John Barnett Humphreys

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John Barnett Humphreys Jr. (* 1787 in London ; † 10 August 1858 in Rio de Janeiro ), son of a Scottish merchant living in Hamburg , was an engineer and shipbuilder and a pioneer of steam navigation in Germany and Brazil .

plant

Prussia

Picture of the steamship Princess Charlotte of Prussia on the Spree near Bellevue Palace (Friedrich August Calau, 1818)
The "Princess Charlotte" on a 1975 stamp

On October 12, 1815, he received a patent or privilege from the royal Prussian government to use the "peculiar method of using steam engines to drive ship's vessels" in Prussia. The patent was initially limited to ten years, but was later extended until the end of 1831. Humphreys built his shipyard or “steam boat construction site” on the west bank of the Havel in Pichelsdorf near Spandau . The property was presumably located below today's Frey Bridge . There he and his mechanic Benjamin Biram laid their first ship on June 21, 1816 . On September 14, 1816, the Princess Charlotte of Prussia was launched , the first steamship to be built in Germany . In order to be able to finish the work quickly, Humphreys was forced to close his shipyard to the public for two weeks towards the end of the construction period, so great was the interest of the people of Berlin and Spandau in his company. The Princess Charlotte was a mid-wheel steamer about 40 m long and 5.80 m wide. It was driven by a paddle wheel with 8 blades and a cross-section of 1.22 meters in the middle . This construction, which was chosen in contrast to the otherwise usual side paddle steamers, was intended to ensure safe passage under narrow bridges, but proved to be ineffective as a form of propulsion. As with all five paddle steamers built by Humphreys on the Havel from 1816 to 1819, the drive consisted of a low-pressure steam engine supplied by Boulton & Watt from England ; it made 14 hp. The chimney was 9 m high.

In May, was founded in 1817 father and son Humpreys the "Royal Prussian patented Steamship Company of Berlin" , which is also an office opened in Hamburg, and in June 1817, the company began regular passenger and mail service with the Princess Charlotte on Havel and Spree between Berlin ( Tiergarten ), Charlottenburg , Spandau and Potsdam .

On March 15, 1817 the side paddle steamer Kurier (14 HP) was launched in Pichelsdorf, and in November 1817 the city ​​of Magdeburg followed (20 HP, as well as a 16 m high mast for setting square sails ). With these two ships, the two Humphreys set up a liner service for passenger and freight traffic between Berlin and Hamburg.

In 1818 Humphreys relocated his shipyard from Pichelsdorf to today's Schiffbauergasse in Potsdam . The paddle steamer Friedrich Wilhelm III ran there on August 3, 1818 . (20 hp) from the stack. One year later, on October 16, 1819, followed the Fürst Blücher (two machines with 20 hp each), with a length of 61 m and a width of 7.60 m, the largest steamship in Germany at the time. Both ships were also used by the Royal Prussian Patented Steamship Company in the liner service between Berlin and Hamburg.

Neither the shipyard nor the shipping companies brought long-term economic success. Princess Charlotte's Berlin passenger and postal service was discontinued in October 1818. The ship was sold and scrapped in 1824. Humphreys sold the shipyard in Potsdam to the Prussian state in 1819 under pressure; it was closed in 1821. The liner service between Berlin and Hamburg ended in 1821/22 after a patent dispute with the Krone. The Royal Prussian Patented Steamship Company went bankrupt in 1824 . Their ships were auctioned in 1824/25.

England

Humphreys, who had been made an honorary citizen of Potsdam in 1819 , left Prussia and moved to Southampton in England. There he worked as an engineer with the shipbuilders in the suburb of Northam, where he developed a number of improvements in steamship building technology, many of which have been patented .

Brazil

As early as 1833, Humphreys received an order from a British company to develop a steamship project on the Rio Doce so that the gold mined in Minas Gerais could be transported more easily. For two years he researched the course of the river from its source to the mouth and then presented a plan for the use of steamboats specially built for the local conditions. The shareholders agreed to the plan and Humphreys returned to Southampton in 1835, where he devoted himself to the design and construction of the Rio Doce steamer . The ship was completed in 1840, with many innovations, and arrived in Brazil in the spring of 1841 with Humphreys on board. Shipping on the river then turned out to be less than successful and was abandoned in 1843.

Humphreys stayed in Brazil and lived in Rio de Janeiro from 1844. There he and the entrepreneur Irineu Evangelista de Sousa , who later became Visconde de Mauá, a pioneer of the Brazilian shipbuilding industry, founded the "Brazilian Steamship Company" in 1844. He built ships and steam engines at a shipyard on the Ilha do Governador and was consulted on numerous projects. In November 1857 he transferred the rights to use a system he had developed that enabled locomotives to travel up steep inclines, the Visconde de Mauá.

Humphreys died on August 10, 1858 in Rio de Janeiro, the then capital of Brazil.

souvenir

In Potsdam today the Schiffbauergasse and a restaurant ship named after Humphreys remind of him.

literature

  • Werner Jaeger: The middle wheel steamship Princess Charlotte von Preussen 1816, writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 7, Verlag Gerhard Stalling AG, Oldenburg / Hamburg, 1977, ISBN 3-7979-1883-6 .
  • Harry Methling: medium-wheel steamer "Princess Charlotte of Prussia", the first steamship built in Germany . In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History , Volume 12, 1961, pp. 72–75.
  • Karola Paepke u. a .: Sailors and steamers on the Havel and Spree . In: Hans-Joachim Rook (ed.): Streiflicher on the history of shipping in Potsdam . Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, 1993, ISBN 3-89488-032-5 .
  • Kurt Groggert: Passenger shipping on the Havel and Spree ( Berlin contributions to the history of technology and industrial culture , volume 10). Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-7759-0153-1 .
  • Immo Sievers: Prussians spied in England . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 17, 1996.
  • Alex W. Hinrichsen: The first 35 years of passenger steam shipping . In: Reiseleben, Issue 12, 1986.
  • Tristan Micke: The first steam ships in Prussia . (PDF; 1.3 MB) In: Herbst-Blatt Treptow-Köpenick , Volume 11, No. 66, March / April 2007, p. 22.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Westphalian Official Gazette of November 14, 1815 No. 91 p. 662. Online at zeitpunkte.nrw (accessed on April 3, 2020)
  2. ↑ The first steamship designed in Germany by a German shipbuilder was the paddle steamer Die Weser , which was launched in Vegesack on December 30, 1816 .
  3. ↑ The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal , Vol. 28, 1840, p. 203. The London Journal of Arts and Sciences, and Repertory of Patent Inventions, Vol, 15, London, 1840, p. 257. The Repertory of Public Inventions, New Series, Vol. 12, London, 1839, p. 307.
  4. ↑ The Artisan , Vol. 11 1853.
  5. ↑ Almanak Lämmert for 1852
  6. ↑ Decreto nº 2.015, de 7 de Novembro de 1857
  7. ↑ British Consulate General Rio de Janeiro, Reg. 617/1858.
personal data
SURNAME Humphreys, John Barnett
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Humphreys, John Barnett Jr .; Humphreys, John B. Jr .; Humphreys, John B .; Humphreys, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Shipbuilders, shipowners
DATE OF BIRTH 1787
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH 19th century