OJD Ahlers (ship)
 The OJD Ahlers
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The OJD Ahlers of the German Steamship Company "Hansa" (DDG "Hansa"), which was put into service in 1911, was the only ship of the shipping company that was named after a person.
It was named after Oltmann Johann Dietrich Ahlers , who was the first director of the Bremen freight shipping company from 1881 until his death in 1910.
In the First World War, the service has been used in East Asia OJD Ahlers of Qingdao with coal and supplies loaded to the cruiser squadron of Count Spee sent as a supply ship. Released after two months, the ship went to Hawaii , where it was confiscated by the United States in 1917. Under different names she came back underway under the American flag. In 1935 the former OJD Ahlers was sold to Italy for demolition.
History of the ship
At the turn of the century, the German steam shipping company "Hansa" ordered the second Drachenfels , a ship with a load capacity of over 10,000 tdw. When the DDG "Hansa" changed and expanded its agreement with Hapag in 1910 , and it was now also on Hapag's liner services to East Asia and back, the "Hansa" ordered two newbuildings from Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd. for this service . in Newcastle-on-Tyne and at AG Weser in Bremen with a load-bearing capacity of over 11,000 dwt, which were completed in 1911.
The one in Bremen with building no. 183 ordered ship was launched on November 16, 1911 and was named OJD Ahlers after the first director of the DDG "Hansa", who died in 1910. She was the first ship of the Bremer Reederei to be named after a person and remained so until the end of 1981. The new building built by AG Weser was 142.78 m long, 17.82 m wide and had a draft of 8 , 27 m. The OJD Ahlers was with 7490 BRT the largest ship of the company and was able to carry 11,365 dwt. The new building was powered by a 4-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engine from the shipyard, which delivered 3000 PSi to one screw and enabled a speed of 11 knots . The crew consisted of 80 men.
The OJD Ahlers was delivered to DDG "Hansa" on December 27, 1911 and added to the shipping company's joint liner service with Hapag to East Asia. Shortly before the start of the First World War , the OJD Ahlers was in Taku , China, and was requested by the Imperial Navy to supply the cruiser squadron .
Fate of war
The OJD Ahlers was loaded from 3 August 1914 in the German colony of Tsingtao with coal and other consumer goods to supply the left in the South Pacific Squadron. On August 9, 1914, she left Tsingtau with a full load of bunker coal, provisions and water. It was the last supply ship sent from Tsingtau to join the cruiser squadron. On the way to the squadron, she met the auxiliary cruiser SMS Cormoran and the Göttingen of the North German Lloyd, which was coming from Japan with 5000 tons of coal, at around August 27, 1914 at the meeting point at Majuro Atoll at the position 07 ° 07 'N / 171 ° 22 'O meet with the East Asian Cruiser Squadron. The association at that time consisted of the armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , the auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich and seven suppliers. The small cruiser Emden had already been released into the Indian Ocean with its supplier Markomannia and the Nürnberg had been detached to send messages to Honolulu .
On September 8, 1914 took in the Christmas Island , the OJD Ahlers 's boats battleship to the two as the only provider to follow the South Seas. At Apia , however, no enemy ships were discovered. On September 17, the boats were returned to the armored cruisers at Suwarrow Atoll at position 11 ° 09 'N / 169 ° 37' E. On September 21 , the Scharnhorst was supplied with coal near Bora Bora , an island in the Tahiti group of islands, at position 16 ° 29 'S / 151 ° 44' W. On September 22nd, the armored cruisers fired at Papeete . The last meeting of the ship with the units of the cruiser squadron took place on September 26th in the Comptroller Bay of the French Marquesas , where SMS Nuremberg also arrived again. The three cruisers then ran towards South America with the supply ships Titania , Göttingen and Yorck .
On September 30, the meanwhile emptied OJD Ahlers was released from the cruiser squadron and went with the Holsatia to Honolulu. The two German ships managed to enter the neutral port shortly before the arrival of the Japanese battleship Hizen , the former Russian Retwisan . Since no safe anchorage was found there, the OJD Ahlers moved to Hilo , where the USA interned the ship in October 1914. Like seven other German ships, she was treated as a lay-up merchant ship, although the support of the German cruiser squadron was known. Five of the other ships had also supported the squadron. Only the small cruiser SMS Geier and its escort ship Locksun were treated as interned warships. In February 1917, the German ships were given a watch on board and the crews had to leave their ships. As with almost all of the more than 100 German ships in US ports, the crew of the OJD Ahlers had made their ship's engine unusable.
On April 6, 1917, the United States seized the OJD Ahlers in Hilo / Hawaii , which was soon transferred to Honolulu.
American flag service
After initial doubts as to whether it would make sense to repair the German ships, the US Navy decided to form teams to repair the damage to the machines of the more than 100 confiscated German merchant ships, which by the end of 1917 had almost all of them ready to sail again.
The OJD Ahlers was from the United States Shipping Board in Monticello renamed in San Francisco is home. In 1923 the state sold the ship to the American Ships and Commerce Navigation Corporation in New York. In the service of the line belonging to the Harriman Group (see United American Lines ), the ship also came to its old home and called at the port of Hamburg. In 1927 sold to Oregon SS Cp., New York, it was renamed Oregon and after a short time Willbabco when the Williams SS Co. took over management. In 1929 it was sold to the Pacific Atlantic SS Co. in Portland (Oregon) and renamed San Julian again .
In September 1935, the former OJD Ahlers was sold to Metallurgici della Venecia Giulia in Trieste , Italy, where demolition began in 1936.
The first 10,000 tons
| Surname | Shipyard | GRT tdw |
Launched in service |
further fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drachenfels (2) |
Wigham Richardson building number 356 |
7217 10,720 |
11/16/1899 1/3/1900 |
1919 under British flag, 1929 sold to Italy, 1933 demolished, |
|
Goldenfels (2) |
Swan Hunter build number 860 |
7463 11,460 |
22.09.1911 11.23.1911 |
British flag in 1919, buyback in 1923, Atlas shipping company America in 1936 , sunk in 1942 |
| OJD Ahlers | AG Weser Building No. 183 |
7490 11,365 |
16.11.1911 27.12.1911 |
1917 to 1935 under the American flag, demolished in Italy |
literature
- Geoffrey Bennett: The Sea Battles of Coronel and Falklands. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-01141-4 .
- 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 day. 7 volumes. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1983.
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa: From liner service to special shipping. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford, 1976, ISBN 3-7822-0105-1
- Reinhold Thiel: The history of the DDG Hansa. Volume 1: 1881-1918. HM Hauschild, Bremen, 2010, ISBN 3-8975-7477-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships , p. 68
- ↑ a b Herbert, p. 70
- ↑ Governor Jaeschke , State Secretary Kraetke , Longmoon , Holsatia , Prince Waldemar