Pennsylvania (ship, 1897)
.jpg) The Pennsylvania ~ 1900
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The Pennsylvania of Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), which was put into service in 1897, was for a short time the largest ship in service in the world. From March 1897 she ran regularly on the line from Hamburg to New York to bring emigrants to the USA. Pennsylvania , built by Harland & Wolff, was followed by three sister ships, Pretoria , Graf Waldersee and Patricia , which were built in German shipyards.
The Pennsylvania was launched in New York in 1914 and confiscated by the United States in 1917. Under the name Nansemond , it was used to supply American troops in Europe and, after the peace treaty, transported over 20,000 men back across the Atlantic. In 1919 it was launched and canceled in Baltimore from 1924 .
In the service of HAPAG
Launched on September 10, 1896 at Harland & Wolff in Belfast , Pennsylvania was handed over to HAPAG on January 30, 1897 and began its maiden voyage from Belfast to New York the following day . She was HAPAG's largest ship and carried the German flag. The largest ship of the Hamburg company until then was the Fürst Bismarck with 8,716 GRT, the last of the four twin-screw high-speed steamers procured by 1891. Despite the possibility of taking over 300 cabin passengers on board, the new ship and its subsequent replicas were primarily intended to serve emigrants and freight traffic. The emigrants were the human cargo to America, while on the way back the transport of goods was actually in the foreground. The ships were able to provide a transport service on a round trip for which the company's first ships would have taken years 40 years earlier.
On March 22, 1897, the first of the Pennsylvania's voyage from Hamburg via Boulogne to New York began, on which the ship remained in service until 1914. On September 24, 1902, she took over the 13-man crew of the sinking Norwegian Bark Bothnia . From 1903 onwards, Pennsylvania regularly stopped at Plymouth . In 1905, the social democratic forward expressed considerable allegations against the shipping company because of overcrowding in Pennsylvania on a departure in April. The Hamburg emigration authority checked this and refuted the allegations. The fact that the space on board was used very intensively is shown, for example, by the fact that you could only climb into the beds in the intermediate deck via the foot end. The tough competition not only led to lower prices, but also to special features that the shipping companies could advertise with. From February 1904, the Hapag steamers to North America had extra kitchens in order to be able to offer kosher meals four times a day during the crossing.
On March 8, 1910, Pennsylvania overran the Hamburg schooner Gertrud in the mouth of the Elbe . Only one man could be rescued from the six-man crew. In 1910 the Pennsylvania was modernized again. The passenger facilities were changed and could now accommodate 404 second class passengers and 2200 tween deck passengers. The measurement now resulted in 13,333 GRT.
In 1910, New York World advertised a price for transporting a mailbag from a transatlantic liner by air to Manhattan . Glenn H. Curtiss , who has been developing aircraft since 1908 and who was particularly keen on the development of seaplanes and flights over water, negotiated with Hapag in order to win this award together with the shipping company. The Canadian pilot McCurdy was supposed to take off from the traveling Empress Auguste Viktoria about 50 nautical miles from the destination, which was given a launch platform 23 m long on the bow. Due to bad weather conditions, the launch could not take place and the superstructure was rebuilt on the Pennsylvania , but this time above the stern of the ship. Here, too, there was no use, as the machine under James C. "Bud" Mars (1876-1944) suffered damage during engine tests minutes before the ship left for Europe on November 12, 1910 and could no longer be repaired. At the same time, the US Navy tried to launch an aircraft from a ship, and on November 14, 1910, the US Navy managed the first successful aircraft launch from a ship.
On July 18, 1914, the Pennsylvania Hamburg left for her last (145th) trip from Germany to New York. The outbreak of World War I leads to the ship remaining in New York Harbor. Her three sister ships were in Germany when the war broke out.
Fate of the sister ships
| Launched in service |
Surname | tonnage | shipyard | fate |
| October 9, 1897 February 8, 1898 |
Pretoria | 12800 GRT | Blohm & Voss building number 123 |
February 28, 1898 Maiden voyage to New York, March 24, 1919 delivered to the USA and used as a troop transport, in British service from 1920, sold for demolition in 1921 |
| December 10, 1898 March 18, 1899 |
Count Waldersee | 12830 GRT | Blohm & Voss building number 131 |
originally planned as Pavia , April 2, 1899 maiden voyage to New York, delivered to the USA on March 23, 1919 and used as a troop transport, in British service from 1920, sold for demolition in 1921 |
| August 25, 1894 November 8, 1894 |
Patricia | 13023 GRT | Vulcan Stettin building number 241 |
June 7, 1899 Maiden voyage to New York, March 22, 1919 delivered to the USA and used as a troop transport, in British service from 1920, canceled in 1921 |
American troop carrier
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When the United States joined the Entente in 1917, the US Shipping Board seized Pennsylvania in April and assigned it to the Army Cargo and Transport Service as the Transporter Nansemond . The ship's new name ( Nansemond ) referred to a county and river in Virginia , home of First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson . The transporter was armed with two 152 mm cannons and two 76 mm guns. The Nansemond (No. 1395) was used as a freighter to transport various goods. She transported flour, poison gas, railroad tracks, trucks and 356 mm cannons. On her last trip during the war, she transported 2000 horses to France.
After the end of the war, the ship was handed over to the United States Navy , which put the USS Nansemond into service on January 20, 1919 in Hoboken (New Jersey) . Her first round trip began on February 4th in New York with few supplies for the American troops in France, which were unloaded in St. Nazaire from February 16th . The return journey with over 5,000 returning US troops took place from February 26 to March 11, 1919 to Newport News . After another trip on this route, the remaining trips were made between Brest and New York. In the following months she made three more trips on this route, only to be decommissioned in New York on August 25th after her return. On her five trips in total, she had brought 23,376 military personnel back to the States.
Her three sister ships, which remained in Germany during the war, had to be delivered by the Germans and were taken over by the US Navy in Cowes in March and carried out some similar voyages until November.
Final fate
The Nansemond (ex Pennsylvania ) was laid up with a variety of other ships in the Hudson River . In 1924 it was sold to Baltimore for demolition.
Her three sister ships, which were still in service under the British flag in 1920, were abandoned as early as 1921.
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
- Passenger list November 11, 1905
- Passenger list August 4, 1905
- engl. Article on the flight tests also from HAPAG ships
- Article on flight intentions
- Nansemond (ID 1395) pictures
- Nansemond
- Operations of the USS Nansemond
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rothe, p. 44.
- ↑ Rothe, pp. 51, 55, 58
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Kludas, II, p. 77.
- ^ Kludas, II, p. 82.
- ↑ Rothe, p. 17.
- ↑ a b Kludas, III, p. 67.
- ↑ according to the documents in Ellis Island, however, the ship landed 3123 passengers!
- ^ Kludas, III, p. 58.
- ↑ Picture of the ramp and the plane
- ^ Kludas, III, p. 85.
- ↑ http://hamptonroadsnavalmuseum.blogspot.de/2016/11/how-one-piece-of-fod-changed-naval.html
- ^ Kludas, IV, p. 36.
- ↑ Operations of the USS Nansemond
- ↑ Kludas, IV, pp. 44f.
