Caiman (ship)
Caiman in St. Goar
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The Kaiman diving shaft was built in 1892 by the Hanner & Comp machine factory in Duisburg for the Royal Rheinstrom building authority . When it was commissioned, it was baptized in the name of Kaiser Wilhelm . A sister ship was the diving shaft Krokodil, built in 1890 . The ship was subject to the WSA Bingen .
Data
The ship is 44.50 m long, 9.33 m wide and has a draft of 1.50 m. Amidships is the lifting frame for the diving bell , which can be lowered to a depth of eight meters. The total height is 14.30 meters above the water level. Since the ship does not have its own drive, it has to be towed to the respective site. Two anchors are used for anchoring at the front, side and aft, the entire chain length is two kilometers. To drive the winches, the diving bell and the compressors , a steam engine was installed at the beginning, which was replaced by diesel engines in 1960. The diving bell has a footprint of four by seven meters.
tasks
The diving shaft was used on the Rhine from Cologne to Karlsruhe for work on the river bed. This included the removal of obstacles, the recovery of lost anchors, the fastening of buoy anchors and their regular inspection. Furthermore, soil samples were taken for the Federal Institute for Hydrology.
Whereabouts
After more than 100 years, the Kaiman was decommissioned in 2006 and should be scrapped. The monument society Bingen am Rhein has campaigned for its preservation as a technical monument. From 2010 the ship was initially in the port of Wiesbaden-Schierstein before it was brought to today's berth, the Meiderich shipyard in Duisburg.