Heron (ship, 1938)

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The Reiher was a combination ship built in 1938 by the German Argo shipping company Richard Adler & Co. , which was used by the Navy as a command ship during World War II and was transferred to Belgium as a reparation payment after the war . It ended its career in the service of two Central American shipping companies and was scrapped in 1968.

Construction and technical data

Side view of the half-sister ship Habicht

The ship was on 27 June 1938 on the shipyard of Howaldtswerke AG in Kiel with the hull number 773 of the stack . It was 79.73 m long and 11.76 m wide and had a draft of 4.58 m . It was measured with 1304 GRT and 720 NRT and had a load capacity of 1503 tdw . A 2-cylinder compound steam engine with a low-pressure steam turbine from Deschimag produced 1350 hp and a speed of 11.5 knots via a shaft .

Sister ship was the 1311 BRT Schwan , also built by Howaldtswerke in 1938 , which was also requisitioned by the Navy in 1939 and used as lock breaker 31 , later lock breaker 131 . Somewhat larger half-sisters were the Adler (1494 GRT) and the Habicht (1577 GRT).

career

Pre-war period

The Heron was put into service by the Argo Reederei in September 1938 and drove between Bremen and the English North Sea ports until August 1939 . She was the third ship of the shipping company with the traditional name Reiher - after a freighter bought in 1897 and sunk in 1907 and the 1909 Heron, renamed Flamingo in 1938 .

Second World War

After beginning of the war it has been requisitioned by the Navy and first as patrol boat V 101 employed in the formed in Kiel 1. Vorpostenflottille. Already on September 12th, she was exchanged for her sister ship Schwan and, after appropriate conversion, was used on September 20, 1939 as a pilot ship for the Lock Guard Service Sund and as a pilot ship for the Baltic Sea Lock Pilot Association . The Sperrlotsenverband Ost was renamed the Guardian Association of the Baltic Sea Accesses (Bewa Ost) on August 1, 1940 , and the Heron continued to be his guide ship, operating in Danish waters. On August 18, 1942, Bewa Ost was dissolved and the heron became the flagship of the Commander in Securing the Baltic Sea (BSO), whose staff, however, was quartered in Ahlbeck near Swinoujscie from June 1944 . The office of the BSO was dissolved on December 2, 1944 and the staff of the newly formed 10th Security Division was formed from it, which was subordinate to the office of commanding admiral western Baltic Sea formed three days earlier . From March 1945 the staff of the 10th Security Division was back on the Reiher . In the last weeks of the war, the ship was then involved in the evacuation of German refugees from East Prussia .

Post-war years

The heron was British in the war booty and then served from 11 October 1945 as leader ship in Copenhagen stationed 3. mines clearing of the German Mine Räumdiensts . Upon completion of this service, the ship was initially owned by the British Ministry of Transport and was eventually assigned to Belgium as reparation payment. In May 1948 it was sold to Armement Antoine Vloeberghs SA from Antwerp , founded in March 1947, transferred to Antwerp via Kiel, and after arrival in Antwerp sold on to Armateurs Alpina Transports et Affrètements SA, a subsidiary of the Swiss company founded in 1947 and based in Antwerp Reederei AG from Basel . The latter had the ship completely overhauled and converted in Ghent , renamed it Alpina and from 1949 put it into service under the Belgian flag on the route between Rouen and Morocco . On January 8, 1952, the Alpina was sold to the Cie. Charles Le Borgne in Marseilles and renamed Augustin le Borne . She left Rouen on January 25, 1952 for Oran and then sailed between southern French and Algerian ports.

In 1956 the ship was sold again, now to the Compañía Naviera Francisco N. from Puerto Cortés in Honduras , which renamed it Francis N. Another sale took place the next year, this time to H. Vogemann in Hamburg . The ship, still under the name Francis N , now received a new machine system, a 2-stroke 6-cylinder diesel engine from MAN , which made 1350 iHP or 1200 bHP and made a speed of 12 knots possible. Vogemann sold the modernized ship in 1959 to the Compañía de Navegación Paoliana SA in Panama , for which it ran under the name Fulchera , even after it was registered in Beirut in 1962 for the same owner .

The old ship was transferred to Naples in February 1968 , to La Spezia in August 1968 and then broken up there in October 1968.

Footnotes

  1. ^ German digital library archive portal: Sperrbrecher 131
  2. ↑ Consisting of the 1st and 2nd security flotilla and with an operational area from Flensburg to Rixhöft .
  3. ↑ German Mine Clearance Service, 3rd Mine Clearance Division (Copenhagen)
  4. ^ History of the Schweizerische Reederei AG (SRAG) Basel

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