Muansa (ship, 1911)
 The Muansa
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The Muansa of German East Africa line (DOAL) was a 1911 by Bremer Vulkan delivered cargo ship the Emir class. It was the fourth cargo ship to be built by the shipping company. When the First World War broke out , the ship found refuge in Argentina.
In 1920 the Muansa was towed back to Germany. After its repair it was delivered, but immediately bought back by the DOAL in 1921. She was the only ship of the shipping company that was bought back from her after delivery.
The ship was also in service with the shipping company when the Second World War broke out . In 1940 she was used as a troop transport during the occupation of Norway .
The Muansa was torpedoed and sunk on January 1, 1943 off Northern Norway by the Soviet submarine L-20 .
History of the Muansa
The first DOAL cargo ships were purchases for the Zanzibar / later Durban-Bombay service, which had been in operation since 1892. The best known was the Somali ex Osiris (1889, 2532 BRT), bought in 1901, which became famous as the coal ship of the small cruiser SMS Königsberg during the First World War. But these ships all also had a multi-class passenger facility.
In 1905, due to the increased volume of cargo to and from German East Africa , the DOAL ordered its first new- build cargo ships with the steamers Khalif (2) and Khedive at Bremer Vulkan, which were used as additional steamers on the main line. The connected Woermann line also acquired a number of cargo ships of various sizes for its West Africa service, the majority of which were also delivered by the Vegesack shipyard.
The Carl Woermann , delivered in 1910 , then became the type ship of the Emin class of the DOAL, of which three ships were delivered in 1911 and three more were launched during the World War in 1915, but were not used and had to be delivered to the Allies after the surrender conditions.
Named after the town of Muansa on Lake Victoria , the Muansa was the second ship in the first series. Like her sister ships, she was 128.0 m long and 16.6 m wide and was powered by a quadruple expansion engine that developed 3300 hp and enabled a speed of 11.5 knots (kn). The ship, measured at 5408 GRT, also had space for 12 passengers and had a carrying capacity of 8800 tdw. The Muansa was launched on June 30, 1911 and was delivered on August 10, 1911.
War fate of the Muansa
The Muansa was early August 1914 in Luderitz , German South West Africa , on the way home, where they learned about the outbreak of war. The captain decided to call at a neutral South American port. The ship entered Buenos Aires on January 8, 1915 , after having first called from South West Africa in Rio de Janeiro . In Buenos Aires, the Muansa was equipped to supply German East Africa and the small cruiser Königsberg located there . On February 2, 1915, the ship was reported to be ready for sea. But then the Reich Colonial Office asked for rifles and ammunition to be handed over to the protection force of German East Africa, whereupon the Admiral's staff telegraphed to Buenos Aires: "Provision steamer for East Africa is not expected to leave until April, by special order." The small cruiser Dresden , lying in Chile, was supposed to accompany the Muansa to East Africa in order to then operate together with the Königsberg in the Indian Ocean . Delays caused by the pressure of the English government on the neutral South American states, and the sinking of the Dresden on March 14, 1915, led to the abandonment of the plan to send the Muansa to German East Africa in October 1915 .
In 1918, the crew made the machine unusable in order to prevent a feared extradition to the Allies. Like other ships that remained in neutral states, she was to be delivered in repaired condition according to the surrender regulations. The ship transferred to Montevideo began its journey home to Germany on August 30, 1920. The Muansa was then repaired in Hamburg and formally transferred to Great Britain on August 14, 1921.
Service between the wars
The Muansa , which remained in Hamburg , was bought back by the DOAL on September 27, 1921. She remained the shipping company's only pre-war ship that returned to the shipping company. However, the sister ship Emin , acquired by Norddeutscher Lloyd in 1927 and named Ilmar , was used by HBAL in Africa and from 1935 was managed by the Woermann Line, which is linked to the DOAL, which sold it in 1939.
The DOAL started liner service to South Africa in November 1920 with its first new build, the cargo ship Urundi (5791 BRT / 9270 tdw). The ship, which was ordered before the war as another Emin- class ship, was issued as a post-war order, deviated from the basic type due to its turbine drive and was launched on July 28, 1920 and delivered on November 2, 1920. In addition, two further newbuildings were completed with the combination ships Usaromo and Ussukuma (7750 BRT / 7250tdw).
When the Muansa came back into service with the DOAL, the shipping company had a fourth ship, the Sultan ex Erna Woermann (1902, 5528 GRT), which was captured by the British in Douala in 1914 and was purchased on August 19 1921 when Huntscastle was used under the British flag.
Since the combined ships of the Woermann line and Hapag's Africa service were also used on the DOAL South Africa line to replace the former Reichspostdampfer line , there was hardly any further expansion of the DOAL's cargo ship fleet. The merger of the two Hamburg-based Africa shipping companies in 1922 while maintaining a separate appearance showed only an expansion of freight capacities to West Africa under the colors of the Woermann line. To South and East Africa, the DOAL mainly used other combined ships with Usambara (1923), Ubena (1928) and finally Pretoria (1936) and Woermann ships built in parallel.
In 1923 another cargo ship was procured with the Ulanga . The ship bought in Great Britain as Den of Airlie was built as the Santa Clara in 1914 for Hamburg-Süd and had an almost identical war fate as the Muansa , as she had survived the war in Rosario . However, it caught fire on the North Sea on September 5, 1931, was able to be brought to Antwerp , but burned out completely there. She was the only ship lost by the DOAL between the world wars.
From 1925 a coastal service was established again in East Africa, for which two small cargo ships were procured: the Rufidji (1387 GRT) and the Askari (590 GRT). In 1932, the company's oldest ship, the Sultan , was scrapped.
It was not until the summer of 1940 that the DOAL received a new cargo ship with the motor ship Ulanga . From the restart until the outbreak of World War II, Muansa and Urundi remained the DOAL cargo ships, to which Hapag's Livadia (3094 GRT) was added when the state reorganized German shipping in 1935 .
On August 26, 1939, the Muansa arrived in Hamburg on her last peace trip from Monrovia . The Urundi was at home and was already in service as a troop transport to East Prussia in July ; Livadia , on her way back from West Africa , ran at Vigo on August 27th , from where she broke through on November 11th via Tromsø and Bergen and reached Hamburg on December 10th, 1939.
War effort and end of the Muansa
The Muansa was assigned as a troop transport of the 1st sea transport squadron during the occupation of Norway in the spring of 1940. On April 7, 1940, the Muansa left Stettin with troops and supplies for Oslo . On April 10th, the secured convoy of nine transporters in the Kattegat was attacked by the British submarines Triton and Sunfish , which carried the transporters Wigbert (3648 BRT), Friedenau (5219 BRT), the outpost boat V1507 (ex whaler Rau 6 ) and the Transporter Antares (2593 GRT) torpedoed, which sank with high losses. The Muansa arrived undamaged in Oslo on April 11th, only to leave on the 20th. On April 28, May 6 and May 14, Muansa again called at Oslo with reinforcements, then returned to Stettin on the 27th from Oslo and retired from the supply trips for the Weser Exercise company.
In August 1940 the ship was registered as "RO 36" for the company "Seelöwe" . On June 13, 1941, the Muansa was in Swinoujscie for loading exercises and on the 15th ran out to Finland together with the French booty ship Malgache with German troops and supplies ; instead of running to Vaasa as originally planned , the ships went to Oulu in the north of the Gulf of Bothnia .
From the spring of 1942, the Muansa was then used as a transport along the Norwegian coast. From a convoy with Dessau and Kora secured by three outpost boats , the Muansa was torpedoed on January 1, 1943 eight kilometers northeast of the Kjolnes lighthouse near Berlevåg by the Soviet submarine L-20 and moved to 70 ° 52 ′ 0 ″ N , 29 ° 27 ′ 0 ″ E sunk, with 19 crew members dying.
New construction of the DOAL freight steamers until 1918
| Surname | Shipyard | GRT | Length [m] |
Launched in service |
further fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caliph | Bremen volcano no.492 |
5105 | 124.8 | 09/29/1906 11/11/1906 |
Refuge in Mozambique in 1914 , confiscated by Portugal in 1916: Fernao Velos , renamed Mirandella in 1925 , scrapped in 1955 |
| Khedive | Bremer Vulkan No. 493 |
5106 | 124.8 | 11/15/1906 01.1907 |
Stranded near East London on August 15, 1910 , total loss |
| emir | Bremen volcano no.542 |
5532 | 128.0 | 01/28/1911 04/03/1911 |
Applied near Gibraltar in 1914 , used as bollards see => Hamburg (Schiff, 1911) |
| Muansa | Bremen volcano No. 549 |
5408 | 128.0 | 30.06.1911 08.10.1911 |
1914 to Buenos Aires , at the end of 1921 back in service with the DOAL |
| Rufidji | Bremen volcano no.553 |
5442 | 128.0 | 29.09.1911 09.11.1911 |
Attacked by a torpedo boat off South Africa in 1914, used as Huntscliff , sunk in the Atlantic on October 16, 1918 |
| Rovuma | Bremen volcano no.580 |
5618 | 128.1 | 07/27/1915 11/17/1917 |
not used, delivered to France in 1919: Nevada / CGT , in 1941 as Nevada II under the British flag, stranded on the west coast of Scotland on July 19, 1942 |
| Kagera | Bremen volcano no.581 |
5617 | 128.1 | 07/27/1915 11/17/1917 |
not used in 1919 extradited to France: Indiana / CGT, used 1942 under Panamanian flag, as in 1952 Assimina scrapped |
| Pangani |
Blohm & Voss No. 232 |
5735 | 127.7 | 07/15/1915 09/8/1919 |
from the pile without a name, not completed, delivered to Great Britain in 1919, to the Netherlands in 1921: Nijkerk / VNSM , broken up in 1950 |
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Kludas: Ships of the Africa Lines. P. 64.
- ↑ Kludas, p. 61ff .: Arnold Amsinck / Max Brock (1907, 4500 BRT, BrV-N ° 495/6), Aline Woermann / Lulu Bohlen (1910/11, 3100 BRT, Reiherstieg), Renata Amsinck / Elisabeth Brock ( 1912, 3700 BRT, BrV-N ° 557/8) and Carl Woermann (1910, 5700 BRT, BrV-N ° 535)
- ↑ Kludas, pp. 68ff.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Kludas, p. 69.
- ↑ in the web references to Rio de Janeiro as the first haven of refuge
- ^ RK Lochner: Battle in the Rufiji Delta , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1990, pp. 337–338.
- ^ Kludas, p. 68.
- ^ Melting head: The German merchant shipping. P. 33.
- ↑ melt head, p. 24.
- ↑ Kludas, p. 70.
- ↑ Kludas, p. 81f.
- ↑ a b Kludas, p. 56.
- ^ WL ships: Wangoni , Adolph Woermann , Watussi , Windhoek
- ↑ Hapag-ships: TSAD , Tanganyika , Nyasa , Toledo
- ^ Kludas, p. 86.
- ^ Kludas, pp. 88, 145.
- ^ Kludas, p. 102.
- ↑ Jordan: World's Merchant Fleets 1939. p. 57.
- ^ Kludas, p. 92.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. P. 316.
- ↑ Wreck site reports a dead person
- ↑ a b Kludas, p. 70.
Web links
- Page on the history of the shipping companies Deutsche Afrika-Linien, John T. Essberger, u. a. as well as the trading house C. Woermann under construction
- Operations by the Muansa, especially during World War II
- Sinking of the Muansa
literature
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford.
- Roger Jordan: The World's Merchant Fleets, 1939. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2006, ISBN 1-59114-959-2 .
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Africa Lines 1880 to 1945 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1867-4 .