Rubens (ship, 1906)
| Rubens | ||
|---|---|---|
.svg){kind=small}
|
||
 German blockade breaker RUBENS, Mansa Bay, German East Africa, 1915 |
||
| Ship data | ||
| Ship name | SMH Rubens | |
| Ship type | Auxiliary ship / blockade breaker | |
| Ship class | Freighter (three-island type) | |
| Keel laying : | ||
| Launching ( ship christening ): | March 1906 | |
| Commissioning as an auxiliary ship: | ||
| Builder: | William Gray & Company , West Hartlepool / England | |
| Shipping company: | Bolton Steam Shipping Co., Ld., London | |
| Home port: | London | |
| Distinguishing signal : | HSFC | |
| Crew: | 37 men (as auxiliary ship) | |
| Whereabouts: | scrapped in Dar es Salaam, 1956 | |
| Technical specifications | ||
| Displacement : | ||
| Length: | 109 m | |
| Width: | 15 m | |
| Volume: | 3587 GRT | |
| Draft : | 6.5 m | |
| Machinery: | A triple expansion machine with two cylinder tanks | |
| Number of screws: | 1 | |
| Power: | 1800 hp | |
| Speed: | 11.5 kn | |
| commander | ||
| First lieutenant at sea | Carl Christiansen | |
The Rubens was a blockade breaker of the Imperial Navy , which in April 1915 transported a supply cargo for the protection force of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the cruiser Königsberg under frigate captain Max Looff through the British blockade of German East Africa .
The operation plan
As early as autumn 1914, the German admiral's staff had intended to send an auxiliary ship to South America to support Count Maximilian von Spee's East Asia squadron . The commanding officer was the first lieutenant at sea in the reserve Carl Christiansen, an officer in the merchant navy at North German Lloyd in Bremen . His brother was the naval aviator Friedrich Christiansen .
Shortly before the departure of the auxiliary ship, the name of which has not been passed down, however, the sinking of the squadron in the sea battle near the Falkland Islands on December 8, 1914 became known, so that the company was canceled.
Thereupon the sea captain Kurt Graßhoff from the Admiral's staff decided to send the steamer to German East Africa with a new order . The goal was to supply the protection force of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the small cruiser SMS Königsberg , which was blocked by British naval forces in the Rufiji Delta .
However, since there was no connection to the colony in mid-December 1914 , the company was postponed indefinitely.
The drive
Preparations
At the end of January 1915 Christiansen was ordered to the Admiral's staff in Berlin . There he was ordered to take over the Rubens steamer in Wilhelmshaven ; a British freighter that was confiscated in Hamburg when the First World War broke out in August 1914 .
For reasons of secrecy, the Rubens was allegedly converted into a barrier breaker at the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven to replace a recently sunk vehicle. After the conversion was completed, the Rubens was loaded in various ports for camouflage reasons. The ship's papers were issued in Danish . The crew came from the Danish-speaking areas of Schleswig-Holstein and Christiansen himself spoke fluent Danish.
The cargo for the Königsberg consisted of 1600–2000 tons of coal, 1000 shells caliber 10.5 cm, 500 rounds caliber 8.8 cm, 3000 rounds caliber 6 cm, 700-1000 tons of water and 50 tons of machine oil. The cargo also included two 6 cm boat cannons in landing carriages with ammunition , 1,500 Mauser model 98 rifles for the Schutztruppe, four 8 mm Maxim machine guns and several million 8 mm cartridges . 3000 rounds of ammunition were destined for the 3.7 cm revolver cannons of the survey ship Möwe , which lay self-sunk in the bottom of the port of Dar es Salaam . In addition, there were uniforms , shoes, tents, field telephones, radio technology, medical supplies , medication, provisions and 1 ton of the explosive trinitroanisole . The cargo was covered with pit timber for camouflage , and the steamer received a deck cargo of wood. A radio telegraphy system was installed under cover.
Departure
The Rubens left Wilhelmshaven on February 18, 1915. The weather conditions for a planned breakthrough through the British North Sea blockade were favorable due to the season.
After crossing the German minefields which received Rubens still in the early hours of February 19 mask as a Danish freighter Kronborg , was known to he in Copenhagen in dock was. The Kronborg was normally used as a log truck.
The original plan was to break the British blockade line in the North Atlantic between the Faroe Islands and Iceland . However, part of the deck cargo was damaged by a heavy storm, so Christiansen decided to abandon this project. Therefore the Rubens broke through the blockade between the Shetland Islands and the Faroe Islands, camouflaged by snow and hail showers.
On March 6, 1915, the Rubens was at the height of the Cape Verde Islands . Here it was given a new mask, the exact nature of which is unknown. The aim of the British India liner, which was now faked, was allegedly Mombasa . This new camouflage was necessary because British patrols had to be expected, especially in the vicinity of Cape Town .
Arrival in East Africa
After circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope on March 22, 1915, the Rubens steamed further north through the Strait of Mozambique . By April 1, 1915, it had not yet been possible to establish radio contact with Königsberg . The plan was to call at the port of Lindi and unload the cargo there.
It was not until the night of April 4, 1915, about 150 nautical miles southeast of the Comoros, that contact was made with the Königsberg . However, neither the crew of the small cruiser nor the Rubens knew that the interception service of the British naval secret service , internally called Room 40 , had been able to decipher most of the German radio traffic since the beginning of December 1914 . The British side was informed of the arrival of the auxiliary ship in East Africa by this time at the latest.
Since a coal transfer from Rubens to the Königsberg was impossible due to the blockade situation in front of the Rufiji Delta, the auxiliary ship steamed northwards to an island of the Aldabra group to await further news from the cruiser. Finally, Rubens received a radio message from Königsberg instructing them to call at Tanga port at daybreak on April 14, 1915 . Just one day after the Rubens had left Aldabra, the site was inspected by the British auxiliary cruiser Kinfauns Castle .
The end
 
| |
Manza Bay in what is now Tanzania
|
Based on the decrypted radio messages, the Royal Navy had set up an interception position in front of Tanga , which included the auxiliary ship Duplex and the protected cruiser HMS Hyacinth . Even before Tanga left, the Rubens was given a new mask, this time as a steamer for the British India Steam Navigation Company . This new cover name is also unknown.
When the Rubens spotted the Ulenge lighthouse and the pilot boat at dawn , the pilot of which was supposed to bring the steamer safely to Tanga, Christiansen discovered the Hyacinth , which was approaching the Rubens from behind at full speed .
On the way into the bay, the Rubens came under heavy gunfire from the Hyacinth . Unaware of the fact that the Hyacinth could not run at maximum speed due to an engine failure, Christiansen decided to cancel the entry into the port of Tanga. Instead, he managed to enter the nearer Mansa Bay, because the Hyacinth unexpectedly turned north. Since the ship caught fire from the bombardment and there was a risk of explosion, it was evacuated by the crew. The Rubens was set aground by opening the bottom valves . In order to give the impression on the Hyacinth that the steamer had been destroyed, additional fires were started on board. The Rubens' crew members reached the nearby coast despite the fire. The commander of the blockade forces of the Royal Navy off the East African coast, Rear-Admiral King-Hall, on the Hyacinth urgently wanted to take prisoners in order to question them about the background of the supply trip. However, a landing force from the Hyacinth was repulsed by a German protection force. Thereupon the British stopped the fighting and withdrew because they thought the steamer had been destroyed.
In fact, however, the Rubens' crew and members of the Schutztruppe managed to hide the steamer over the next five weeks and secure the rescued cargo for use in the Schutztruppe. Divers from the Königsberg , who operated under the most difficult conditions inside the wreck , played a decisive role . Around 3 million rounds of ammunition could be recovered in this way, although they could not be used due to the wetness. Only after they had been taken apart, dried and reassembled by hand could they add to the ammunition stocks of the protection force. However, there was a comparatively high rate of failures, so that some were only used for training and hunting purposes.
In September 1956, the Italian salvage company Mawa Handelsanstalt began to seal and pump out the wreck . After 70 days of work, the now ready-to-drive hull was towed to Dar es Salaam by the Simba salvage tug . There the cargo of 1,600 tons of coal still in the hull, which had been intended for the Königsberg , was unloaded and sold to the East African Railways and Harbors . The hull was then scrapped.
A lifebuoy of Rubens is now in the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven .
The Commander's Return to Germany and his Memoirs
After a meeting with Colonel Lettow-Vorbeck, Christiansen decided to return to Germany in order to equip a second expedition to East Africa based on his previous experience .
Christiansen was therefore legendary as a Swedish citizen . Although he managed to leave German East Africa through the then neutral colony of Portuguese East Africa ( Mozambique ), the first lieutenant was arrested by the police in Johannesburg on suspicion of espionage . After a few weeks in police custody , Christiansen was transferred to a military prison in Cape Town when he could not be proven that he was spying , where he was treated very courteously according to his own statement:
“The commanding officer is a correct, as far as possible even friendly officer, with a lot of understanding for the lot of a prisoner of war. Apart from extremely strict guarding, accommodation, food and personal treatment are impeccable in every respect, so that the prisoner can relax here in the most wonderful weather. "
After a few more weeks Christiansen was taken to London on board the troop transport Durham Castle , which transported the first South African troops to the European theater of war . He was first detained at Scotland Yard and then transferred to the "Intelligence Department" of the British Admiralty . Here he was interrogated by Captain William Reginald Hall , director of Naval Intelligence . Christiansen was astonished at the intelligence service findings on the British side; so was Hall z. B. known that the first lieutenant had been the commander of the Rubens .
After staying in a prison camp , Christiansen managed to be interned in Switzerland in October 1917 due to illness . Due to the pretense of a mental illness, he was allowed to leave for Germany in July 1918.
Before the end of the war in November 1918, Christiansen's memoir “Through!” With war material on Lettow-Vorbeck ( Stuttgart 1918) was published. This work is obviously the basis of later publications. However, Christiansen was no longer able to use his knowledge from the Rubens' breach of the blockade ; independently of this, the admiral's staff had meanwhile dispatched the auxiliary ship Marie to German East Africa.
literature
- OV: The captains Christiansen. Narrated from log books , 5th expanded edition Berlin no year [1942].
- Carl Christiansen: "Through!" With war material to Lettow-Vorbeck , Stuttgart 1918. ( Digitized version, Berlin State Library )
- Otto Mielke : SM "Sperrbrecher A" (steamer "Rubens"). Creeping voyage to East Africa , SOS Fates of German Ships , No. 56, Munich 1955.
- David Ramsay: "Blinker Hall". Spymaster: The Man Who Brought America into World War I , Stroud 2008.
- Patrick Beesly: Room 40. British Naval Intelligence 1914–1918 , London 1982.
- Johannes Lensch (ed.): Knud Knudsen's trip to East Africa. Truthful report about the aid trip of the "Marie" with ammunition to German East Africa etc. , Flensburg 1917.
- Peter Eckart: Blockade breaker "Marie". Adventure trips by Captain Sörensen during World War I , Berlin 1937.
- Kevin Patience: Shipwrecks and salvage on the East African coast , Kingdom of Bahrain, Arabian Gulf 2006.
- John Walter: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914–1918 . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, p. 122 f., ISBN 3-613-01729-6 .
- Kurt Assmann : The battles of the Imperial Navy in the German colonies. First part: Tsingtau. Second part: German East Africa , Berlin 1935, pp. 148–153.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ludwig Deppe: With Lettow-Vorbeck through Africa . Berlin: Verlag August Scherl, 1921, p. 106.
- ↑ Mystery of the lifebuoy resolved after 25 years (press release of March 21, 2000)