Primus (ship, 1839)
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Primus was a paddle steamer that was built in England in 1839 . Your name stands for one of the most serious shipping accidents on the Elbe . On July 21, 1902, it sank to what is now the Hamburg district of Nienstedten . 101 people were killed.
The ship
The Primus was a paddle steamer owned by the Pickenpack & Hink shipping company in Hamburg-Cranz and was used as an excursion steamer. She was built in England in 1839 and subsequently came to Hamburg as the first steam-powered steel ship on the Elbe. From 1841 the paddle steamer commuted between St. Pauli and Harburg, and from 1853 it was used in the ferry service between Hamburg and Buxtehude. It was the first Estonian steamer owned by John Arnold Libbertz. The Primus had a crew of four; the permitted number of passengers was 192. It was powered by a two-cylinder steam engine. There were 60 seats on board (20 in the front cabin, 40 in the aft cabin) and a small canteen. Meta Hinck and Heinrich Pickenpack were the owners of the crashed paddle steamer.
The misfortune
On the night of July 20 to 21, 1902, the ship was on its way back from Cranz in the Altes Land up the Elbe to Hamburg. On board were 206 men, women and children, members of the song board "Treue von 1887" from Hamburg-Eilbek , whose annual summer excursion came to an end. This was "... the only pleasure (...) that they can afford in the whole year" (so the Hamburger Nachrichten in a report about the accident).
After crossing the river, the Primus was on the wrong side of the fairway when the sea tug Hansa turned up in front of Nienstedten . Despite the evasive maneuver, the collision occurred half an hour after midnight. The Hansa , a tender ship of the shipping company Hamburg-Amerika-Linie , rammed the Primus with a speed of twelve knots. The only lifeboat capsized.
The ships remained wedged together at first, then the wreck of the Primus came off and drifted away. The strong list of the Primus hastened its downfall; it sank within a quarter of an hour. The captain of the Hansa tried to push the wreck to the north bank of the Elbe, but was only able to push it to a distance of approx. 80 to 40 m (the sources are inconsistent here), since otherwise his ship threatened to run aground due to its draft. Driven by the Elbe stream, the Primus sank to a depth of 8 meters with a full aft ship.
Panic broke out on board: the hull of the Primus quickly filled with water. The firing of the boiler was also out of control, so smoke and fire caused additional horror. Many of the passengers were below deck and did not come out. Families were separated in a mess so that many looking for loved ones were surprised by the rapidly penetrating water.
The crew of the Hadag steamer Delphin IV rescued the shipwrecked Primus . Even the crew of the Hammonia , who were in sight, were able to pull some people onto deck.
The nineteen-year-old waiter Emil Eberhard from Eilbek rescued five passengers from the ship's hull, but then drowned himself trying to save more lives. Another savior who paid with his life was the stoker Wilhelm Steffens; his gravestone is in the cemetery in Nienstedten. A total of 101 people died.
In the early hours of the morning, the extent of the disaster became apparent. Volunteer fire brigades and medical teams recovered the bodies. They were laid out in the Nienstedter church, four fatalities were later buried in the Nienstedter cemetery.
In the period that followed, numerous dead were washed up on the banks of the Elbe. In Wedel alone, a dozen or so body finds were recorded between 1902 and 1905 that could be attributed to the accident (administrative report of the city of Wedel, reporting period 1900 to 1905). A total of 99 victims were rescued, two remained missing.
The reasons
The accident came about through a chain of several circumstances, which, however, were never fully clarified:
The Primus was hopelessly overloaded. Therefore the ship, which with more than sixty years of service was one of the oldest on the Elbe, found it very difficult to counter the current in the southern fairway. Since experience has shown that the current in the northern fairway was lower, the captain Johannes Peter should have hoped for a faster voyage there. In addition, some passengers should be left ashore in Nienstedten. Thus, at the time of the collision , the Primus was near the north bank of the Elbe. Since the ships moving downstream were on their way there, the Primus ran towards the traffic like a ghost driver . Furthermore, the ship is said to have only had a single lifeboat. After all, the number of non-swimmers in the population at the beginning of the 20th century was significantly higher than it is today, so that the actually very short distance to the shore was an insurmountable obstacle for many. Since it was a pleasure trip (there was also a band on board), a large number of the passengers were probably no longer quite sober and were accordingly restricted in their ability to act.
The Primus was also far inferior to its opponent in the accident in terms of size and performance (the Hansa had about ten times the displacement and twenty times the engine power) and was hit much harder by the impact.
The statements of the survivors contradicted each other in many details; Nevertheless, the master of the Primus , who survived the sinking, was blamed for the accident at the negotiation before the Maritime Administration .
The public reaction
.Statue.1.ajb.jpg)
The Liedertafel "Treue von 1887" was a social democratic workers' association. The drowned on board were workers, small clerks, and artisans. The shock of the misfortune could be felt throughout the German Reich, but it was felt particularly painful in Hamburg, and there especially in working class circles. However, Wilhelm II , for example, also took part in a fundraising campaign for the bereaved, which raised a sum that was almost astronomical for the time.
When the coffins with the 78 dead who were buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery (the remaining 24 were buried in local cemeteries) were carried from the port to Ohlsdorf by surviving club members, over 100,000 people, mostly with red SPD flags, lined the Streets, so that the funeral procession also became a show of force for the growing social democracy . Work was stopped in several factories. The SPD held funeral ceremonies in front of the communal grave on the anniversary of the disaster until 1932.
Salvage and dismantling
The wreck of the Primus was recovered soon after the accident. The diving company Beckedorf succeeded in putting the Primus on the lifting barges on July 24, 1902, supported by the steamers Sperber and Elbe . Onlookers watched from the bank as the Primus was towed to the Brandt shipyard in Neuhof. Experts determined that the old paddle steamer had a ramming point almost two meters deep on the starboard side; the wheel arch at the coal bunker showed severe damage. A body was recovered from the wreck.
The ship was extensively repaired and continued to operate under the name Buxtehude from 1903 . In 1909 it was scrapped .
Court hearing
The maritime administration hearing took place on July 31, 1902 in Altona. According to the judgment, the cause of the accident was human error . The court gave the captain of the Primus the main guilt, but also the captain of the Hansa .
The Association of German Captains and Officers of the Merchant Navy issued a statement on this. Although Captain Peters was guilty according to the letter of the law, he had "acted according to customs" that had not yet been objected to.
Commemoration
On the banks of the Elbe in Nienstedten , a memorial stone commemorates the misfortune donated by the Patriotic Society at “Jacob's Staircase”, which derives its name from the Hotel Louis C. Jacob and directly next to it leads from the Elbchaussee level down to the Elbe . The community grave at the Ohlsdorf cemetery was designed by the cemetery director Wilhelm Cordes himself. The focus is on a statue of Christ in memory of the victims . On the individual graves lie flat podium stones with bronze plaques that alternate with small motifs, including the two ships shortly before the collision.
literature
- Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" disaster. Documentation of a tragedy. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-86680-087-8 .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 42.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 35.
- ↑ a b c d Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 48.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 44.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 44.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, pp. 21, 45.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 83 f.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 45.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 44.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 65.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 46 f.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 73.
- ↑ a b Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 47.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 93.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Meier: The "Primus" catastrophe. Documentation of a tragedy. Erfurt 2007, p. 52.