North Coke
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The Nordcoke was a cargo ship with, for her time, very advanced steel hatch covers .
history
The bulk carrier Nordcoke was built in 1936 by the Lübecker Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft , Lübeck , on behalf of the shipping company Norddeutsche Kohlen- und Kokswerke AG in Hamburg . The ship was launched under construction number 356 in the summer of 1936. In December 1936 the ship was delivered to the shipping company. After the steamer Nordcoke was in service to the satisfaction of the shipping company until the beginning of the Second World War , it was transferred to the Nordic Transport and Shipping Company in Hamburg in 1939 and later renamed Nordlicht in 1939 .
In May 1945, the Northern Lights were confiscated by the British Ministry of War Transport , brought under the management of James Westoll Limited with the home port of London and, after being renamed Empire Conwear in October 1945, initially launched . In 1946 the ship was handed over to the Soviet government , registered in Arkhangelsk and named Armavir .
After it was passed on to Poland in 1947 and renamed Kolno with its home port of Gdynia , it was initially continued to be operated by Żegluga Polska , transferred to the newly established state-owned Polskie line Oceaniczne in 1951 and passed on to Polska Żegluga Morska in Stettin in 1960 . On March 14, 1967, the Kolno on the Odense Å had a collision with the Danish freighter Østbornholm , but could continue to operate. After a stranding in Falsterbo, Sweden on January 7, 1970, the Kolno was laid up in Swinoujscie from April 2, 1971 and was only used to generate steam. From April 1983 the ship was finally demolished.
Arrangement and function of the hatch covers
Usually holds were dry freighters until the 1950s with hatch beams closed and wooden boards, which superimposed with tarpaulins , Battens and Schalk woods seaworthy were closed. On the one hand, this required a relatively large number of deck personnel, and on the other, it took a relatively long time.
The size of the hatch openings has increased over the years, among other things due to the use of larger grippers for bulk cargo handling or the shipping of larger packages in general cargo and especially heavy cargo transport.
The steel hatch covers (the sources also speak of iron hatch covers) of the Nordcoke were divided in the direction of the transept and were initially opened halfway with the loading gear and placed on the still closed half. Thereupon the pair of hatch covers with tackles and blocks was opened and set up vertically. The hatch seal consisted of a hemp packing that was kept watertight with paraffin .
The Nordcoke's hatch openings, which were then very large at over 10 × 10 meters, should, according to the approach of Norddeutsche Kohlen- und Cokes-Werke A.-G. accelerate the cargo handling of the cargo steamer specializing in coal and ore transport. Opening and closing the hatches also only took a few minutes. Another advantage of the construction, albeit a minor one, besides the labor and time savings, was the fact that there was no storage space on deck for the numerous wooden lids that are otherwise common.
Further development
The lid construction used in the hatches of the Nordcoke was relatively quickly replaced by Mac-Gregor systems after the Second World War, the development of which began as early as the 1920s and 1930s.
The steamer Clara Blumenfeld from the same shipping company, which was built in 1910 and sunk during the war, was restored in 1950 with a rollable Mac Gregor hatch cover system with rubber seals, which turned out to be less maintenance-intensive.
After the former Nordcoke was delivered to Poland in 1947, the Szczecin shipyard Stocznia Szczecińska developed im. A. Warskiego made the Stocznia Szczecińska B-32 , their first post-war series cargo ship, which was built in 41 units.
literature
- Schmelzkopf, Reinhart: The German Merchant Shipping 1919–1939. Volume 1: Chronicle and evaluation of the events in shipping and shipbuilding. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, Hamburg 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
- Zickerow, Karl: Freight steamer Nordcoke - built for Norddeutsche Kohlen- und Kokswerke AG, Hamburg, by the Lübeck mechanical engineering company . In: Werft-Reederei-Hafen . Vol. 18, No. 5 , March 1937, p. 61-63 .
- Kloess, HK: The hatch cover according to Mac Gregor . In: Ship and Harbor . Vol. 2, No. November 11 , 1950, p. 283-285 .