The motor ship Meersburg (until 1964: Schienerberg ) was a passenger ship on Lake Constance , which was in service on the Untersee from 1930 to 1961 and on the Überlinger See until it was decommissioned in 1994 .
The Schienerberg , named after the Schiener Berg ridge in the west of the Höri peninsula , was built in 1930 by the Bodan shipyard in Kressbronn on Lake Constance and put into service in the home port of Radolfzell in the same year . The twin-screw motor ship in one and a half saloon design was the largest of six motor ships that were built between 1926 and 1936 for Untersee and Überlinger See. It was 42 meters long and very flat so that it could pass the Rhine bridges between Konstanz and Schaffhausen after folding down the mast, chimney and the upper part of the wheelhouse . The comfortable ship was mostly used for special trips in this area and was initially only able to carry 300, but after two conversions it could carry up to 500 passengers. The disused and camouflaged Schienerberg was badly damaged in an air raid in July 1944 and was not repaired until 1949.
From 1962 , the Schienerberg, the first DB ship on Lake Constance to be equipped with a radar device , operated year-round between Meersburg and Konstanz . Modern technology could not prevent a collision with the gravel ship Seestern in the Konstanz funnel in thick fog in October 1967 . Although both ships were badly damaged, it was possible to tow the gravel ship to the shallow bank and save it from sinking. In 1964, after the saloon steamship Stadt Meersburg was taken out of service, the Schienerberg was given the name Meersburg and the ship's bell of the paddle steamer, which was dismantled in 1960, and after the all-year operation in 1973 was still in season for 21 years on the Überlinger See. In the last few years the ship has served the particularly interesting route from Radolfzell am Untersee over the Seerhein and under the Konstanzer Rheinbrücke to the island of Mainau with the noticeably long open foredeck, which is to the delight of the cyclists . In 1994 the Meersburg was decommissioned after 64 years of operation and scrapped in 1995. Since then, the special trips on the Untersee and Hochrhein have often been carried out by Queen Katharina , who was commissioned in 1994 .
literature
Klaus von Rudloff and Claude Jeanmaire: Shipping on Lake Constance, Volume 3: Beginning of Motor Shipping , Verlag Eisenbahn, Villigen AG 1987, ISBN 3-85649-072-8
Michael Berg: Motor shipping on Lake Constance under the Deutsche Reichsbahn and in the post-war period , regional culture publisher, Ubstadt-Weiher 2011, ISBN 978-3-89735-614-6
