Princess Charlotte of Prussia

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Princess Charlotte of Prussia
The steamship Princess Charlotte of Prussia.jpg
Ship data
flag Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Prussia
Ship type Paddle steamer
Shipyard John Barnett Humphreys , Pichelsdorf
Launch 1816
Commissioning October 27, 1816
Whereabouts Wrecked in 1824
Ship dimensions and crew
length
41.44 m ( Lüa )
width 5.88 m
Machine system
machine Steam engine
Machine
performance 		14 HP (10 kW)
Top
speed 		4 kn (7 km / h)
propeller 1 central paddle wheel
Transport capacities
Permitted number of passengers 300

The Princess Charlotte of Prussia was the first steamship built in Germany . It was built in 1816 in Pichelsdorf near Spandau by the Scottish engineer John B. Humphreys Jr. and provided passenger and postal services on the Havel and Spree in 1817 and 1818 .

Prehistory and construction

On October 12, 1815, Humphreys received a patent or privilege from the royal Prussian government to use the “peculiar method of using steam engines to drive ship's vessels” in Prussia. The patent was initially limited to ten years, but was later extended until the end of 1831. He put on his shipyard or “steam boat construction site” on the Havel near Pichelsdorf. There, on September 14, 1816, the Princess Charlotte of Prussia was launched, which had been laid down on June 21. The ship was named after the eldest daughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. , the later Russian Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

The ship

The ship was a mid- wheel steamer 41.44 meters long and 5.88 meters wide. It was driven by a paddle wheel located in the middle with eight blades and a width of 1.22 meters. The diameter corresponded roughly to the height of the trunk. This construction, which was chosen in contrast to the usual side paddle steamers, guaranteed safe passage under narrow bridges, but proved to be not very effective as a drive system. In order to create space for the paddle wheel, the hull was particularly wide and provided with two keels . The drive consisted of a 14 HP (10 kW) low-pressure steam engine from Boulton & Watt delivered from England , which enabled the ship to travel at a speed of approx. 4 knots or 7.5 km / h when fully occupied. This “uncommon speed”, as a respected Berliner Wochenschrift wrote, was bought at the cost of the immense coal consumption of around 250 kilograms per hour of driving. The chimney was 9 meters high. The ship offered space for up to 300 passengers. There were spacious, well-furnished cabins under the fore and aft decks, and windows were inserted in the side walls instead of portholes to let more light into the cabins, and there was also a restoration on board.

On October 27, 1816, Princess Charlotte ran with 160 passengers on board for her maiden voyage from Pichelsdorf to Pfaueninsel and back. On November 2, 1816, King Friedrich Wilhelm III. even a tour on the Havel.

In May 1817, Humphreys and his father, a merchant operating in Hamburg , founded the Royal Prussian Patented Steamship Company in Berlin , which also opened an office in Hamburg , and in June 1817 regular passenger service with Princess Charlotte between Berlin ( Tiergarten ) , Charlottenburg , Spandau and Potsdam . The ship was also in the service of the royal mail. The economic success failed to materialize, however, and after just two years, in October 1818, the Princess Charlotte stopped her trips. It was sold and scrapped in 1824. (The liner service between Berlin and Hamburg set up in 1817 with two other ships of the Royal Prussian Steamship Company was also unsuccessful and discontinued in 1821/22.)

A model of the ship is in the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven and German Museum of Technology Berlin . The German Federal Post Office issued a postage stamp with the image of the ship in 1975.

  • The Princess Charlotte on a Notgeldschein 1921

  • The Princess Charlotte on a postage stamp from 1975

  • The drive with center wheel on the model of Princess Charlotte in the German Maritime Museum

  • Rudder arrangement of Princess Charlotte in the German Maritime Museum

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The first steamship built by a German shipbuilder was the Die Weser , which was launched on December 30, 1816 in Vegesack .
  2. ↑ Hans-Joachim Uhlemann: 250 kilograms of coal per hour: The first steamship drove on the Havel in 1816 . In: Berliner Zeitung , January 8, 1994
  3. ↑ Immo Sievers: Prussians spied in England: A Pichelsdorf shipyard built the first German steamship 180 years ago . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 17, 1996