Paddle steam tractor
A paddle steam tug is a paddle steamer for towing barges. In Europe, propulsion was mostly carried out using side-mounted paddle wheels , and more rarely a rear wheel. In inland shipping they are called wheel boats, in Austria they are called wheel train ships. Ever since the first paddle steam tugs appeared on the Rhine, the Halfen and Treidelknechte feared for their existence, and so from 1831 there were violent conflicts, in Sinzig and other places along the Rhine the tugs were shot at.
history
After the first steamships were successfully used for the transport of people and goods at the beginning of the 19th century, the first attempts at towing were made in the Netherlands from 1821 with the Hercules paddle steam tug built for this purpose . The ship was 53.40 m long, 6.50 m wide and could load 100 tons and pull up to six ships with a total of 350 tons of cargo. It was driven by a 200 PSi strong compound engine . From 1829 the Hercules was used regularly between Rotterdam and Cologne . In 1845, the first iron paddle steamer in Germany was built at the Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen shipyard in Duisburg-Ruhrort. The Ruhr was 62.20 m long, 6.70 m wide and was powered by a 180 PSi steam engine. The first paddle steamers still had paddle wheels with fixed blades. Compared to the later used paddle wheels with eccentric control, these wheels were narrow and had a large diameter.
While the first steam engines still worked with low pressure and the paddle wheels were driven with the balancing linkage, the later medium and high pressure steam engines , which were installed horizontally, were driven directly from the crankshaft to the paddle wheels. The speed was around 40 revolutions per minute. With the introduction of the eccentric paddle wheels, the towing force increased to 6000 to 7000 tons, the tow trains were up to 1500 m long and consisted of up to eight barges. The paddle wheels became wider, up to six meters, and their diameter narrowed. While the first paddle steamers were still relatively narrow, over the years the ships reached an overall width of almost 23 m. The draft was between 1.20 m and 1.70 m. Special types of ships, the so-called Basel drivers, were used for the journey on the Upper Rhine .
The chain and rope ships that were used on the Elbe , the Weser , the Oder , the Saale , the Main , the Neckar , the Danube, the Rhone and the Rhine competed with the wheeled tractors . The advantage of chain shipping was the considerably lower consumption of coal compared to free-moving tugs. However, the Tauer disappeared very quickly on the Rhine, as they severely hindered the rest of the navigation.
In 1929 the shipping company Franz Haniel had its paddle steam tug Franz Haniel I converted to a diesel engine drive with two engines of 500 hp each. The tugs Zürich (1921), Dordrecht (1922), Toulon (1929) and 1931 Le Rhône with turbine drive were also built.
The turbines of the paddle steamer Dordrecht made 1500 hp at 3600 revolutions per minute, which were reduced to 40 wheel revolutions with spur gears. The French wheelboat Metz was converted to coal dust firing in 1930, which resulted in fuel savings of up to 30 percent. Occasionally, rear-wheel steam tugs were also built. Unlike the American stern-wheel steamers, these had two separate paddle wheels under a fairing at the stern. The main areas of operation for these ships were the Elbe and Danube, and occasionally the Rhine.
construction
The paddle steam tugs, which had been built since the 1880s, mostly had two boilers, each with around 200 m² heating surface, the medium-pressure multiple expansion steam engines produced up to 1800 PSi. The hull, initially riveted, was 65 to 80 m long, seven to nine meters wide without wheel arches and had a draft of up to 1.90 m. The wheel arches were roughly in the middle of the ship and provided with a superstructure on which the navigation bridge was located. In front of and behind the bridge were the boilers with folding chimneys. The steam engine was installed between the boilers. In front of and behind the steam boilers were the coal bunkers, which together could hold up to 200 tons of coal, depending on the size of the ship. Up to eight towing winches (rope winches) with wire lengths of up to 1500 m were installed on the forecastle. The towing wires ran along the port and starboard under the bridge to the rope clamps and were guided over pulleys to the overflowers (overflowers are brackets that run across the stern and ensure that the wires can move freely laterally).
The coal consumption was around 70 tonnes for a trip between Rotterdam and Duisburg and back. The last wheeled tractor on the Rhine, the Oscar Huber , was converted to heavy oil operation in 1954 and got two new boilers with a total of around 500 m² heating area instead of the previous four boilers with coal firing. The crew was reduced from 15 to eight people. The heating oil consumption for a 16-day trip Duisburg – Karlsruhe and back was between 60 and 70 tons.
Rope winches
Mooring winches
Steam anchor winch
Defectors on the quarterdeck
Accommodations
In the foredeck below deck there were accommodations for the stokers, sailors, machinists and helmsmen. The master had a spacious apartment with a bedroom, saloon, office space, bathroom and toilet and his own kitchen on the stern, partly also below deck. The sanitary rooms and the kitchen for the teams were in the superstructures on both sides of the paddle wheels.
operation area
The paddle wheel tractors were used on the Rhine, Weser, Elbe and Danube. In 1935 135 wheeled boats were registered on the Rhine. During the Second World War , many paddle steamers were sunk by bombing or by their own crew. Most of the ships were lifted again and repaired. However, with the introduction of powerful diesel tugs with screw drives, the end of steam tug shipping was foreseeable. In 1967 the last paddle wheel tractor on the Rhine, the Oscar Huber , was decommissioned. Bucket-wheel tractors still operate on the Danube, but mainly with diesel engines.
Museum ships
- Oscar Huber paddle steam tug in Duisburg
- Paddle steam tug Württemberg in Magdeburg
- Paddle steam tug Ruthof / Érsekcsanád in the Danube Maritime Museum in Regensburg
Shipyards
- Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen in Duisburg-Ruhrort
- Shipyard Christof Ruthof , Mainz and Regensburg
- Gebr. Sachsenberg , Rosslau on the Elbe
- E. Berninghaus shipyard , Duisburg
Shipping companies
- Fendel Group, Mannheim, 17 paddle steam tugs
- Haniel shipping company , Duisburg, 11
- Matthias Stinnes , Mülheim an der Ruhr, 11
- Mannheim Steam Towing Company, 7
- Harpen shipping company, Duisburg-Ruhrort, 9
- Raab Karcher shipping company , Duisburg, 6
- Compagnie Génerale pour la Navigation du Rhin, Strasbourg, 22
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.geschichte-kripp.de/7.html .
- ↑ http://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?rid=sbz-002:1925:85:86::1887 Description of the turbine tug Dordrecht.
- ↑ a b Werner Böcking: From Steam to Diesel: The Rhine Tug Shipping in Transition , Boss-Verlag Kleve, 1992, ISBN 3-89413-204-3 .
- ^ Walter Michels: Unforgotten steam navigation on the Rhine and Danube , Commission publisher Hestra-Verlag Darmstadt 1967.
literature
- Walter Michels: Unforgettable steam shipping on the Rhine and Danube , Commission publisher Hestra-Verlag Darmstadt 1967
- Werner Böcking: Ships on the Rhine in three millennia , August Steiger Verlag, Moers 1979 ISBN 3-921564-14-X
- Werner Böcking: From steam to diesel: Die Rheinschleppschiffahrt im Wandel , Boss-Verlag Kleve, 1992 ISBN 3-89413-204-3
