President (Schiff, 1905)
.jpg) The President as a transporter USS Kittery (AK-2)
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The president of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), put into service in 1905, was a small passenger steamer for the shuttle service in the West Indies, which was supposed to connect smaller ports with the main lines of Hapag. The steamer built at the Seebeck shipyard in Geestemünde was transferred to the West Indies in December 1905 and remained in service until the outbreak of World War I , using the Danish St. Thomas as a base.
At the beginning of the war, the President was initially used as a radio station. Initially, the small cruisers SMS Karlsruhe and SMS Dresden were still in the Caribbean from the Imperial Navy , had to be supplied and tried to equip auxiliary cruisers like the Crown Prince Wilhelm . It was not until December 1914 that the little steamer sought refuge in San Juan and was launched. In July 1917, the US confiscated the ship and used it as the USS Kittery (AK-2) transporter between the US east coast and American bases in the Caribbean until 1933 .
In the service of HAPAG
The President , launched on August 28, 1905 at the Seebeck shipyard , had been ordered as a feeder steamer for HAPAG's West India lines. It was the shipping company's second attempt to establish such a service in one of its oldest shipping areas. As early as 1873 she had bought and stationed three small steamers to support her passenger and cargo line to the West Indies established in 1871.
Hapag operated this line with older ships and two ships newly ordered for this service, the Franconia and the first Rhenania, of just over 3000 GRT. The Alsatia and Lotharingia of almost 1200 GRT were used as feeder steamers on site . The two small steamers were the first seagoing ships ordered by Hapag in Germany. The Alsatia , built at the Reiherstieg shipyard, ran aground off Puerto Plata after just under three months and was a total loss. The Lotharingia built by Schweffel in Kiel wasn't much happier either. Hapag stopped passenger traffic in 1878 and sold its large passenger steamers to Compagnie Générale Transatlantique . The Lotharingia was still in the postal service from Saint Thomas to the Gulf of Mexico and was last used as a pure cargo ship. When she was no longer needed for these tasks because of the relatively small freighters used on the main line, she started her journey home to Hamburg on October 24, 1882 after almost nine years in the Caribbean. Since then, Hapag's first feeder steamer has been lost in the West Indies. The third feeder steamer, the Maracaibo bought in Scotland , was sold on after just two years of operation.
With the purchase of the British Atlas Line in 1901, which ran between New York and the West Indies, and the creation of a passenger line from Hamburg to Mexico in 1903, the shipping company resumed passenger traffic. On a 21-day round trip from Saint Thomas to Kingston (Jamaica) and back, the new feeder steamer was supposed to call primarily at the smaller ports of the islands of Haiti and Puerto Rico and as a connection for the combi-ships on the West India lines of Hapag from Hamburg to the then Danish one Serving Saint Thomas. For these lines, the Reiherstieg shipyard delivered the Dania and the Bavaria in 1905 . These ships of 3898 GRT each had the ability to carry 30 to 60 cabin passengers and possibly also over 600 tween deck passengers. In 1907, the ship fleet expanded considerably when Hapag took over the West India liner service of the Danish shipping company Det Østasiatiske Kompagni, including three ships ( Niederwald , Odenwald , Sachsenwald ) and then hired more new ships.
The President was for the Seebeck shipyard the fourth new construction of a small combination ship with double screws for one of the major German shipping companies - after the Nuen Tung (1900, 1341 GRT) for the Singapore - Bangkok service and the Reichspostdampfer Prinz Waldemar (1903, 3227 GRT) of the NDL for the Singapore- New Guinea - Sydney line and the Admiral von Tirpitz (1905, 2007 BRT) for Hapag. The latter came into service on the Shanghai - Tsingtau - Tientsin postal line .
On December 9, 1905, the President began the transfer trip from Hamburg to the West Indies . The 88.5 m long steamer was intended for a service speed of 12 knots, but is said to have reached over 15 knots. It had cabins for 30 to 45 first class passengers and was able to take a further 36 passengers as day guests or in the tween deck. The draft of just under four meters and the good maneuverability of the two-screw ship made it possible to call at smaller ports that had not been reached before. Until the outbreak of the war in 1914, the steamer remained in service.
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Even after the start of the war, he moved between the Leeward Islands and seemed intended to support the German cruisers. In fact, the German cruisers Dresden and Karlsruhe, which were in the Caribbean in August 1914 , had already turned south in the Atlantic. However, the President had received and repeated cable messages, radio messages and other news with her excellent radio system several times in order to inform the cruisers and the auxiliary cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm, which was equipped by the Karlsruhe . It was not until December 12, 1914, that Captain Schlimbach decided to call permanently with his ship in the neutral port of San Juan (Puerto Rico) , where the Hapag steamer Odenwald was already located, which was already supporting the takeover of coal from the Karlsruhe cruiser in this port when the war broke out would have.
On April 1, 1917, the Danish islands in the Caribbean and also Saint Thomas, the de facto home port of the President , changed hands for 25 million dollars . The commander of the Danish cruiser Valkyrien handled the handover with the United States Navy . The islands became the United States Virgin Islands . The American transporter USS Hancock (1879, 8500 ts) had transferred a command of Marines , and their commander became the first US governor of the islands. When the USA entered the war on the Entente side six days later , they confiscated the German steamers Wasgenwald and Calabria lying there . The Hancock then ran to San Juan and occupied the German steamers President and Odenwald there on May 18, 1917 . On May 23, the Hancock left with some of the crews as prisoners of war, the not ready-to-go Odenwald in tow and accompanied by the President San Juan. On June 1, 1917, she arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard , where the German ships were to be prepared for use by the American Navy.
American troop carrier
On July 6, the outdated President entered service in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under the new name USS Kittery . She was to be used as a cargo and passenger ship between the USA and the American bases in the West Indies. On July 18, 1917, she left Philadelphia for her first trip on US service. It was stationed in Charleston, South Carolina and usually made a monthly tour to supply American forces in the Caribbean.
After the war, the starting point for the voyages that were still carried out was Charleston or Norfolk (Virginia) , and the Kittery called at a variety of ports. Her last mission began in the Guantanamo Bay naval station , led to Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien and then to Norfolk, where she arrived on December 21, 1932. She moved to Philadelphia January 28-30, 1933, where she was decommissioned on April 5th. The ship was handed over to the US Shipping Board without finding a new user. In 1937 the former president was then scrapped.
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume II Expansion on All Seas 1890 to 1900 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 19
- Arnold Kludas: The History of the German Passenger Shipping Volume III Leap growth 1900 to 1914 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 20
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 21
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1896 to 1918 . Steiger Verlag, 1986, ISBN 3-921564-80-8 .
Web links
- Johannes Gerhardt: Albert Ballin , Hamburg University Press, Hamburg 2009, as an online edition
- Image of a model of the President
- USS Kittery (AK-2) Attention tw. Information u. Pictures of the NDL prince
- USS Kittery (1917–1933, later AK-2), originally SS President (German Passenger-Cargo Ship, 1905)
- Kittery