Norge (ship, 1881)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
The Norge was a steamship put into service in 1881 under the name Pieter de Coninck , which originally belonged to a Belgian shipping company , but was sold to the Danish Thingvalla Line in 1889 and renamed Norge . It transported passengers and cargo from Copenhagen via Oslo to New York . On June 28, 1904, the Norge ran on the shallows Hasselwood Rock near the rocky island Rockall in the North Atlantic and sank; of the 795 people on board, 625 (according to another representation 635) were killed. The sinking of the Norge was the largest shipping disaster in the North Atlantic to date and was only surpassed by the Titanic in 1912 . It is also considered to be one of the worst shipping accidents in the history of emigration in the early 20th century.
history
The Norge was commissioned by the Belgian company Theodore C. Engels & Co. from Antwerp and built by the Scottish shipyard Alexander Stephen and Sons on the River Clyde . She ran under the name of Pieter de Coninck from the pile , her home port was Antwerp. It had two steel decks , six bulkheads and a double floor . It could accommodate a total of 1100 passengers in three price categories, with the focus on third class with a capacity of 900 people. On June 18, 1881, the finished ship was handed over to the White Cross Line, a Belgian shipping company based in Antwerp. A week later, on June 25, 1881, the ship set out in Glasgow on its maiden voyage to New York.
In 1889 the Pieter de Coninck was bought by the Danish shipping company Dampskibs Selskabet Thingvalla (better known as the Thingvalla Line ) and renamed Norge . The Thingvalla Line was founded in 1880 and had its headquarters in Copenhagen. At the turn of the century she was one of the dominant shipping companies in terms of the wave of emigration from Scandinavia to the United States . The Pieter de Coninck was rebuilt that same year and used on the route Stettin - Copenhagen - Oslo - Kristiansand - New York .
In the following years there were repeated accidents. On January 3, 1890, the ship ran aground off Oslo in thick fog . There were no fatalities, but the ship leaked and the passengers had to be split between two other ships. From January 13th, the repair work on the hull of the steamer took place in Gothenburg. On August 2 of that year, collided Pieter de Coninck in New York Harbor with the Advance . The first fatal incident occurred on August 20, 1898, when the Pieter de Coninck rammed and sank the Coquette fishing boat at the Newfoundland Bank , killing 16 of the 25 fishermen on board. In 1898 the ship changed hands again when the Thingvalla Line was taken over by the Danish shipping company Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (DFDS) and the new Scandinavian American Line division formed. The Norge now transported passengers from Copenhagen via Oslo to New York.
Downfall
On the way to Rockall
On Wednesday, June 22, 1904, the steamer left Copenhagen for another crossing to New York. Captain Valdemar Johannes Gundel (1864–1931), who had commanded the Norge since 1901, was in command. There were 68 crew members and 405 passengers on board , including 134 children. Two days later, on June 24th, the Norge reached the port of Oslo , where 232 more passengers came on board. On the same day she entered Kristiansand, where 90 travelers boarded. A safety inspection by Norwegian authorities also took place here. A rescue exercise was not carried out during the entire trip. There were now a total of 795 people on the ship, in addition to the 68 crew members 727 passengers, including 200 children under 12 years and 23 infants. Most of the passengers came from Scandinavia and Russia, but there were also a few Germans, British and Americans among them.
After leaving Kristiansand, the Norge steamed in a north-westerly direction towards the Pentland Firth , a strait between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands. The actual course would have been circumnavigating the rocky island of Rockall to the north , but Captain Gundel opted for a more southerly course. He had done this several times in the past and saw no danger in it. He assumed that when the weather was good and the sea was calm, cliffs would be noticed in good time and they could be avoided. He also wanted to pass the rocky island in time for dawn so that the passengers could see it at breakfast in the rising sun. Therefore, from the evening of June 27th , the Norge headed for Rockall at top speed.
However, Captain Gundel hadn't taken into account the strong current that night. She put the Norge on a course 23 miles north of what the captain was supposed to take. In the early morning of June 28th, Gundel decided to change course to the south, but could not determine his position exactly due to the cloudy sky and heavy fog. When he was sure he was going south enough not to hit the rocks, he turned west again.
Collision and sinking
A quarter of an hour after the last course change, at 7:45 a.m. on June 28, the Norge hit the Hasselwood Rock, which belongs to Rockall, and ran aground. Since the ship moved with the waves, the ship's command assumed that you were not stuck on the reef, but had just grazed it. Gundel ordered "full power back" to get his ship off the rocks, but it was no use anymore. The leak battered steamer was so badly damaged that immediately in several places seawater into the hull spilled and he flip side got. Gundel ordered the lowering of the lifeboats , of which there weren't enough for everyone on board.
The conditions on the sinking ship were catastrophic. The boat deck was crowded in seconds with panicked passengers looking for life jackets and rushing to the boats. Many of them only wore nightgowns or were half-naked. Since many boats were stormed by the crowds before they were even ready to be lowered, officers used pistols to keep people at bay.
One lifeboat sank after launching because it was completely overcrowded, while another capsized after it hit the water. Another was still fully occupied in the davits when the Norge sank and threw its occupants into the sea. 20 minutes after the collision, the Norge sank with hundreds of people on board. After the ship's sinking, a large carpet of corpses, swimmers, rubble and broken lifeboats spread over the sinking site. Only five of the eight boats were successfully released from the ship. Captain Valdemar Gundel stayed on the bridge until the end and was pulled out of the water by one of the boats and rescued after the sinking.
rescue
The five lifeboats drifted far apart and some were only found days later. The scantily clad people had to endure rain and heavy seas and had hardly any water or provisions on board. Several passengers in the boats died in the days at sea before rescue arrived. Boat no. 3 with 28 people on board was already recovered on June 29th by the British trawler Salvia , the survivors were brought to the English port city of Grimsby . The 71 people in No. 1, including the captain, were found by the German patrol boat Energie on July 3 and brought to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides . On the same day No. 8, which was designed for 23 people, was discovered with 35 survivors on board by the cargo steamer Cervona of the British Cairn Line, which also brought the occupants to Stornoway. In the early morning of July 4th, the Scottish fishing boat Largo Bay discovered the 17 castaways in boat no. 5 and brought them to Aberdeen . The schooner Olga Pauline brought 19 people from boat no. 4 to the Faroe Islands on July 5th .
Of the total of 795 people on board the Norge , 625 were killed. 170 people were rescued, 146 of them were passengers and 24 were crew members. 117 men, 16 women and 37 children survived. Above all Norway and Denmark were affected by the tragedy, as most of the passengers came from there. It was the worst shipping accident on the North Atlantic to date. Among those rescued was 18-year-old Herman Wildenvey , who later became one of the most famous Norwegian poets of the 20th century. He dealt with the misfortune in his autobiography Vingehesten og verden (My Pegasus and the World) , published in 1937 .
Danish investigation
While the passengers continued their journey to the United States, the surviving crew members of the Norge were brought to Copenhagen. The Danish Maritime Court, chaired by court president JNA Madvig, wanted to hear them and find out how the accident had come about. The seaman Carl Mathiesen was the first member of the crew to arrive in Copenhagen on July 7th. Madvig interviewed him in private that same day in a closed session. The court advisors, Admiral Bruun and Captain Torm, were only present from the second hearing on July 10th. Madvig decided to keep the entire process private to shut out the press, protect the shipping company and avoid scandal. Thus the entire investigation was in his hands, the press relied on the court minutes.
Since 224 Norwegian citizens had died in the accident, the Norwegian Ministry of Shipping and Navigation, headed by Magnus Andersen, sent a questionnaire to the Danish court.
The official hearings and investigations were eventually carried out by the Danish Ministry of Justice and dragged on for several years. The result was that a “useless team” and “a lot of bad luck” led to or contributed to the accident. The captain and his crew were named as the main responsible. The court cited the following points as wrong decisions and causes of misfortune:
- The decision to pass Rockall south. This route was more dangerous than the northerly course, and south of Rockall many ships operated east. There was therefore a risk of collision with another ship.
- The currents in the Pentland Firth, which were known to be very strong, were not considered.
- The decision to steam past Rockall to show the passengers. The court called it " Russian Roulette with the Lives of 800 People".
- Performing a four-line bearing in a sea area with strong currents. The ship's management should have known that this type of location determination is not feasible in waters with currents.
- Failure to adequately prepare the crew for possible emergency situations. There had been no emergency or rescue exercises, and the crew members were not familiar with the safety equipment on the ship.
The shipping company DFDS and steam shipping in general were also denounced. DFDS was accused of being more interested in their profits than in the well-being of the passengers and therefore only having installed the bare essentials of life-saving equipment on the ship. In addition, the shipping company had not learned from previous comparable accidents. Maritime experts also called for a revision and improvement of the superficial safety regulations on passenger ships.
Reverberation in the press
The events surrounding the sinking of the Norge , in particular the allegations against the captain and crew, elicited a lively echo, especially in the New York newspapers, as the news broke in the middle of the investigation against the owner of the paddle steamer General Slocum , whose fire exceeded 1000 Cost people their lives.
literature
- Edward T. O'Donnel: The Outing . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 3-596-17449-X .
- Per Kristian Sebak: Titanic's Predecessor: The S / S Norge Disaster of 1904 . Seaward Publishing, 2004, ISBN 82-996779-0-4 (English).
- Liv Marit Haakenstad: Utvandringen 1825–1930 . Orion Forlag, 2008, ISBN 978-82-458-0848-3 (Norwegian).
Web links
- Website of the Norge
- The story of the Norge ( Memento from May 31, 2019 in the Internet Archive )
- The Norge in the Clydebuilt Ships Database ( Memento from January 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- The Norge in the Norway Heritage online database
- Short entry in Maritime Quest
- Summary of the sinking ( memento of June 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- Illustrated report on a Norwegian website
- Information about the shipping company in The Ships List
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Severin Carrell: Rockall - a timeline. In: The Guardian . Guardian News & Media Limited, May 28, 2013, accessed April 19, 2015 .