ORP Sławomir Czerwiński
 The Sławomir Czerwiński still called Lodz around 1930
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The ORP Sławomir Czerwiński was a cargo and passenger ship built in 1907 , which sailed under the British flag as Kovno and then under the Polish flag as Lodz until 1928 . The Polish Navy bought the ship in 1932 and used it as a submarine depot until it was scrapped in 1937 .
Construction and technical data
In 1907 the British shipping company Ellerman Lines ordered the steamer from Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Kingston upon Hull . There the ship was launched on April 16, 1907 and was christened Kovno , named after the city of Kaunas in Lithuania . Her length was 96.9 meters, she was 12.5 meters wide, had a draft of 5.6 meters and was measured with 2450 GRT and 1477 NRT. The drive consisted of a three-cylinder, triple expansion machine that achieved 1,500 hp and acted on one screw. With that she reached a top speed of 10 knots. The crew included 40 officers and men. In addition to the freight, up to 200 passengers could be carried.
history
British cargo ship Kovno 1907–1928
After delivery by the shipyard, Hull became the home port of the Kovno . For the shipping company it was the second ship of this name: The first Kovno was a 1700 ton steamer built in 1882 and sold to Sweden in 1903. The shipping company, which after taking over the Wilson Line from 1917 onwards Ellerman's Wilson Line Ltd. was called, the new Kovno mainly used on the route Norway - Great Britain. There she operated between Hull and Kristiania (from 1624 to 1924 the name of Oslo ) and Kristiansand . The shipping company also used the ship for journeys between Hull and Danzig . During the First World War, the ship was attacked by German forces on February 18, 1917, but was able to escape. In 1928 the shipping company sold the ship.
Polish cargo and passenger ship Łódź 1928–1932
The buyer of the ship was the newly founded shipping company Polbryt (also known as Polbrit ) in December 1928 , in which the Polish state shipping company Żegluga Polska held 75 percent and Ellerman's Wilson Line 25 percent of the shares. Polbryt had bought four ships from Ellerman's Wilson Line - in addition to the Kovno , which was renamed Łódź , the Rewa , the Warszawa and the Premjer . The shipping company served as an emigration line from Poland to Great Britain, where passengers for the Atlantic passage were transferred to larger ships.
Gdynia became the ship's new home port . In the next few years the Łódź traveled regularly on the route from Danzig and Gdynia to Hull and London . There the big shipping companies like Cunard Line and the White Star Line took over the emigrants for the onward journey to America. The Łódź carried up to 200 passengers in the simplest of quarters on these journeys. After the introduction of immigration restrictions in the United States in 1931, the number of passengers also fell, the shipping company reduced its capacities and sold the Łódź to the Polish Navy on October 19, 1932.
Submarine depot ship ORP Sławomir Czerwiński of the Polish Navy 1932–1937
The purchase by the navy was funded through a public collection from students and teachers in schools in Poland. The ship should therefore originally be called Dar Szkoły Morskiej ("Gift of the Seafaring Schools "), but was named after the recently deceased Minister of Education Sławomir Czerwiński (* October 24, 1885 - † August 4, 1931).
With the commissioning on November 15, 1932, the Sławomir Czerwiński was assigned to the submarine squadron, consisting of the boats ORP Ryś , ORP Wilk and ORP Żbik , in the naval port of Gdynia. There she replaced the decommissioned sailing training ship ORP Lwow , which was then used up as a depot ship until it was dismantled. In Gdynia, the Sławomir Czerwiński served as the squadron's unarmed accommodation and depot ship, as the barracks and port facilities were still under construction. She took on this task as a stationary submarine escort ship for the next five years until 1937. In autumn 1937 the barracks and port facilities were completed and the - meanwhile worn out - Sławomir Czerwiński became superfluous. On October 6, 1937, she was removed from the list of fleet units and then scrapped.
literature
- Maciej Neumann: Flota II Rzeczypospolitej i jej okręty [The fleet of the Second Republic and its ships] , Wydawnictwo LTW, Łomianki 2013, ISBN 978-83-7565-309-0 .
- Stanisław M. Piaskowski: Okręty Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1920–1946 [The Ships of the Republic of Poland 1920–1946] , Planów album, Warsaw 1996, ISBN 83-900217-2-2 .
Web links
- Lloyd's Register (1931) , accessed July 24, 2018
- ORP Sławomir Czerwiński - Photos and history of the ship at dobroni.pl (Polish), accessed on July 24, 2018
- ORP Sławomir Czerwiński - technical data and history of the ship , at graptolite.net (Polish), accessed on July 24, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ ORP is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ↑ a b c d Piaskowski, p. 33
- ↑ a b c d e Neumann, p. 220
- ↑ cf. Shipping company info Wilson-Line at theshipslist.com
- ^ Attacks on British merchant and fishing ships in 1917 at naval-history.net
- ↑ ORP Sławomir Czerwiński - photos and history of the ship at dobroni.pl
- ↑ cf. Neumann, p. 206