Monte Cervantes (ship, 1928)
 The Monte Cervantes in January 1930
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The motor ship Monte Cervantes was a passenger ship of the Hamburg South American Steamship Company (HSDG or "Hamburg Süd"). The ship of the Monte class was after its maiden voyage in January 1928, only slightly more than two years of service. In a short period of time, it caused an international sensation with a critical incident off the island of Svalbard and its sinking in January 1930 off the southern Argentine city of Ushuaia .
An attempt to rescue the passenger ship, known as the “ Titanic of the South” or “Argentine Titanic”, failed in 1954. As a result of the almost complete destruction of the archive of the shipping company “Hamburg Süd” in the course of the storm surge in 1962 , the majority of the ship's documents and almost all technical documents were lost and original historical building records about the Monte Cervantes are lost.
The ship
The Monte Cervantes was built under hull number 478 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg and was the third ship in the Monte class after the Monte Sarmiento (November 1924) and the Monte Olivia (April 1925) . After the baptism took place on 25 August 1927, the launch and on 3 January 1928, the entry into service. The Monte Cervantes had two propellers that were driven by four six-cylinder diesel engines manufactured by the Hamburg engine factory . With 6800 hp she reached a maximum speed of 14.5 knots .
Initially, the ship had a passenger capacity of 2492 seats - 1354 in the tourist class and 1138 in the tween decks - and accordingly 30 lifeboats . According to the owners' plans, the Monte Cervantes should run regularly between Hamburg and the South American capitals of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires . After a short time, however, their area of responsibility was expanded to include pleasure trips to all parts of the world. For this reason, the capacity was reduced to around 1,750 seats in order to ensure that the guests could experience the trips more enjoyable. This was also made possible by the noble and extremely modern equipment for the time. Large panoramic decks lay amidships, there were two spacious dining rooms, a wide hall and, in addition, a large smoking salon and a writing and reading room. There was running water in all cabins in price categories IA to V, and travelers in price group VI and in the dormitories used bright, white-tiled washrooms that were separated by gender. Without exception, all participants on board had equal rights and had unlimited access to all public parts of the ship. The price difference between the cabins was only based on their type and location. For example, guests in the top as well as those in the bottom price category had access to several bathtubs and showers, a doctor with free treatment and a hairdresser for women and men. In the run-up to the trips, the shipping company often pointed out that popular trips should be planned avoiding luxury and great class differences. Passengers were also advised to bring little luggage and no fine formal clothing with them, as they were inappropriate. In addition, there were no wardrobes in the more expensive cabins, just a few hooks to hang up the clothes. During the trips was always a band on board and from time to time also designed small artist of NORAG the entertainment. The cabin prices were set as follows:
| Price category | deck | location | Type | price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IA | A. | Outside | Twin cabin | 530 - 630 Reichsmark (RM) |
| I. | D&E | Outside | Twin cabin | 490-590 RM |
| II | A. | inside | Twin cabin | 420 - 500 RM |
| II | D&E | Outside | small twin cabin | 420 - 500 RM |
| IIIA | A. | Outside | Triple cabin | 440-520 RM |
| III | D&E | Outside | Triple cabin | 410-480 RM |
| IV | D&E | inside | small twin cabin | 380-430 RM |
| V | D&E | inside | Triple cabin | 360 - 400 RM |
| VI | E. | Outside | Nine to eleven bed cabins | 300-340 RM |
| VII | F. | Living deck compartment with 120 or more beds | 240-280 RM |
period of service
The Monte Cervantes set out on January 7, 1928, four days after her commissioning, under the command of Captain Meyer on her maiden voyage from Hamburg to La Plata in Argentina . In the following months the luxury liner made several cruises and was usually fully booked.
Just under six months later, however , a sensational incident occurred on a trip from the North Cape to Svalbard . For crossing waters affected by the pack ice , the ship had previously received slight reinforcements at the bow . On July 24th, however, the journey had to be interrupted due to excessive ice drift in the research bay in Bellsund near Spitsbergen. The Monte Cervantes threatened to be enclosed by the floating floes , which is why Captain Meyer decided to bypass the ice barrier. When attempting to break through at around 11 p.m., the sharp ice edges tore open the outer skin of the ship and caused considerable damage, which allowed seawater to penetrate in several places. The crew's attempts to pump it out proved unsuccessful, and the water was soon up to five meters high in some rooms of the fore ship , which then slowly sank. Already slightly bow-heavy, the captain steered towards the bank, where all 1,500 passengers had to go ashore. The crew then radioed the Soviet icebreaker Krassin, cruising 80 nautical miles away , and asked for quick help. With the help of the divers and the powerful pumps of the icebreaker, the ship was pumped dry and the damage was provisionally repaired within five days by July 29 so that the voyage could continue. The Krassin then escorted Monte Cervantes to the northern Norwegian port town of Hammerfest , from where the damaged vessel was towed to its home port of Hamburg by the deep- sea tug Seefalke . During the time of the accident and the uncertain wait for new reports, almost all of the major daily newspapers on the European continent reported in detail on the events, thus drawing massive public attention to the case.
Downfall
First day
Her last journey took the Monte Cervantes to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in the Cape Horn region . Under the command of the 55-year-old captain Theodor Dreyer from Hamburg-Blankenese and his first officer Reiling, the ship docked on January 17, 1930 in Puerto Madryn, Argentina , and reached Punta Arenas on the morning of January 20 . The next day we went through in bad weather, but the sea is calm the Beagle Channel , reaching at 19 o'clock Ushuaia . In the morning hours of January 22, the ship left the port in better weather conditions and headed for Yendegaia Bay, 15 nautical miles to the west. At 12:40 p.m. Reiling confirmed a change of course requested by the captain by means of a cross bearing - he had decided not to take the route around the lighthouse on the Les Eclaireurs cliffs , which was considered safe , but instead to take the ship through a labyrinth-like route with dense fields of algae and numerous islets and shoals to maneuver. The Argentine pilot Rodolfo Hepe did not raise any objection.
At 12:43 p.m. the Monte Cervantes ran at high speed on a submarine rock that was not yet shown in the nautical charts at the time . The ship leaked and water seeped in. Due to the tremendous shock, a large part of the ship's equipment, such as dishes and numerous furniture, was broken. The bulkheads were closed immediately, but a little later the hull slipped off the rock and slid back into the sea, which meant that even more water could press into the now exposed leaks, which soon flooded the holds and the tween deck. Immediately afterwards the order was given to clear the lifeboats . At first there was a bit of panic , but after the crew had explained to the passengers that the 30 boats would be enough to carry 500 more passengers, the excitement subsided. Within 55 minutes, all 1,117 passengers and 255 crew members had left the ship and were in the lifeboats.
The SOS radio operator had already mored since the grounding. In addition to numerous stations on both sides of the Atlantic , the Argentine cargo steamer Vicente Fidel Lopez picked up this reputation in the port of Ushuaia. He immediately went to the scene of the accident and sent a launch ahead. Other sources reported that he had already set off for Monte Cervantes before the emergency call arrived , as the city's misfortune could be seen in the distance.
The remaining crew members on board the shipwrecked meanwhile collected all the passengers' valuables that they could still find and handed them over to the arriving barge, combined with the request to pick up the people from the lifeboats. These had considerable maneuvering difficulties in the meanwhile refreshing strong wind, especially since cooks or other servants often steered the oars, who were just as untrained as the passengers. Shortly after the departure of the first, a second launch, that of the Ushuaia prison, appeared, offered its help and was sent back with several stacks of warming woolen blankets when a few minutes later the Vicente Fidel Lopez herself reached the damaged vessel. She took the occupants of the lifeboats on board and transported around 800 people to the safe mainland by evening. However, some of the lifeboats had been driven away by the wind and current and driven to remote rocky coastlines. Its inmates had to take a long hike through densely wooded and mountainous terrain before they too arrived in town. At the time, Ushuaia only had 800 inhabitants and was almost overwhelmed by the more than 1300 people who had just left the city that morning. The castaways were given shelter in hostels, private houses and even in prison, the inmates of which agreed to give up their blankets and half of their daily ration of food.
Shortly after the last lifeboat had brought enough distance between itself and the Monte Cervantes , the engines were started again. They were still functional because the engine room was not yet under water. Dreyer maneuvered the ship with the remaining 70-man crew, carried by the wind and currents, into the rocky reef of the Les Eclaireurs cliffs, where he set it aground to prevent further sagging. The forecastle was already flooded as far as the D-deck and was sloping ever lower, and plumb measurements showed that the steamer was only sitting on the reef with the port side of its stern, while the rest of the hull was still floating freely in the water. Further measurements showed that water continuously penetrated through the leaks, which is why the captain ordered that everyone disembark, for which the last lifeboat was lowered. The night was spent on a nearby rocky island.
Second day
On the morning of the following January 23rd, crew members of numerous ships, among them again the Vicente Fidel Lopez , crossed over to Monte Cervantes to retrieve more luggage. This turned out to be chaotic at times, as numerous cabins were locked, no one of the crew had a master key on hand and many suitcases, bags and valuables floating in the water had probably also been looted by locals and individual crew members. Then the cargo ship tried to tow the much larger passenger ship, but failed because of the low engine power of the Argentine ship of only 450 hp . In the evening, Captain Dreyer ordered the rest of the crew to disembark. He wanted to stay on the ship, convinced that he had to hold his position. The steward managed to persuade him to leave the ship after all. Meanwhile, two officers climbed back on deck because they had forgotten something. A moment later the ship jerked and sank bow first. The crew members still on board jumped into the water and were rescued by the waiting launch . Only Theodor Dreyer could no longer get to safety. With the lifebuoy on, he probably accidentally jumped into the open promenade deck, slipped into the ship and drowned. The launch searched for him for over an hour without success. Thanks to the level-headed reaction of the crew and the proximity to the coast, which enabled rapid assistance from other ships, with the exception of the captain, there were no fatalities in the sinking.
On January 24th, a telegram from Ushuaia reached the shipping company in Hamburg:
- “Monte Cervantes capsized quickly to starboard yesterday at around 9 p.m. Hardly any time that officers still on board were able to save themselves. Captain Dreyer, on the navigating bridge when sinking, is unfortunately missing. "
Due to the slow process and the initially rather harmless situation, the shipwreck could be accompanied by the on-board photographer for several hours. He documented the lowering of the lifeboats, the evacuation measures and, from the sea, the victims themselves.
Another story
In the Weimar Republic , the Hamburg Maritime Office negotiated the sinking of Monte Cervantes on March 6, 1930 and absolved the crew of all guilt. However, individual sailors were charged with stealing valuables from the wreck in the past few hours. Rumors of Theodor Dreyer's death continued to circulate in Tierra del Fuego for a long time. They ranged from suspicions that he committed suicide to avoid trial before the Maritime Law Court, to reports published by the daily Clarín that he was tied to the wheel and shot with a pistol, to speculation that he was was not killed at all. The advocates of the latter opinion were of the opinion that he had gone to the small fishing village of Villa Ukika with false papers, since there - although without an exact date - the legend is told of a man dressed in white who had not appeared from anywhere.
In the shallows of the rocks, the stern of the Monte Cervantes did not go completely under, but protruded from the sea, visible from afar. However, since the wreck was outside the usual shipping routes, no efforts were made to recover it. It was only when metal prices soared after the Second World War that the Salvamar company, founded by the Italian businessman Leopoldo Simoncini, who lived in Argentina, secured the salvage rights in 1951 . After months of work, they began to dismantle all usable metal parts, melt them down and sell them piece by piece. 80 workers were employed and lived both on an anchored tugboat and in a hut that had been built on the ship's hull. The interior of the Monte Cervantes was almost exhaustively cannibalized to finance a subsequent salvage, as the dismantling at sea became more and more complicated. For this purpose, some of the superstructures, such as the chimneys, were blown off and the hull was filled with buoyancy. Between October 3 and October 14, 1954, the wreck was finally to be towed to Ushuaia. Three tugs pulled the Monte Cervantes from the Les Eclaireurs cliffs a good two kilometers towards the coast across the open sea, when the weather worsened and a rope tore and an air cushion burst. The damaged ship could no longer be stopped and the towing cables had to be cut. The tug Saint Christopher itself was injured and the Monte Cervantes sank completely in the Beagle Channel. The tugboat is still in the port of Ushuaia today.
In the 1990s, divers in the Beagle Channel discovered several remains of the steamer near the lighthouse. In cooperation with a German research team headed by Matthias Kopfmüller , the location of the wreck was finally determined. An unknown object was located in September 2000 using a depth echo sounder. A buoy with an orientation line was dropped over this site and a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was launched. With it it was possible for the first time to penetrate the hull of the Monte Cervantes at a depth of 133 meters. The first part of the ship that protruded into the camera from the darkness were the propellers. As a result, divers of the team also reached the wreck. Numerous small items such as a red wine bottle, glasses, cutlery, ashtrays and chandeliers were recovered and given to the Museo del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia. The entire campaign was accompanied by Spiegel TV , which subsequently produced the almost hour-long documentary film `` Sunk before Cape Horn - The Riddle of Monte Cervantes '', in which the new video recordings and findings, old photographs, historical documents and eyewitness reports were incorporated. After a trip to Tierra del Fuego and expeditions with specialist divers , Marc Brasse shot the film Diving into the Past - The Riddle of Monte Cervantes , which was previously broadcast on June 14, 2006 and August 13, 2007 for the television station Phoenix .
memory
Shortly after the sinking, rescue workers, passengers and crew members of the Monte Cervantes held a memorial service for the captain on board the sister ship Monte Sarmiento , at which wreaths were thrown and Dreyer's exemplary behavior during the evacuation was highlighted. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the shipwreck, a passenger at the time organized a newspaper advertisement in 1980 for a meeting of the surviving passengers and crew on the last voyage of Monte Cervantes . They met in Buenos Aires and traveled together to Ushuaia , where certificates of thanks were drawn up for the local population and old contacts were revived. In Germany , the sinking of the Hamburg liner has almost been forgotten these days and is rarely discussed, while it is still very present in the stories of the people of Tierra del Fuego. In Ushuaia, the streets Capitán T. Dreyer and Náufragos del M. Cervantes commemorate the accident. In his home town, the Hamburg district of Blankenese , a path was named after him in honor of the drowned skipper; A memorial stone dedicated to him was erected in the Nienstedten cemetery . In addition, a plaque on the Iglesia Nuestra Señora de la Merced in Ushuaia commemorates the events in January 1930 outside the city in the Beagle Channel.
Continuing
literature
- José Feinmann: El naufragio del "Monte Cervantes" y sus enseñanzas . Rosario , 1930
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-344-00164-7
- Enrique S. Inda: El tesoro del Monte Cervantes . Buenos Aires, 1999, ISBN 978-950-503-298-3
- Rudolf Stade: Ships, People, Fates ; Edition 79: Monte Cervantes - the end of Tierra del Fuego on a rocky spire . Publishing house Rudolf Stade, Kiel
- Arnold Kludas: Pleasure Trips at Sea - A History of the German Cruise . Volume I: 1889-1939, Convent Verlag, Hamburg, 2001, ISBN 978-3-934613-21-8
- Arnold Kludas, Karl-Theo Beer: The glamorous era of luxury ships - travel culture on the oceans . Koehler Verlag, Hamburg , 2005, ISBN 978-3-7822-0922-9
- Monika Schillat: Diary: Tierra del Fuego . Editorial Fuegia, Córdoba , 2006, ISBN 978-987-05-1816-7
Newspaper reports
- La Razón , February 2, 1930: "Declaraciones del gobernador interino de Tierra del Fuego, señor Hugo Rodriguez"
- Clarín , October 11, 1954, page 10: “Ha vuelta a hundirse el“ Monte Cervantes ”. Once años de trabajo y 16 millones de pesos perdidos "(Enrique S. Inda)
- Clarín , January 23, 1979, pages 18 and 19: “El SOS del Monte Cervantes. ¿Te acordás, hermano, del naufrágio en el Beagle? "
- Clarín , March 14, 1999, pages 50 to 57: “El otro Titanic. El naufrágio del Monte Cervantes en las Costas de Ushuaia "(Jessica Feinsod)
Web links
- Official website of the Hamburg Süd shipping company
- Svante Domizlaff: “A Blankeneseer cannot be honored higher” on welt.de ( Die Welt ). Retrieved on August 24, 2009 (German)
- "The riddle of the" Monte Cervantes "" on spiegel.de ( Spiegel Online ). Retrieved January 12, 2011
- “La saga del Monte Cervantes” on histarmar.com.ar . Retrieved January 12, 2011
Footnotes
- ↑ Rothe (1987), page 107
- ↑ "Towards Spring - A Cheap Mediterranean Cruise " ( NORAG advertising sheet for a cruise from March 22 to April 8, 1930, which never took place due to the sinking)
- ↑ Monika Schillat: "" Monte Cervantes "- the" Titanic "of Argentina." (PDF; 118 kB) in monika-schillat.eu . Retrieved on August 25, 2009 (German)
- ↑ Picture of Saint Christopher in Ushuaia at flickr.com
- ↑ 54 ° 48 ′ 34.89 ″ S , 68 ° 18 ′ 28.87 ″ W Location of Saint Christopher in Ushuaia
