Crown Princess Cecilie (ship)
 Contemporary postcard with the Crown Princess Cecilie .
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The twin-screw express mail steamer Kronprinzessin Cecilie was a passenger ship of the North German Lloyd , Bremen , which was named after Cecilie von Mecklenburg-Schwerin . As the wife of Wilhelm of Prussia, she was the last Crown Princess of the German Empire from 1905 to 1918 . The steamer was the last of a total of four sister ships that Lloyd had commissioned for the transatlantic express service between Bremerhaven and New York and which became known as the Kaiserklasse . With these four steamers, the Bremen shipping company owned the most homogeneous fleet of fast steamers in the world. The interior of the Crown Princess Cecilie was designed by some of the most important artists and architects of her time.
Shipyard
_Dampfmaschine.jpg&filetimestamp=20100224010529&)
The ship was built in the AG Vulcan Stettin shipyard for Norddeutscher Lloyd and delivered to the shipping company in July 1907.
particularities
The ships of the Kaiser class were characterized by size, elegance, speed and top technical performance. The largest piston steam engine system that has ever worked in a ship was installed in the Crown Princess Cecilie . With four quadruple expansion engines, it developed 46,000 hp (33,832.95 kW) and acted on two four-blade propellers , which could accelerate the high-speed steamer to a maximum of 23.6 knots . This drive engine represents the last and technically most important high point in steam engine technology on board large transatlantic steamers and, together with the system on board the sister ship Kaiser Wilhelm II, was “a type of its own”. Each of the two crankshafts of the Crown Princess Cecilie had six cranks, have been driven by cascaded cylinders. The order of these cylinders was the following for each of the two expansion machines: low pressure cylinder (LP cylinder), medium pressure cylinder II (MD cylinder), MD cylinder I and high pressure cylinder (HP cylinder) one on top of the other, and then again MD cylinder I and HP cylinder one above the other, MD II and LP cylinders next to each other.
Nevertheless, the Crown Princess Cecilie was no longer involved in the record voyages for the “ Blue Ribbon ” from the end of 1907, as the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania began its Atlantic voyages in October of the same year and immediately brought the record back to Great Britain. In contrast to the Germans, the British relied on the future- oriented drive principle of the steam turbine for the Lusitania , which proved to be much more effective.
The Weser-Zeitung of July 30, 1907 reported shortly before commissioning that the ship had “279 first class passenger compartments and 109 second class. The cabins have the character of cozy hotel rooms. ”The two imperial rooms , eight luxury rooms and the twelve state rooms were particularly described . The Kaiser and Luxuszimmer were suites made up of several particularly lavishly furnished rooms such as breakfast rooms, salon and bedrooms with their own bathrooms and toilets.
The long-standing, successful house architect of Lloyd, Johann Georg Poppe , was hired to design the interior of the more than 700 cabins and numerous lounges . The general director of the North German Lloyd, Heinrich Wiegand , and Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted a more functional style for the fourth steamer of the imperial class, which would replace the pompous historicism that had been cultivated up to now . Therefore Poppe was no longer given sole responsibility. An ideas competition was announced for the luxury cabins, for which Wiegand the Bremen architects Eeg & Runge , Wellermann & Frölich , Abbehusen & Blendermann and Runge & Scotland as well as the already well-respected architect Joseph Maria Olbrich , builder of the Vienna Secession building and representative of the Darmstadt artists' colony , Bruno Paul , a pioneer of modern purpose-built architecture, and Richard Riemerschmid , the leading representative of the “art and craft” movement. The Berlin purveyor to the court, Pfaff, designed the Ibach concert grand for Crown Princess Cecilie .
- Interior views of the "Crown Princess Cecilie".
1st class:
The central area of the dining room.
1st class:
In the side area of the dining room.
1st class:
The "Viennese Café".
1st class:
One of the stairwells.
1st class:
smoking room
1st class:
reading and writing room with a portrait of the Crown Princess
.jpg)
.jpg)
history
On August 6, 1907, the ship left Bremerhaven on its maiden voyage to New York . Until the summer of 1914, it operated regularly on the North Atlantic route. Many well-known personalities of the time used the Crown Princess Cecilie , including Karl and Klara May in 1908.
Outbreak of war in 1914
On July 28, 1914, Crown Princess Cecilie left New York on schedule under the command of Captain Charles August Polack for Bremerhaven. There were 1216 passengers on board, as well as gold bars and coins valued at 15 million US dollars. The gold was intended for Parisian and British banks. On the high seas the captain received news of the impending start of the war and the shipping company asked him to turn back immediately. Since the events that follow have been the subject of several legal proceedings, they are well documented. The ship ran into the small port of Bar Harbor in the state of Maine on the night of August 4, 1914 and anchored in the bay there. The reason why he did not go to New York or Boston , Polack said to have intercepted the radio traffic between the British cruiser Essex and Halifax and learned from it that the British were planning to monitor the major American ports. Crown Princess Cecilie's passengers were disembarked and transported by special trains from Mount Desert Ferry station to Boston and New York. A heavily guarded transport train consisting of five express cars, two sleeping cars and a dining car brought the gold back to New York. The Crown Princess Cecilie and her crew were anchored in the bay until the morning of November 6, 1914. As a provisional protection against possible British attacks, Polack had the ends of the chimney tied with a black tape to simulate a ship belonging to the English White Star Line . Only after a US protection guarantee to the German ship's command that the Crown Princess Cecilie would not be attacked by any enemy warship, the steamer was escorted to Boston with the US destroyer Warrington and a coastal defense cutter. There it was temporarily confiscated as a security deposit, since claims for damages were pending because of the failure to transport gold. Basically, the American government had declared that no ship of the German merchant navy would be confiscated and that the Germans could dispose of them at will. Only crews from warring German ships would be interned . German sailors wishing to leave their ships were asked to do so through the immigration authorities, which was standard practice.
Trial 1914/17
On May 7, 1917, suits by the two New York financial services providers Guaranty Trust Co. and National City Bank as well as two passengers from New York and Brussels for breach of contract were dismissed by the Supreme Court . The court found that the master had dutifully safeguarded the safety of all interests and correctly assessed the dangers when he turned the ship in the Atlantic.
Confiscation in 1917
Since the United States had meanwhile entered the World War on April 6, 1917, on the side of the Allies, the United States Shipping Board ordered that Crown Princess Cecilie be confiscated immediately after the end of the trial . However, at the beginning of February 1917, it had already been determined that the crew had destroyed the machinery to make it difficult for the Americans to take over. According to Captain Polack, he had received the sabotage order from an official of the German embassy in Washington and had it carried out on the night of January 31, 1917. According to the findings of a US marine engineer, the Germans had cut a large piece of steel out of each of the cylinders of the quadruple expansion machines and also knocked off the fastenings of the cylinder heads. Since the components manufactured in Germany could not be reproduced in the USA, the installation of a new machine system was necessary.
After completion of the conversion and equipment work, the ship was taken into active service as a troop transport on July 28, 1917 under the new name USS Mount Vernon . " Mount Vernon " was the name of the former country residence of the first President of the USA, George Washington . On October 31, 1917, the steamer left New York for its first voyage across the Atlantic in service with the US Navy. On a total of nine voyages, the ship brought US soldiers to the theaters of war in Europe on the Hoboken - Brest route .
Submarine attack 1918
On September 4, 1918, the Mount Vernon sailed from Brest to New York with 150 wounded soldiers on board. During the renovation, the hospital was set up in the rooms of the Viennese café on the sun deck. On the morning of September 5, 1918, the ship was about 370 kilometers from the French coast when crew members sighted the periscope of a submarine about 460 meters ahead on starboard and opened fire with a bow cannon. Despite an evasive maneuver immediately initiated, the Mount Vernon was hit amidships by a torpedo from the German submarine U 82 and suffered severe damage. 36 sailors were killed in the attack and 13 were wounded. The water ingress from the huge leak flooded the entire middle section and some boilers failed. Only the closed bulkheads prevented the ship from sinking. The steamer ran back to Brest with a list of 15 degrees and a speed reduced to six knots and was made seaworthy again in the dry dock there. The final repair took place in Boston.
post war period
In spring 1919, symbolically on February 22nd, George Washington's birthday, the ship began its first voyage to France to repatriate American soldiers from the European theater of war back home.
After the return transports were completed, the former Crown Princess Cecilie stayed in reserve together with her sister ship, the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II, and was then decommissioned. Both ships should, however, be kept operational. Various attempts to reactivate the still attractive ocean liner for the short-lived United States Mail Line failed. Moored next to each other, both steamers rusted away at their berth in Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore until 1939 . With the outbreak of World War II, the United States offered the British the ships as troop transports, but they refused the offer. As a result, both express steamers were scrapped in Baltimore at the end of 1940, where Crown Prince Wilhelm had already been scrapped in 1924 .
Captains
Crown Princess Cecilie
| No. | Surname | Life dates | On-board service | comment |
| 1 | Dietrich Högemann | († May 17, 1917) | 1907 to May 1913 | Högemann made his first voyage in 1869 on the Union steamer from Bremen to New York. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War , he was a member of the crew of a sailor when the French put the ship in the canal and captured the crew. In 1879 he joined Norddeutscher Lloyd as fourth officer and in 1901 became captain of the mail steamer Prussia . Then he drove on the old Kaiser Wilhelm II , the Kaiser Wilhelm the Great , the new Kaiser Wilhelm II and finally the Crown Princess Cecilie . On December 9, 1905, he celebrated his 200th ocean crossing with American and German friends in Hoboken on board his ship, the Kaiser Wilhelm II. , Which he had commanded since its commissioning in 1903. Högemann retired in 1913 as a commodore of the NDL fleet. He received several German and foreign awards, including the Order of the Red Eagle and the Order of the Crown of Italy . |
| 2 | Charles August Polack | (Born January 29, 1860 in Grimma ; † November 17, 1934 in Bremerhaven ) | May 1913 to May 7, 1917 | Polack received his captain's license in 1900 and led the Aachen , Werra , King Albert , Princess Irene , Kaiser Wilhelm the Great and George Washington before he was given command of the Crown Princess Cecilie in 1913 . When the Crown Princess Cecilie arrived in Hoboken on March 19, 1914, Polack had completed his 100th voyage as captain and was honored both in Hoboken and in Bremen. |
USS Mount Vernon
| No. | Surname | Life dates | On-board service | comment |
| 1 | Douglas E. Dismukes, USN | from March 1918 to 1919 |
The Schnelldampfer class (Kaiserklasse) of the North German Lloyd before 1914
All four steamers in this class had four chimneys and correspondingly powerful engines with outputs of around 30,000 hp.
- Kaiser Wilhelm the Great (1897 to 1914; 22.35 kn maximum speed, blue ribbon winner)
- Crown Prince Wilhelm (1901 to 1923; sister ship of the Kaiser Wilhelm the Great; 23.51 kn maximum speed, blue ribbon winner)
- Kaiser Wilhelm II. (1902 to 1940; 23.58 kn maximum speed, blue ribbon winner)
- Crown Princess Cecilie (1907 to 1940; 23.6 kn maximum speed)
literature
- Eberhard Mertens (Ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975, ISBN 3-487-08110-5 .
- Tony Gibson: The world of ships. From the beginning to the present. Over 1500 civil and military ship types. Basserman Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8094-2186-3 .
- Matthias Trennheuser: The interior design of German passenger ships from 1880 to 1940. Hauschild-Verlag, Bremen 2010, ISBN 9783897573055
Web links
_Dampfmaschine.jpg&filetimestamp=20100224010529){kind=link}
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mertens, Eberhard (Ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . P. 15
- ^ Stefan Zima: crank drives , 2nd edition. Vieweg + Teubner publisher. Stuttgart 1999. ISBN 3-528-13115-2 . Pp. 87-88
- ↑ Mertens, Eberhard (Ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . Pp. 14-15
- ↑ Eberhard Mertens (ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . P. 14
- ^ Karl Schaefer: The North German Lloyd and modern spatial art , in: Decorative Art 11 (1908), 76-90 [1]
- ↑ ibach.de
- ↑ Dieter Sudhoff , Hans-Dieter Steinmetz: Karl-May-Chronik IV (1906-1909) , Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg / Radebeul 2005. ISBN 3-7802-0174-7 . P. 451.
- ↑ Eberhard Mertens (ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . P. 65
- ↑ The New York Times, April 2, 1915, p. 4
- ↑ Eberhard Mertens (ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . P. 75
- ^ Arnold Kludas : The history of the German passenger shipping. Destruction and rebirth 1914 to 1930. Ernst Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1989. ISBN 3-8225-0047-X . P. 36
- ↑ Mertens, Eberhard (Ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . P. 78 (newspaper clippings)
- ^ A b The New York Times, December 2, 1914, p. 4
- ↑ a b The New York Times, May 7, 19174, p. 5
- ^ The New York Times, February 18, 1917, p. 1
- ^ The New York Times, February 7, 1917, p. 1
- ↑ a b Mertens, Eberhard (ed.): The Lloyd Schnelldampfer. Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Crown Princess Cecilie. Olms Presse, Hildesheim 1975. ISBN 3-487-08110-5 . P. 79
- ^ The New York Times, May 4, 1924, p. 10
- ^ The New York Times, May 19, 1917, p. 13
- ↑ a b The New York Times, May 7, 1913, p. 6
- ↑ The New York Times, December 10, 1905, p. 7
- ↑ The New York Times, December 17, 1934, p. 19.
- ↑ Hartmut Bickelmann]]: Bremerhaven personalities from four centuries . A biographical lexicon . Bremerhaven City Archives, 2003, ISBN 3-923851-25-1 , p. 248.
- ^ Reinhold Thiel: The history of North German Lloyd 1857-1970 , Volume 3, Verlag HM Hauschild, 2004, ISBN 3-89757-166-8 , p. 128
- ^ The New York Times, March 15, 1914, p. 4