Margery (ship)
 Steamship Èlise .
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The Margery (according to some sources also "Marjory", both English for Margret), renamed to Élise , crossed the English Channel in 1816 as the first steam-powered ship .
prehistory
1813, the linen trader William Anderson and McCubbin ordered from Glasgow at William Denny a steamboat. The ship was launched in Dumbarton in 1814 and was named after the eldest daughter of William Anderson Margery . The ship was powered by a 10 hp steam engine that came from the James Cook factory and ran 6 knots . An illustration on a postage stamp of the African island state Sao Tome and Principe shows an open boat without any superstructures, a tall, thin chimney in the middle that also served as a mast and a smaller mast in the foredeck .
From July 17, 1814, the Margery drove between Glasgow and Greenock and also called Helensburgh twice a week . In November 1814 the ship was sold to Anthony Cortis and Co. The ship should now be used on the Thames , for this it first had to be towed through the Forth and Clyde Canal Canal, because the paddle wheels had been dismantled because the ship was too wide and then drove on the east coast of Great Britain to the mouth of the Thames. On December 14, 1814, Samuel Birch, the Lord Mayor of London , made a first test voyage on the Thames and from January 23, 1815, the New London Steam Packet Margery ran between London and Gravesend, making it the first steamship to regularly operate on the Thames ran.
In March 1816, Pierre Andriel, Pajol et Cie., A newly founded Parisian company for passenger travel, acquired the Margery and baptized it with the name Élise .
The crossing
On March 9, 1816, the Margery was first brought to Newhaven and on March 17, 1816 she cast off there and headed for Le Havre - and this meant crossing the English Channel.
There are all sorts of anecdotes about this crossing, the truth of which is assessed differently: The Margery got caught in a severe storm, the stove in the captain's cabin fell over and the ship almost burned in the open sea. The shocked crew was allegedly only prevented from mutinying and returning to England with a special ration of rum . A French pilot called for help - cutter is said to have run away when the "hissing and smoking monster" approached.
However, the frenetic reception of the ship and crew in Le Havre is historically guaranteed. Disbelieving amazement was followed by a veritable triumphal procession up the Seine to Paris, where it arrived on March 28th. She is said to have been greeted with 21 gun salutes at the Palais des Tuileries . For several years she served as a passenger ship on the Seine.
literature
- Heinz Hermann Wille: Great moments of technology. Urania-Verlag, Leipzig 1987, ISBN 3-332-00032-2 .
Footnotes
- ^ William A. Baker: The engine powered vessel: from paddle-wheeler to nuclear ship , Grosset & Dunlap, 1965, p. 22
- ↑ Bernard Dumpleton: The Story Of The Paddle Steamer , Eastbourne 2002, ISBN 1-84150-801-2 , p. 16 ( online )
- ↑ Beginning of steam navigation with paddle steamers.
- ↑ Augsburger Allgemeine of March 17, 2011, section Das Datum
- ^ Heinrich von Förster, Emil von Förster : Allgemeine Bauzeitung , Vienna 1866, pp. 138–145 ( online )