Reichenfels (ship, 1903)
.jpg) The Reichenfels in Hamburg 1922
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The Reichenfels was the type ship of a series of five cargo ships of the German Steamship Company "Hansa" (DDG "Hansa"), which came into the service of the shipping company in 1903/04. It was delivered to DDG "Hansa" in 1903 by Wigham & Richardson in Newcastle . The ships were a slightly enlarged version of the previous Liebenfels class .
In 1914 the Reichenfels in Colombo was applied by the Royal Navy.
It was used as a transporter on the Entente side from 1915 as Polglass Castle . In 1921 the DDG Hansa bought back its former ship and used it again under its old name until the Great Depression. The ship was canceled from 1933.
History of the ship
Since the end of 1896 with the Neidenfels , the DDG "Hansa" procured ships of over 5000 GRT and 8000 tdw for their East India service. For many of the ports called, smaller ships were needed, so that from 1902 to 1904 the shipping company also procured twelve smaller ships in three series for service to the East Indies.
The Reichenfels was the lead ship of the first series of five ships. It was created like the sister ship Rabenfels at Wigham & Richardson in Newcastle, the main supplier of new construction to the Bremen shipping company. The three other ships in the series were supplied by German shipyards.
The Reichenfels , built under construction number 406, was launched on September 7, 1903. With a total length of 122.83 m and a width of 15.74 m, it was 4 m longer and slightly wider than the Ehrenfels of the Liebenfels class that preceded it with hull number 405 . With the same draft, a 4-cylinder quadruple expansion machine of 2000 PSi corresponding to the previous model enabled a speed of 11 knots (kn). The Reichenfels was measured with 4743 GRT and had a carrying capacity of 7023 tdw. In October 1903 the ship was delivered. It was named after the Reichenfels castle ruins in Thuringia.
Operation history of the Reichenfels
The Reichenfels was used on the lines of the DDG "Hansa" in the Middle East, East India and Australia. The front of the outbreak of war in German East Africa leaked SMS Königsberg tried to Reichenfels to attract, with a coal cargo of 6,000 tonnes on the way from Aden was to India was. The Reichenfels did not receive the radio messages from Königsberg and ran on to Colombo without knowing the outbreak of war, where it arrived on August 5th and was confiscated. The coal load of the Reichenfels would certainly have made a more effective cruiser war possible for the small cruiser, which had arrived in the sea area off Aden with a small stock of bunkers.
In 1915 the confiscated Reichenfels was made available to the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Co Ltd and renamed Polglass Castle .
In and near Colombo the sister ships Trifels (from 1916 Polvena ) and Moltkefels (from 1914 Kandy ) were raised, which were then used like the Polglass Castle on the Entente side. The sister ship Rabenfels , confiscated in Port Said , was converted into a seaplane carrier and used as HMS Raven II and from March 16 to June 10, 1917 in the Indian Ocean to search for the German auxiliary cruiser Wolf (ex Wachtfels of the DDG "Hansa"). During this mission she had a Sopwith Baby and two Short 184s on board.
The class lost out in the war in 1917 with the Polvena ex Trifels, sunk by a German submarine, and the Trautenfels , which was stranded off Hong Kong in 1918 and had been confiscated from Thailand when Yiam Samud had an accident.
On December 6, 1921, the DDG "Hansa" bought back the former Reichenfels and used it again as Reichenfels for the Persian Gulf, India and Burma. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the now older ship was launched in Bremen on March 4, 1930. In February 1933 it was sold to Deschimag, Werk AG "Weser" in Bremen for demolition, and from December 1933 it was scrapped there.
Another ship with the name Reichenfels took part as a freighter in the Africa campaign and transported in convoy z. B. from Genoa tanks, guns and jeeps for Rommel's army to Africa. It was sunk by the British in June 1942 in the Mediterranean on its way to Africa with a full load of ammunition and equipment.
The Reichenfels- class cargo ships
| Surname | Shipyard | GRT tdw |
Launched in service |
further fate |
|
Reichenfels (1) |
Wigham & Richardson building no. 406 |
4743 7023 |
7.09.1903 10.1903 |
Confiscated in Colombo in 1914 : Polglass Castle , bought back on December 6, 1921, Reichenfels again , broken up in 1933; |
|
Raven Rock (1) |
Wigham & Richardson building no. 407 |
4749 7164 |
November 5, 1903 December 21, 1903 |
Confiscated in Port Said in 1914 , HMS Raven II seaplane transporter in 1915 , Ravenrock in 1918 , sold to Japan in 1923: Heiyei Maru No. 7 , Kenei Maru , January 12, 1945 sunk by American planes; |
|
Trifels (3) |
Joh. C. Tecklenborg building no. 195 |
4714 6880 |
5.03.1904 28.04.1904 |
Interned in Colombo in 1914 , 1916: Polvena , October 17, 1917 torpedoed northeast of Ushant by U 53, torpedoed again and sunk by UC 79 ; |
|
Trautenfels (1) |
Flensburger SG building no. 237 |
4781 7100 |
5.03.1904 30.04.1904 |
Interned in Bangkok in 1914 , confiscated in July 1917: Yiam Samud , stranded off Hong Kong in April 1918 , total loss; |
|
Moltkefels (1) |
Flensburger SG building no. 240 |
5015 7710 |
07/23/1904 08/25/1904 |
Applied before Colombo in 1914: Kandy , sold to Greece in 1921: Vasilevusa , 1927: Kaloudo , demolished in 1934; |
Web links
literature
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa - from liner service to special shipping , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1976, ISBN = 3-7822-0105-1
- Reinhard Karl Lochner: Battle in the Rufiji Delta , 1987, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-453-02420-6
Individual evidence
- ^ Dates of the Reichenfels
- ^ Dates of the Ehrenfels
- ↑ Herbert: Kriegsfahrten Deutscher Handelsschiffe, p. 84
- ↑ Lochner: Kampf im Rufiji Delta , p. 95