Max Joseph (ship)
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The Max Joseph was one of the first steamers to sail on Lake Constance . After an incident in Überlingen, it was nicknamed “arsonist”.
According to Gustav Schwab, the steamer was equipped with "two magazines for merchant goods, etc., a cabin for travelers located on the rear bow" [sic!] And an engine and boiler room. The cabin, equipped with benches on three sides, offered space for around 20 people. The ship was provided with "an oak frame on an oak keel with a rear and front trunk" and was subsequently equipped with sails in addition to its steam engine by Fawcett and Littledales with a power of 16 hp (according to Schwab).
history
Johann Friedrich Cotta had the Glattdecker built by Edward Church and the boat builder Mauriac from Bordeaux in Friedrichshafen in 1824 after Carl Victor von Bonstetten had inspired King Wilhelm I with the idea of setting up steamboat services on Lake Constance.
The first ship in the fleet was the Wilhelm , also built by Church and Mauriac , which was launched on August 17, 1824, and began service on December 1 of the same year. The somewhat smaller Max Joseph , who was baptized after the Bavarian king and largely financed by Cotta, made her first trip on December 2nd or 3rd, 1824 from Friedrichshafen to Lindau and in the weeks after that she was used on the Untersee and the Rhine tested. Test drives took place on December 5, 1824 and April 22, 1825. It turned out, however, that the gradual dismantling of the eight-meter-high chimney of Max Joseph , which was necessary to pass under the bridges in Constance, Stein am Rhein and Diessenhofen , was extremely cumbersome. However, the Max Joseph was not able to run on the planned Lindau- Konstanz - Schaffhausen route anyway , because from January 1825 she had to use the Friedrichshafen- Rorschach route as an alternative . The Wilhelm was intended for use on this route, but it had lost its chimney in a wintry storm on January 4, 1825.
Compared to the Wilhelm , the Max Joseph already represented a technical advance: It had movable paddle wheels that could be controlled by an eccentric device, and thus reached a speed 1 km / h higher than the so-called "sea snail".
As the Bavarian boat guilds strongly opposed the introduction of steamers, Cotta soon moved the Max Joseph to Constance. Until 1829, the steamer then mainly operated on the Überlinger See and the Untersee. There was once an incident in Überlingen that earned the steamer the nickname "arsonist" and a redesign: While the ship was in Überlingen and the stokers were laying new logs, the rain of sparks from the chimney caught fire in a house near the port. As a result, the Max Joseph received a curved chimney attachment that made the steam chimney resemble a stove pipe.
After five years of use, the wooden hulls of the two steamers Wilhelm and Max Joseph were worn out by the vibrations that the single-cylinder engines caused. While the Wilhelm received a new hull made of oak, which was felled in the royal forest in Bebenhausen , and served another 17 years on Lake Constance, Cotta waived similar measures for the Max Joseph , whose operation was due to the dumping prices of the competing boat guilds in Konstanz and Ludwigshafen was unprofitable anyway. The Max Joseph was still in Friedrichshafen until 1830 and was then sold for demolition.
literature
- Karl F. Fritz: Adventure steamboat trip on Lake Constance . 2nd Edition. Meersburg 1990, ISBN 3-927484-00-8 , pp. 11-17
- Gustav Schwab: Lake Constance and the Rhine Valley from St. Luziensteig to Rheinegg. Handbook for travelers and friends of nature, history and poetry . Stuttgart / Tübingen 1827, p. 309 and p. 521 ff. (Appendix)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gustav Schwab: Lake Constance and the Rheinthale from St. Luziensteig to Rheinegg. Handbook for travelers and friends of nature, history and poetry . Stuttgart / Tübingen 1827, p. 524
- ↑ a b Gustav Schwab: Lake Constance along with the Rheinthale from St. Luziensteig to Rheinegg. Handbook for travelers and friends of nature, history and poetry . Stuttgart / Tübingen 1827, p. 525.
- ↑ a b www.schiffe-schweiz.ch ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ schwaebische.de
- ↑ Veit Becher u. a .: Friedrichshafen Yearbook for History and Culture: 1 , Klaus Kramer Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-9805874-8-8 , p. 115.
