Pitlochry (ship)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pitlochry [pɪtˈloxrɪ] was a four-masted steel barque built in Dundee , Scotland in 1894 for the F. Laeisz shipping company . In 1913 she sank after an accident with the steamer Boulama south of the entrance to the English Channel on the journey to Chile .

description

The big Windjammer , named after the town of Pitlochry in Scotland , had the then standard in accordance with a steel hull made of riveted plates on steel frames and a collision bulkhead in the bow. It was built as a three-island ship, the midship island of which is also known as the Liverpool House. Three large hatches, one in front of the mizzen mast and one in front of and aft (behind) the midship island led to the holds, plus a smaller one in front of the foremast . Four lifeboats were stowed in pairs behind the foremast and in front of the mizzen mast on davits .

Typical of a sailing ship from Great Britain's shipyards was the stern wheelhouse with a quarter-circle roof. She ran a modern standard rig with double Mars and Bramrahen , above royalrahen . Some sources describe the tall ship with an anniversary rig, i.e. without a royal sail, which can be refuted by photos. The mizzen mast was a pole mast (lower mast and mizzen pole one piece) with two gaffs .

The hull was painted in the Laeisz colors of black, white and red: black the surface ship with the midship island set off in white, white the water pass and red the underwater ship. She was a very fast, beautiful ship, excellently constructed; Line and sail plan, deck layout and rigging were optimally coordinated, as captain Robert Miethe put it. Her captains attested her excellent sailing characteristics, and she reacted quickly and easily to the rudder. The captains JHH Nissen and Robert Miethe led them like a big sailing yacht.

The four-masted barque was originally built by Alexander Stephen and Sons in Dundee on their own account, Carl Laeisz bought it from the slipway . It was measured at 3,111 GRT , could hold up to 4,724 t / 4,650 ts (1 ts ( ton ) = 1.01605 t) of freight and was the largest FL unit when it was commissioned.

history

Like the vast majority of Laeisz sailors, she drove - with the exception of a world tour in 1898 under Captain Georg Schlueter via Philadelphia , Hiogo , Valparaíso - exclusively on the "saltpeter route" Europe - Chile and made many good and fast trips. The legendary sailing ship captain Robert Hilgendorf was her first skipper and sailed her on her maiden voyage to Valparaíso and via Iquique with a cargo of saltpetre back to Hamburg, where he took over the five-masted barque Potosi .

As one of the few tall ships, the Pitlochry made the journey from the English Channel to Valparaíso in 58 days (1902) under captain Jochim Hans Hinrich Nissen. On 24./25. In September 1905, the large barque suffered a partial mast loss under Captain Jessen (jib boom, foremast, main mast marshals and Kreuzbramstenge) in a severe hurricane off Cape Horn and sailed back to Montevideo under emergency rigging . After ten days, the British steamer Junna hooked the sailor on October 5, 1905 and towed him to the port of Montevideo for repairs.

In 1908, Captain Robert Miethe took over the large barque. When he crossed the English Channel in the same year in the best weather and the English seaside resort of Brighton came into view, Captain Miethe headed for the coast and changed course by jibing at the last moment - a few ships' lengths from the famous pier full of people . The bathers could hear the commands as well as the running of the sailors on deck and were enthusiastic about the maneuver of a huge windjammer sailing towards them under full gear and then turning away. They cheered and clapped so loud that in return the crew on board could clearly hear the applause. Miethe said that such an opportunity to operate so spectacularly close to the coast in the best sailing weather would only occur once in a lifetime. In 1909, the ship again proved its sailing characteristics under Captain Robert Miethe, who was unable to get a pilot in Cuxhaven due to an upcoming storm with the large barque , could neither turn (storm) nor jib (no room) to sail back to the open sea, and So the Elbe drove up to Hamburg past three of the five lightships at the time and found the last anchorage in front of the harbor in fog and dusk . The following day, the captains of the steamers weathering the storm there were amazed to see a large four-master anchor at this point (without tug and pilot).

After 19 years of service, a circumnavigation and 23 round trips to Chile and back, she collided innocently southwest of the Isles of Scilly in the Atlantic on November 28, 1913 at position 47 ° 20 ′  N , 8 ° 6 ′  W ( approx. 300 nautical miles west of Nantes ) on the voyage to Valparaíso with the 2,613 GRT steamer Boulama of the Elder Line ( Elder Dempster & Co. / African Steam Ship Co. ) and sank after about 20 minutes. The 33-strong crew was rescued from the steamer and brought to Liverpool . Apart from the Pitlochry, the four and five masters of the Laeisz shipping company only lost the great Prussia in 1910, the Pangani in 1913 (30 dead) and the Petschili in 1919, none of them through their own fault. This made the “ Flying P-Liners ” much more reliable than other sailing ships of their time.

Ship data

literature

  • Oliver E. Allen: The Windjammers . From the series: The sailors . TIME-LIFE Books BV, Amsterdam 1981, pp. 57-59; ISBN 9-06-182-406-0
  • Hans Jörg Furrer: The four- and five-mast square sailors in the world . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Herford 1984, p. 24 (photo), 165-166; ISBN 3-7822-0341-0
  • Peter Klingbeil: The Flying P-Liner. The sailing ships of the shipping company F. Laeisz . Verlag "Die Hanse", Hamburg 1998, 2000, pp. 21-22, 136 (photo), 138/140; ISBN 3-434-52562-9
  • Hans Georg Prager: F. Laeisz - from cargo sailors to bulk carriers . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Herford 1974; ISBN 3-7822-0096-9

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Peter Klingbeil: The Flying P-Liner. The sailing ships of the shipping company F. Laeisz . Hamburg 1998 and 2000, p. 22 above (postcard around 1900) and p. 136 below (photo)
  2. ↑ Hans Jörg Furrer: The four- and five-mast square sailers of the world . Herford 1984, p. 24 (photo)
  3. ↑ Oliver E. Allen: The Windjammer . From the series: The Seafarers . Amsterdam 1981, p. 57