Crefeld (ship, 1922)
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The second Crefeld of Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) was a combined ship for the service to the South American east coast. It was one of the first two new passenger ships built by the NDL after the First World War.
Their passenger facilities, tailored to emigrants, were reduced in size after a short period of service. In 1934 it was converted into a pure cargo ship. Since the outbreak of war in Massawa resting Crefeld was sunk by its own crew because of the threat of occupation by British forces on April 4 1,941th
history
The Bremer Vulkan -Werft and the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (FSG) built shortly after the war very similar large viermastige freighter with passenger facility for Hapag and Seereederei of Hugo Stinnes , which at Hapag as countries class were called. Norddeutsche Lloyd ordered a similar ship from each of the two shipyards for emigrant traffic to South America, which was the first new passenger ship to be built for the NDL in 1922. Upon delivery, the NDL had already resumed its South America service with a trip on the old Reichspost steamer Seydlitz and the use of the pre-war ship Gotha .
The Cologne built at Bremer Vulkan under construction number 591 was delivered on March 14, 1922 and then made the first trip of a new building to Argentina . The Crefeld , built under construction number 360, was launched on December 23, 1921 in Flensburg, after the Stinnes ships Tirpitz and Havenstein , which were completed as cargo ships . The Crefeld was delivered to the NDL on June 25, 1922 in front of the similar Hapag ships Preussen and Oldenburg , which only received a small passenger facility. She was the second ship of the NDL that was named after the Rhenish city . The first Crefeld was a 3973 GRT steamer built in 1895 for the Brazil service of the NDL from the Stettiner Vulkan , which was ceded to Spain in 1918.
In the South America service
It was not until August 10, 1922 that the Crefeld started on its maiden voyage to the Río de la Plata . It had a load capacity of 11,150 dwt, was 150.87 m long and 18.55 m wide. Driven by a triple expansion steam engine of 4400 hp, the ship ran at 12.5 knots and required a crew of 192. For the accommodation of normal passengers, emigrants and Spanish seasonal workers, it had cabins for 282 passengers of the second class, compartments for 376 passengers of the III. Class and 380 beds in the living deck. On the maiden voyage, 726 passengers of different nationalities boarded in Bremen. 30 only wanted to go to the Spanish ports of La Coruña and Vigo , 217 had booked to Rio de Janeiro , four to Montevideo and 475 to the destination port of Buenos Aires . Although the NDL already put a three-class passenger ship into service in autumn 1922 with the new Sierra Nevada (8753 GRT), which then in 1923 the combined ships Weser and Werra (9450 BRT) and from 1923 also the 11400 GRT passenger ships of the new Sierra class followed, the simple emigration ships Köln and Crefeld were not withdrawn from this route until 1926.
Other liner services
Since 1925, the NDL tried to build up a passenger service to Australia again and from 1926 deployed the two ships alongside the older Gotha . At the end of May 1925, the Gotha was the first German passenger ship to arrive in Australia for the first time after the World War . The admission of emigrants was not regulated until the autumn of 1926, when Crefeld , which was now also used on the new line from Bremerhaven on August 10, brought the first 50 German emigrants to Australia among its 69 passengers. On two subsequent trips in 1927 it had 153 and 136 passengers, but only nine of them were in the cabin class. Between the two voyages, the Crefeld was used again to South America.
The NDL gave up the attempts to operate a passenger line to Australia again and now tried to build a line to Canada with the Cologne and Crefeld . The passenger facilities of the two ships have been reduced considerably.
After returning from her last trip to Australia, the Crefeld was converted , which then only has room for 35 passengers 2nd class and 212 III. Class bot. On her first trip to Montreal on June 4, 1928, she had only 65 passengers III. Class from ten European nations on board, with the Hungarians forming the largest group in front of the fifteen Imperial Germans. The Crefeld remained in service on this route until 1930 . In the summer of 1930 it also ran via Halifax (Nova Scotia) and Havana to Galveston (Texas) .
The excessive number of older passenger ships at the NDL led to the conversion of the first two post-war passenger ships, Cologne and Crefeld, to pure cargo ships in 1934 , which were to be used primarily on the route to East Asia. The Reiherstieg shipyard in Hamburg, now owned by Deutsche Werft, carried out the reconstruction of the Crefeld .
Fate in war
After the outbreak of war in 1939, the freighter Crefeld called the Italian Massaua in Eritrea on the Red Sea , where it was laid up. In addition to the ships of other German shipping companies, the NDL express freighters Oder and Coburg were also located there .
On February 17, 1941, the motor ship Coburg tried to break through as a supply ship to the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis operating in the Indian Ocean . She was arrested on March 4 in the Indian Ocean southeast of the Seychelles with the prize tanker Ketty Brövig (7031 BRT) before a meeting with the Atlantis by the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra and both ships sank themselves after the cruiser opened fire from a great distance . On February 26th, the Wartenfels of the DDG Hansa managed to leave Massaua unnoticed and to escape to Diego Suarez in Vichy-controlled Madagascar . On March 24th the Oder tried to escape from Massaua, but was discovered in the Red Sea by the sloop HMS Shoreham and sank itself on it. On March 30th, the freighter Bertram Rickmers tried to escape from Massaua as the last German ship . He evaded capture by the British destroyer HMS Kandahar by scuttling himself .
When the British occupation of the port threatened, the crew of the Crefeld sank their ship in the port on April 4, 1941 at 15 ° 36 '39 " N , 39 ° 28' 28" E . In Massaua the German freighters Oliva (7886 BRT) and Gera (5155 BRT) of Hapag as well as the Lichtenfels (7566 BRT), Frauenfels (7487 BRT) and Liebenfels (6318 BRT) of the DDG Hansa sank , some of which are still in Were set on fire. All were later lifted to make the port usable. Frauenfels , Liebenfels and Gera were brought back to life as Empire Niger , Empire Nile and Empire Indus .
Fate of the sister ship Cologne
| Launched in service |
Surname | tonnage | Construction no. | fate |
| November 12, 1921 March 14, 1922 |
Cologne | 9265 BRT 11150 dw |
Bremen volcano 591 |
Maiden voyage to La Plata, 1926 Australia service in 1928 reduced passenger capacity, Canada Service, 1934 conversion to a pure cargo ship (7881 GRT) on the shipyard, June 26, 1940, a drive from Luleå to Hamburg south in the Gulf of Bothnia Gefle stranded and broken |
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Kludas: NDL-Seeschiffe 1920–1979. P. 15.
- ↑ Rothe: p. 61.
- ↑ Bremen passenger lists in the Bremen State Archives
- ^ Kludas: The history of the German passenger shipping. Volume IV, 1989, p. 137 ff.
- ↑ "Business as Usual." FIRST GERMAN PASSENGER STEAMER recorder, June 13, 1925.
- ↑ MIGRATION FIFTY GERMANS ARRIVE. First since was The Advertiser. October 20, 1926.
- ^ Sinking of the Coburg
- ↑ sinking of the Oder
- ↑ sinking of the Bertram Rickmers
- ↑ 1–10 . April 1940 Red Sea
- ↑ Loss of Cologne
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping Vol. IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Maritime Museum, Volume 21.
- Arnold Kludas: The ships of the North German Lloyd 1920 to 1970 . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 1992, ISBN 3-7822-0534-0 .
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . Steiger Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-921564-97-2 .
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919–1939. Volume 1: Chronicle and evaluation of the events in shipping and shipbuilding. Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1974, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .