Mentor (ship)

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Commercial frigate 1820. Painting by Lüder Arenhold after English drawings 1891

The commercial frigate Mentor was a Hanseatic merchant ship from Bremen , which circumnavigated the world on behalf of the Royal Prussian Maritime Trading Company from 1822 to 1824 . For the first time a ship sailed around the world under German command.

Construction and equipment

The construction of the sailor Mentor took place from 1807 to 1808 at the shipyard of Peter Jantzen (1745-1813) and Jürgen Sager in Vegesack . So this happened before the effects of the continental blockade . The loading capacity was 225 loads . The barque was then also known as a merchant frigate and was used for trips in the Atlantic. She was initially under the command of Captains Hinrich Tecklenborg and Nicolaus Hagemann. From 1815 to 1816 the ship was on a tour to Brazil and was led by Captain Erich Ruyter. Until 1824 the ship belonged to the brothers Friedrich & Everhard Delius in Bremen, who came from Dissen. In 1817, the Mentor was rebuilt in the shipyard by Johann Lange and converted into a full ship. The Mentor was chartered by the Prussian Maritime Trading Company in 1822 and completely overhauled and repaired again for the purpose of the upcoming circumnavigation of the world and especially equipped with a copper cover. The Mentor was equipped with six cannons for self-defense against pirate attacks .

The Mentor sailed around the world from December 15, 1822 to September 14, 1824

On December 15, 1822, the Mentor sailed from Bremen over the Weser to the North Sea under the command of Captain Johann Andreas Harmssen . Harmssen's nephew Johann Wilhelm Wendt acted as the helmsman and the Berlin merchant Wilhelm Oswald as the Prussian supercargo . There were 22 men crew from Bremen on board the ship, which was loaded with Prussian merchandise. The ship thus sailed under the flag of Bremen on behalf of Prussia. In the service of the Prussian Maritime Trading Company, Wilhelm Oswald tried to open up new sales markets for the Silesian linen manufacture, which had got into economic difficulties.

Trip to Chile

The first leg of the journey was across the Atlantic. The equator was passed on January 27, 1823. From February 18 to March 30, 1823, the ship entered the Pacific in stormy seas around Cape Horn and then along the Chilean coast. On March 7, 1823, a heavy wave destroyed part of the entrenchment. After 113 days at sea, the Mentor reached the port of Valparaíso on April 8, 1823 . The ship stayed at anchor there for several months. Valparaíso was largely destroyed at the time because of the earthquake on November 19, 1822. Wilhelm Oswald and the businessman FJ Scholz, who had also traveled with him, rode to the capital Santiago de Chile in May 1823 to carry out commercial transactions . During this time, Prussia's first consular relations with Chile were established. From October 2 to October 4, 1823, the Mentor drove to the port of Coquimbo . The then small town of only around 5000 inhabitants was interesting because of the copper production in the surrounding mines.

From there, the Mentor set sail again on October 18, 1823. During this trip a dangerous incident occurred on October 21, 1823. A brig with 14 cannons and a 70 man crew stopped the mentor . On behalf of the Spanish Crown, the brig's captain requested the mentor's shipping documents , which were apparently mistaken for a South American ship. However, the brig soon turned out not to be a ship of the Kingdom of Spain, but consisted of a mainly English crew. The original pirate intent of the English was successfully averted after the search of the ship and some harassment, since the Mentor was not a South American ship, and a passport paper could be presented to the Spanish embassy in Berlin, which allowed trade with the countries of South America, and for the captain of the brig there was ultimately no interest in a conflict with Prussia. However, this incident showed the crew that this sea voyage was also fraught with considerable incalculable risks.

Trade with the islanders of Hawaii

On November 10, 1823, the equator was passed from south to north and after 41 days at sea, the Mentor reached the port of Honolulu on November 28, 1823 on the island of Oahu in the Kingdom of Hawaii . Many of the islanders' products, equipment, jewelry and clothing were acquired there, most of which were made in the times before Christianization and thus appeared valuable for the history of the South Sea peoples. The ship's crew also took a man named Harry Maitey with them, who was determined to leave his home at his own request. Maitey came to Berlin and initially stayed in the house of the President of the Sea Trade. He learned the German language with great effort, was baptized and confirmed as a Protestant Christian in 1830, married the daughter of the animal keeper on Pfaueninsel and had three children.

Trip to China and the Dutch East Indies

Anyer on the coast of Java

After a relatively short stay in Hawaii, the journey continued on December 4, 1823. After 33 days, the ship reached the port of the Chinese city of Canton on January 5, 1824 . Chinese goods, including 5,000 cases of tea, as well as nankin , cassia and other commercial goods were loaded in Canton . The 34-day sea voyage to the island of Java in the Dutch-Indian port city of Anyer lasted from March 20, 1824 to April 23, 1824 , which decades later was to be completely destroyed by the eruption of the Krakatau volcano on August 27, 1883.

Return to Europe

After a two-day stay, the mentor set sail again on April 25, 1824. After traveling through the Indian Ocean and circumnavigating the southern tip of Africa, the ship reached the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic on July 2, 1824 after 69 days , where the exiled Emperor Napoleon had died three years earlier. On July 4, 1824 the sea voyage was continued. On July 14, 1824, the equator was crossed. After 70 days, the ship reached the Prussian port of Swinoujscie on September 14, 1824 . This circumnavigation of the world was also the first of the Kingdom of Prussia . The trip covered around 39,000 nautical miles, which corresponds to 72,228 km, and lasted a total of one year and 273 days, with the mentor being out at sea for 362 days. None of the 22 crew members died on the voyage. There was a reception by State Minister Graf von Bülow and Oberfinanzrat Christian Rother , the President of the Seehandlungsgesellschaft. From Swinoujscie, Captain Johann Andreas Harmssen traveled via Stettin to Berlin, where he was supported by King Friedrich Wilhelm III. was received and was awarded the General Medal, First Class .

Later use the mentor

During the circumnavigation of the world, the Prussian maritime trading company bought the mentor from the Bremen house Delius after it had left Canton in March 1824, and ordered it to Swinoujscie instead of Bremen. On September 7, 1824 in Helsingør , the captain received a Prussian flag from the Prussian consul, under which the ship finally sailed into the Baltic Sea after paying the sound tariff and entered Swinoujscie on September 14, 1824. The mentor was repaired for eight months after her return to Szczecin. Since the ship kept leaking despite frequent repairs, the mentor could no longer be used for circumnavigations of the world. The successor to the mentor for these ventures was Princess Louise . The mentor was instead used only for still rides in the Atlantic. The stock exchange hall in Hamburg wrote about a trip the mentor to the West Indies on October 19, 1827. In 1831 the ship in Swindemünde was sold for 5000 thalers below book value to the shipowner Thomsen, who continued the ship under the new name of President Rother .

literature

  • Heinrich Berghaus : Six trips around the world of the royal Prussian sea trading ships Mentor and Prinzess Louise within the years 1822–1842 . Verlag von Grass, Barth &. Comp., Breslau 1842
  • Percy Ernst Schramm : South America after liberation, portrayed by a German businessman (Wilhelm Oswald), In: Yearbook for History, State, Economy and Society Latin America , 5 (1968), pp. 202-234
  • Heinz Burmester: circumnavigation under the Prussian flag. The Royal Prussian Sea Trade and its Ships , Ernst Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 978-3-8225-0062-0
  • Peter-Michael Pawlik: From the Weser into the world . Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 33, Ernst Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-8225-0256-1 , p. 116
  • Michael Stoffregen-Büller : The Sandwich Islander. From Polynesia to Prussia's Peacock Island. Henrik Bäßler Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-945880-38-8 , pp. 10–78

Individual evidence

  1. Heide Gerstenberger : From country to country: from the history of Bremen seafaring. Edition Temmen 1991, p. 142
  2. There are contradicting statements in the literature. Heinrich Berghaus states in the book Six Journeys around the Earth ... , Breslau 1842 on page 7 as the year of construction of the mentor, the year 1817, which, however, contradicts the fact that newspaper reports even before 1817 reported about trips by the mentor in the Atlantic. Possibly the year 1817 refers to a conversion of the Mentor, originally conceived as a barque, to a full ship.
  3. ^ German observer or privileged Hanseatische Zeitung No. 383, Hamburg August 16, 1816
  4. ^ A b c Heinz Burmester: Circumnavigation under the Prussian flag. , Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1988, p. 22.
  5. Concerning the year when the ship Mentor was bought from the Delius brothers by the Prussian Seahandlungsgesellschaft, Heinrich Berghaus in the book Six Journeys around the Earth ... , Breslau 1842 on page 7 states the year 1825, whereby it should read 1824 correctly
  6. "Delius, Prussian consul in Bremen and entrusted with the management of the maritime trade in the Hanseatic city, had chartered the ... sailor mentor to the maritime trade in 1822, which acquired the full ship from Delius in 1824." (see Lars U. Scholl : The "Princes Louise" of the Royal Prussian Seehandlungs-Societät: two unpublished documents. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 9 (1986), pp. 117–122, p. 117)
  7. "Mentor sailed from there to canton and was acquired by the sea trade on the return journey." (See Johann Friedrich Meuss: The Enterprises of the Royal Sea Trade Institute for Bringing Prussian Trade to the Sea: A Contribution to the History of Sea Trade (Prussian State Bank) and maritime affairs in Prussia in the first half of the nineteenth century (publications by the Institute for Oceanography at the University of Berlin; Series B, Historisch-Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe; NF 2), Berlin: Mittler, 1913, p. 74)
  8. Lars U. Scholl : The Princes Louise of the royal Prussian sea trading society . In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 9, 1986, p. 117
  9. ^ Heinrich Berghaus: Six journeys around the world ... , Breslau 1842, p. 7
  10. Percy Ernst Schramm: South America after Liberation, ... , In: Yearbook for History, State, Economy and Society Latin America , 5 (1968), p. 203
  11. Percy Ernst Schramm: South America after Liberation, ... , In: Yearbook for History, State, Economy and Society Latin America , 5 (1968), p. 202
  12. ^ Heinrich Berghaus: Six journeys around the world ... , Breslau 1842, p. 17
  13. The South American states were renegade colonies for the Spanish crown at the time. The declarations of independence of the Latin American states had only passed a few years at the time and were illegal from the Spanish perspective. The crew of the allegedly Spanish but in fact English brig wanted to plunder under this pretext.
  14. ^ A. Moore: Harry Maitey. From Polynesia to Prussia . In: Hawaiian Journal of History 2 (1977), pp. 125-161
  15. ^ Oesterreichischer Beobachter , October 23, 1824
  16. ^ Newspaper for the Elegant World , February 3, 1825
  17. ^ Heinz Burmester: circumnavigation under the Prussian flag . Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1988, p. 23
  18. ^ Heinz Burmester: circumnavigation under the Prussian flag . Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1988, p. 24