927, pp. 78-83.
- E. Gramoli: The first fast motor cargo ships for liner services around the world. Part II, In: Werft * Reederei * Hafen. Vol. 8, Issue 5, March 7, 1927, pp. 102/103.
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- W. Weingart: The practical evaluation of test drive and travel results. In: Werft * Reederei * Hafen. Vol. 8, Issue 6, March 22, 1927, pp. 122/127
Web links
- company history extracted from "Pride of the Princes" by Norman Middlemiss
- Picture of Asiatic Prince there and the Javanese and Malayan P .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sinking of the Javanese Prince on uboat.net with picture
- ↑ Loss of the Asiatic Prince in a hurricane
- ^ The Canberra Times, September 10, 1928
- ^ Rohwer, p. 401
- ↑ Sinking of the Indian Prince
- ^ Sinking of the Chinese Prince
- ↑ Siamese Prince with picture
- ↑ Loss of the Siamese Prince
- ↑ Loss of the Cingalese Prince