Kaffraria (ship, 1864)
 Wreck in Otterndorf
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The SS Kaffraria was a British cargo ship owned by Bailey & Leetham of Hull , England. It was built in 1864 for the Ryrie & Company shipping company in London by the Laing & Son, Ltd. shipyard, Sunderland, England. Ryrie & Company sold the ship to Bailey & Leetham in 1871.
The name Kaffraria referred to an area belonging to the British Cape Colony between British Kaffraria , the districts of Queenstown and Wodehouse, Basutoland , the colony of Natal and the Indian Ocean.
The ship
Initially the ship was registered at 872 GRT , but this value was increased to 1039 GRT in 1873 after the ship was extended. The ship was 72 meters long, had a width of 8.8 meters and a draft of 4.9 meters. It was a single-screw iron schooner with a two-level deck, five bulkheads, a corrugated deck and a double bottom aft. It had a four-cylinder steam engine that developed 90 hp (67 kilowatts ). The machine was built by the Humber Iron Works in Hull. In 1883 the steam boilers were replaced. The ship's Lloyds Register Code Letters were WFVQ and its registration number was 49917.
The fate of the ship
Under the command of Captain W. Barron, the Kaffraria ran aground on January 7, 1891 in the Elbe near Otterndorf . The ship carried a cargo of general export consumer goods such as kitchen utensils, children's toys, bundles of wool, hand tools and household appliances. This valuable cargo was quickly looted by the coastal residents. A day later, on January 8th, the ship sank. As the wreck posed a threat to shipping over time, it was removed in 1984. The stern part of the ship with the rudder and the screw can be seen today as a memorial on the beach in Otterndorf.
Legend
According to a story from Otterndorf, a stray bullet from a member of the Hadler rifle corps, who was secretly practicing on the dike, hit the propeller of the SS Kaffraria , which was just passing the Otterndorf outer dike. The shot made the ship unable to maneuver and hit the medem sand with full force . The bow was torn open so that the water could penetrate and the ship got into a lopsided position. The upcoming north-west storm then sealed his fate. The cargo was gradually flushed out of the ship, presumably to the outer dike in Otterndorf. However, never a single part of the ship's cargo was found. Quote from a local daily newspaper: "... the valuable cargo was quickly, as if by magic, illegally removed from the residents before the ship sank in the Elbe on January 8th ..." Whether there was a connection between the shipwreck and a generous one that took place three years later Donation with which a shooting range and a 175 meter long shooting range could be built has not been clarified.
Individual evidence
- ^ Register of Ships - K. Transcribed from the Lloyd's Register of British and Foreign Shipping. Archived from the original on January 26, 2004 ; accessed on January 21, 2017 (English).
- ^ 150 years of Hadler Schuetzencorps. (PDF).
Coordinates: 53 ° 49 ′ 33.6 " N , 8 ° 52 ′ 51.6" E