Pomeranian (ship)
.JPG) Model of the ship (2013)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Pomeranian was a passenger ship put into service in 1882 , which was used from 1887 by the Canadian-British shipping company Allan Line as a transatlantic steamer on the North Atlantic and carried passengers, freight and mail between Great Britain , Canada and the United States . In 1917 the ship was transferred to the Canadian Pacific Line's fleet when the Allan Line was taken over. On April 15, 1918, the ship was sunk in the English Channel by a German submarine.
The ship
The 4,364 GRT large steamer was at the shipyard Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in the British port of Kingston upon Hull built and launched on May 6, 1882 from the stack. Consisting of iron -made hull was 116.13 meters long, 13.35 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 10.08 meters. The steamer was initially powered by a twin- cylinder compound steam engine from Earle's Shipbuilding, whose 316 nominal horsepower acted on a single propeller and allowed a speed of eleven knots (20.4 km / h). It was provided with a chimney and four masts with the rigging of a schooner and had two decks . In the passenger quarters there was space for 40 passengers in the first, 60 in the second and 1,000 in the third class.
history
The steamer was built for the Royal Exchange Shipping Company Ltd., mostly called Monarch Line , founded in 1870, and named Grecian Monarch . In the first ten years of its existence, the shipping company only operated sailing ships calling at the Mediterranean and the Far East . In 1880, however, she opened a liner service from London to New York , for which a small fleet of steamers was built. On August 13, 1882, the Grecian Monarch ran from London on her maiden voyage to New York. On her last trip on this route she set off on November 26, 1886.
In 1887 it was bought by the Allan Line as the Monarch Line was liquidated as a result of a crisis in late 1886 . The Grecian Monarch was renamed Pomeranian in the course of the takeover . The Assyrian Monarch , put into service in 1880 , also went to the Allan Line and was named Assyrian . The first voyage on the new route London– Montreal began the Pomeranian on September 8, 1887. From August 1889 the ship sailed from Glasgow via Quebec to Montreal and from April 1891 from Glasgow to New York. In February 1893 came Pomeranian at sea in a heavy storm, the bridge tore away the map room and part of the living room and the master, the second and third mate, four seamen and four passengers took the lives.
The ship was repaired in Glasgow and two of her four masts were removed. On May 11, 1893, she resumed her service on the Glasgow – Québec – Montreal route. In 1900 the Pomeranian was temporarily used as a mule truck in the Second Boer War. For this purpose, wooden stables for the animals were built between the front mast and the chimney. The ship was then returned to the Allan Line. In 1902 major renovations were carried out, in the course of which the previous machinery was replaced by new triple expansion steam engines from William Denny and Brothers , which, with 550 nominal horsepower, achieved significantly more than the previous ones and the ship a speed of twelve knots (22.2 km / h) enabled. In 1908, first class was abolished and the accommodations were converted so that only second and third class passages could be booked.
From May 6, 1905, the Pomeranian steamed from London to Montreal for seven years. On May 9, 1912, she made her first trip from Liverpool to Philadelphia . From June to December 1912 she drove from London via Saint John to Halifax . In the following years it ran again to Philadelphia and Portland .
In 1917 the Pomeranian came under the management of the Montreal based shipping company Canadian Pacific Line , the shipping division of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). A partnership between CPR and the Allan Line had already started in 1913. After a large part of the CPR fleet had been drafted for military service in 1914, the fleets of both companies merged in 1915 and formed a joint liner service, the Canadian Pacific Ocean Services (CPOS). On January 10, 1916, the decision to take over Allan Line was announced and in 1917 the shipping company ceased to exist.
Sinking
On Saturday, April 13, 1918, the Pomeranian cast off in London under the command of Captain Alexander Maxwell for a crossing to Saint John. He was responsible for a 54-strong team. A pilot was also on board. The ship had 177 tons of chalk , 129 tons of fuller's earth and 340 tons of general goods on board. There were no passengers on this trip. In the early morning of April 15, 1918, the Pomeranian zigzagged through the English Channel in calm, smooth seas . Nine nautical miles northwest of the Portland Bill headland on the southern tip of the Isle of Portland , a small promontory on the coast of the southern English county of Dorset , the steamer was sighted by UC 77 , a German submarine under the command of First Lieutenant Johannes Ries. No one noticed the submarine on board the steamer.
Although the Pomeranian was traveling at almost full speed and in a zigzag course, Ries set his submarine in position and began an attack. At 05:30 in the morning he shot down a torpedo that hit the port side of the Pomeranian near the bow . The detonation destroyed the crew quarters in the bow and tore a large hole in the hull, into which large amounts of seawater poured. This was accelerated by the forward movement of the Pomeranian . The ship leaned heavily to port and went down within a few minutes.
Of the 56 people on board, the second engineer, William Bell, was the only one who survived. Bell climbed into the crow's nest that still protruded from the water after the ship sank in shallow water. Four hours later he was rescued from the yacht Lorna and taken to Weymouth . Destroyers of the Royal Navy , the area searched from within a radius of 20 miles, but found neither corpses nor lifeboats or rafts. The British Admiralty assumed that most of the crew members had perished directly as a result of the torpedo hit in the crew quarters.
The wreck of the Pomeranian lies at the coordinates 50 ° 33 ′ 34 ″ N , 2 ° 41 ′ 20 ″ W at a depth of 29 to 39 meters and is in two Parts broken. It is listed to starboard on sandy and rocky ground and is surrounded by a field of debris. The ship's bell has already been recovered.
Web links
- The Pomeranian in the Miramar Ship Index
- Technical data, chronology of the routes and a photo of the Pomeranian
- Extract from the timetable and some details from the ship's history
- The Pomeranian in the submarine database
- Information on the condition of the wreck
- Report in the New York Times of August 22, 1887 on the acquisition of the Grecian Monarch and the Assyrian Monarch
- Report in the New York Times of 27 June 1918 on the sinking of the Pomeranian (English)