Pretoria (ship, 1936)
 The identical Windhoek
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The Pretoria of the German East Africa Line (DOAL) was the largest ship of the shipping company founded in 1890 for the Reichspostdampferdienst to German East Africa . Her sister ship Windhoek went to the sister company Woermann-Linie (WL). Both ships were the top ships of the German Africa Service from 1937 to 1939.
The Pretoria was in 1939 when war broke out in Germany. From the end of November 1939 she was used by the Navy as a houseboat for submarine crews and was in Pillau from December 1940 . From February 1945 she was used as a hospital ship and to evacuate the German eastern territories.
1945 in Copenhagen British war booty, it was used as a troop transport under the name Empire Doon , then Empire Orwell . From 1959 she was used as the Gunung Djati pilgrim ship between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. In 1980 the Indonesian Navy acquired the ship and initially used it as a troop transport Tanjung (also Kri Tanjung Pandan ), then as a residential ship. In 1987 the former Pretoria was scrapped.
History of the ship
In June 1935 the two German Africa shipping companies (DOAL and WL) that remained after the state reorganization ordered two 16,500 GRT 18- knot steamers from Blohm & Voss . The German Reich was very interested in the use of the ships with a capacity of 500 passengers, which were intended to attract an international audience and thus gain foreign currency, an idea that the state supervisory bodies had already pursued when promoting the East Asian express steamers ( Potsdam , Scharnhorst and Gneisenau ).
The first new building was named after the South African capital Pretoria and assigned to the German East Africa Line. The ship with hull number 506 was launched on July 16, 1936, a month before its sister ship , and was delivered on December 12, 1936. The Pretoria was 175.7 m long, had two turbine sets with gears of 14,200 shaft horsepower , the steam of which was generated in two oil-fired high-pressure boilers of the Benson type . The service speed of the new building was 18 knots. There were 152 seats in 1st class and up to 338 in tourist class to accommodate passengers. The two sister ships built almost at the same time were largely identical.
On December 19, 1936, the Pretoria began her maiden voyage to South Africa. The newbuildings were used on the main line to South Africa, which they managed 17 days from Hamburg via Rotterdam and Southampton to Las Palmas and on via Walvis Bay and Lüderitz Bay to Cape Town and were four days faster than the ships previously used. The ships then went on via Port Elizabeth , East London and Durban to Lourenco Marques , which was reached after 26 days. On the return journey, which began after two days of rest, the journey from Cape Town led directly to Europe.
The Pretoria was to run via Southampton, Lisbon and Casablanca to Cape Town and then on to Lourenço Marques. When she left Southampton on December 24th with 470 passengers and a crew of 300, she ran into a sandbank in the Solent . Five tugs hurrying to help could not be towed free again. Only after she had delivered 900 tons of water overboard and 400 tons of fuel oil to a tanker did seven tugs manage to tow the Pretoria free again on December 26th . She ran back to Southampton for an inspection and continued her journey the following day. Except for the loss of the starboard anchor, she had suffered no damage. She decided not to call at Lisbon and Casablanca in order to bring her passengers to Cape Town at the scheduled time.
Already on May 20, 1937, the Pretoria was involved in another accident when she collided with the British tanker Hekla in fog in the North Sea , which was badly damaged and lost part of its cargo. The Pretoria stayed with the Hekla until tugs arrived from Bremen to bring the British tanker to safety.
Since, as a rule, nine loading days were required in Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp when leaving the country, an eight-day advance journey to the two Benelux ports was introduced for the unloading and loading processes , which also contained an offer for German tourists as "Hansafahrten": the guests were Excursions to Delft , The Hague , Scheveningen and Amsterdam or Mechelen , Leuven , Tervuren , Brussels and Ghent as well as visits to the battlefields of Ypres and even a three-day trip to Paris are offered. After returning to Hamburg, the ships left for South Africa.
War effort
The Pretoria was in Germany when the war broke out in 1939, while the Windhoek was in Angola . From the end of November 1939, the Pretoria was used by the Navy as a residential ship for submarine crews; it was initially in Kiel , then in Neustadt / Holstein and finally from December 1940 in Pillau .
From January 25, 1945 she was used with other barges of the 1st U-Lehrdivision to evacuate the East Prussian refugees from Pillau and left the port in the first evacuation convoy with Robert Ley , Ubena and other ships. This first voyage of the company "Hannibal" was primarily used to transfer military personnel, and the additional refugees on board were only transferred from the boiler to Danzig or Gotenhafen . The Pretoria had before leaving the cruiser Emden from which the Tannenberg Memorial convicted coffins of Hindenburg taken and his wife on board and brought them to Stettin . It was then converted into a hospital ship for 2,700 wounded and marked accordingly and put into service on February 22, 1945.
The Pretoria was then used to evacuate the wounded from the eastern German territories. Until shortly before the end of the war, she almost exclusively took military personnel on board. On its eight trips across the Baltic Sea, the ship is said to have transported over 35,000 people to the west. In April 1945 she carried out two evacuations from Hela under fire. The voyages led to Copenhagen, where the ship was confiscated by the British during the surrender.
Under the British flag
The Pretoria was after the war for a while as a hospital ship in Hamburg before to Newcastle was transferred for conversion into a troopship. She was renamed Empire Doon and operated by the Orient Steam Navigation Company . In 1946 she suffered severe boiler damage in the Mediterranean and was towed from Port Said to Falmouth by the naval tug Bustler . She then lay up in front of Southend on Sea . In May 1947, the Empire Doon was relocated to Southampton and provided with a new drive system at John Thorneycroft & Co ; at the same time, the facility was optimized for a troop transport. The turbine system was changed and the German Benson boilers were replaced by Foster Wheeler boilers, which reduced the maximum output to 10,000 hp and 16 knots. The ship now offered space for 1491 soldiers in three classes. After difficulties with the modified machinery, the ship came back into service in January 1950 and was renamed Empire Orwell . The first trip after the renovation began on January 17th to Tobruk and Port Said. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, the ship brought troops to Cyprus and was then involved in the evacuation of Allied troops from the Suez Canal zone. In her last year of service as a troop transport, the Empire Orwell suffered severe storm damage in the North Atlantic and had to be brought to Lisbon by a salvage tug. The ship also transported British troops back home from the Far East. At the end of the year, the ship was chartered to a Pakistani company and transports Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.
In November 1958, the Alfred Holt & Co shipping company bought the ship and had it converted by Barclay Curle & Co Ltd in Glasgow into a pilgrim ship of 17,891 GRT that could carry 106 first class passengers and 2,000 simple pilgrims. A mosque was installed on the ship , which also had a signpost to Mecca. The former Pretoria was named Gunung Djati after a saint from Java . The ship, now measured at 17,851 GRT, was managed by the Ocean Steam Ship Co in Liverpool . On March 7, 1959, the Gunung Djati ran from Great Britain to Djakarta to take up service from there.
Service under the Indonesian flag
In 1962, the ship was sold to the Indonesian government without changing the area of operation. Despite multiple changes of ownership, the ship remained in use as Gunung Djati between Indonesia and Jeddah . From April to October 1973 the ship was completely overhauled in Hong Kong , during which the geared turbines and the boiler system were replaced by MAN diesel with 12,000 HP.
In 1979 the ship was bought by the Indonesian Navy and renamed Tanjung Padan . It could be used as a troop transport, but remained as a residential ship at the Tanjung Priok base .
In 1987 the former Pretoria in Taiwan was scrapped.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schmelzkopf: Handelsschiffahrt , p. 187
- ↑ melt head, p. 206
- ^ Prager: Blohm & Voss , p. 165
- ↑ a b c Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. V, p. 96.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Kludas: Afrika-Linien, p. 96
- ↑ a b Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. V, p. 98.
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , p. 520
- ↑ Schwendemann: Grand Admiral Dönitz lied
- ^ Rohwer, p. 530
- ↑ Kludas: Afrika-Linien, p. 97
Web links
- Page on the history of the shipping companies Deutsche Afrika-Linien, John T. Essberger, u. a. as well as the trading house C. Woermann under construction
- Pilgrim ships
- GUNUNG DJATI
- HMRT Bustler
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Africa Lines 1880 to 1945 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1867-4 .
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 21
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Vol. V An era comes to an end from 1930 to 1990 , writings of the German Maritime Museum, volume 22
- Hans Georg Prager: Blohm & Voss Koehler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-78220-127-2 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-0097
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . Steiger Verlag, Moers 1987, ISBN 3-921564-97-2 .
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Die deutsche Handelsschiffahrt 1919–1939 , Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X