Lotharingia (ship, 1923)

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The Lotharingia was a French passenger ferry that was used in 1939/40 by the French Navy as the mine ship Alexis de Tocqueville , from 1941 by the German Navy as an anti- aircraft ship Pelikan and sunk in August 1944 by a bomb hit .

Construction and technical data

Consisting of steel -built ship was on March 8, 1923 on the Glen Yard of the shipyard of William Hamilton & Co. in Port Glasgow on the Clyde in Scotland with the hull number 385 and the name of Lotharingia from the stack and was established in April 1923, the Cie. Nord Atlantique delivered in Cherbourg . It was 60.9 m ( waterline ) and 61.19 m ( between the perpendiculars ) long and 11.61 m wide, had a draft of 4.70 m and was measured with 1256 GRT and 598 NRT . Two triple expansion steam engines , manufactured by David Rowan & Co. in Glasgow , developed 170 nhp or about 1200 PSi and enabled a speed of 12 knots with two screws .

history

The Cie. North Atlantique was a company registered in France Subsidiaries of the British Cunard Line , and stationed in Cherbourg Lotharingia served to passengers and their luggage between the terminal building at Kai and large because of their draft further out on the roads lying, traveling in the North Atlantic service passenger ships to and fro to transport. In 1934 the ship came to the Soc. Cherbourgeoise de Remorquage et Sauvetage, which had taken over the passenger shuttle service in Cherbourg, and was renamed Alexis de Tocqueville .

On August 27, 1939, a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War , the ship was commandeered by the French Navy , equipped as a mine ship and put into service in Brest under the designation Alexis de Tocqueville (X26) .

One day before German troops marched into Brest on June 19, 1940, the Alexis de Tocqueville was sunk by her crew on June 18 in the port . The Navy left the ship lift and repair, it paid a total of seven anti-aircraft guns of the caliber of 37 mm and 20 mm, and placed it with the name Pelican and the number FB 20 as Flakschiff in Hafenschutzflottille Brest in service. In December 1943, the flotilla was merged with the Lorient harbor protection flotilla to form the Bretagne harbor protection flotilla.

As on August 25, 1944, the Battle of Brest began lying Pelican south of Brest between the peninsula Ile Longue and the island Trébéron approximately at position 48 ° 18 '  N , 4 ° 31'  W anchor. There she was hit by a bomb during the heavy air raid by the Royal Air Force on the night of August 25th to 26th, which exploded mines on the quarterdeck and completely destroyed the ship. Only ten men of the crew were able to escape to the bank at Quélern .

Footnotes

  1. ^ The shipyard was taken over by Lithgows in 1919 , but was continued under its own name until 1963.
  2. ↑ http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?212462
  3. ↑ FB = France Brest.

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