Meteor (ship, 1887)
 Painting by Fritz Stoltenberg, Meteor , ca.1893
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The Meteor (also referred to as Meteor (I) in literature) was the first in a series of imperial racing yachts owned by Wilhelm II to carry the name Meteor .
Regatta career as Thistle
The yacht was designed by George Lennox Watson and built at the D. & W. Henderson & Company shipyard in Partick ( incorporated into Glasgow in 1912 ) on the River Clyde in Scotland . She ran on April 26 in 1887 by the stack . The client was a syndicate consisting of the shareholders William Clark, John Clark, Andrew Coates, William Coates, James Coates, George Coates, J. Hilliard Bell, and William Bell led by James Bell, all members of the Royal Clyde Yacht Club , was .
The yacht was a steel structure with a teak deck . The Thistle was skippered by John Barr (half-brother of the legendary Charlie Barr ). The construction was carried out in great secrecy in the winter of 1886/1887 because the Thistle was the British challenger to the America's Cup . When it was launched, the hull was covered with cotton cloth so that you couldn't see its lines. In her first summer season in 1887 she sailed very successfully in Scotland and was able to take 11 first and 2 second places in 15 regattas. For the races of the 7th America's Cup, she crossed the North Atlantic and met the American Defender-Yacht (Defender) Volunteer in New York , who was under great pressure to succeed due to the Thistle's outstanding successes .
7th America's Cup: September 27-30, 1887
When Thistle reached New York, a local newspaper hired a diver to examine the mysterious underwater ship, which was covered when it was launched. There was an angry discussion about the fact that the specified water line (LWL) was shorter than it actually resulted from a re-measurement. The exact measurement was important insofar as the yachts did not form a unitary class and had to give each other time compensation in order to compensate for their different sizes. A match race in today's sense was not possible at that time.
Management team of Thistle :
- Skipper : John Barr
- Afterguard (tactics and navigation): William Bell, James York, George L. Watson and Captain WR Gibson.
The regatta series was set by the organizer, the New York Yacht Club , on two wins within three races in the waters off New York.
1st race: September 27, 1887
The first race brought about 32.6 nautical miles on the so-called Inside Course about 20 nautical miles to windward (upwind) from the starting point Scotland Lightship (Scotland Lightship) and back. The American defender yacht (Defender) Volunteer beat Thistle by a margin of 19 minutes and 23 seconds after the calculated time (see above).
2nd race: September 30, 1887
The second race resulted in more than 40 nautical miles on the so-called Outside Course about 20 nautical miles to windward (upwind) from the starting point Scotland Lightship (Scotland Lightship) and back. The US defender yacht Volunteer beat Thistle again with a lead of 11 minutes and 11 seconds after the calculated time.
James Bell tried unsuccessfully same after the regatta, Thistle for 10,000 pounds sterling to sell locally. She returned to Scotland on October 14, 1887.
The yacht then had a very successful regatta career in British waters for the Royal Clyde Yacht Club from 1888 to 1890.
Regatta career as a meteor
The German Kaiser was looking for a promising regatta yacht for his sailing ambitions. At that time, competitive yachts could only be bought or built in the USA or Great Britain. His advisors became aware of the Thistle because of her success and he bought the yacht in 1891 for 90,000 gold marks . Thistle was renamed Meteor with the home port of Kiel , as Kaiser Wilhelm II. Was the namesake and " Commodore " of the Imperial Yacht Club .
With the Meteor , the German Kaiser took part in the prestigious international regatta week of Cowes , the Cowes Week , for the first time with his own sailing yacht . His appearance in Cowes and in the clubhouse of the Royal Yacht Squadron on the Isle of Wight prompted his uncle , the Prince of Wales and later King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Edward VII , to buy a regatta yacht at the same shipyard, the Meteor in Scotland to order.
Between 1893 and 1895, Wilhelm II sailed with Meteor against the new, roughly equal-sized yacht Britannia of the Prince of Wales and later King Edward VII. Britannia clearly won all races because she was the faster ship and was sailed by a better crew. At that time, yachts of this size (big class) were sailed exclusively by mostly English, Scottish or Norwegian professional crews including a captain. The teams were mainly recruited from fishermen who were hired for the summer months or for individual regattas. In winter they went fishing on their sailing cutters.
The ambitious Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered a new, faster yacht of the same name from George Lennox Watson due to the defeat against Britannia . Like the previous yacht, she was built at the D. & W. Henderson & Company shipyard in Scotland.
In 1895 the Meteor was handed over to the Imperial Navy in Wilhelmshaven as a training ship and renamed the Comet . In 1921 it was scrapped .
literature
- Matthias Kripp: The facilities of the imperial yachts, Master's thesis of the University of Bonn, Prof. Dr. Tilmann Buddensieg, 1989, published in: Deutsches Schifffahrtsarchiv, Vol. 16 (Part 1) + Vol. 17 (Part 2), Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum Bremerhaven, Ernst Kabel Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-8225-0274-X
Web links
- America's Cup's AC-CLOPAEDIA: Thistle
- Photo Thistle by JS Johnston
- Yacht sport archive: Line drawing of the Thistle
Individual evidence
- ↑ Note: the numbering of the imperial racing yachts with the name Meteor came later
- ↑ a b c d America’s Cup: AC-CLOPAEDIA - Thistle. Retrieved January 25, 2009.
- ^ Douglas R. Burgess: Seize the Trident: The Race for Superliner Supremacy and how it Altered the Great War . McGraw-Hill Professional, 2005, ISBN 0-07-143009-1 , pp. 14–15 (digitized online from google books).
- ^ Svante Domizlaff, Alexander Rost: Germania - The yachts of the house of Krupp. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-7688-1840-3 , p. 88ff.