Admiral Tegetthoff (ship)

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Admiral Tegetthoff
The Admiral Tegetthoff occupied by the ice
The Admiral Tegetthoff occupied by the ice
Ship data
flag Austria-HungaryAustria-Hungary (trade flag) Austria-Hungary
Ship type Research ship
Shipyard Joh. C. Tecklenborg
Build number 41
Commissioning August 1871
Whereabouts Abandoned in 1874
Ship dimensions and crew
length
38.39 m ( Lüa )
width 7.3 m
Draft Max. 3.47 m
measurement 300 GRT
230 NRT
 
crew 24 men
Machine system
machine Steam engine
Rigging and rigging
Rigging Schoonerbark
Number of masts 3
Number of sails 12
Transport capacities
Load capacity 520 dw

The S / X Admiral Tegetthoff was a sailing research ship named after Admiral Wilhelm Freiherr von Tegetthoff with an auxiliary drive. It was the ship that was used for the " Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition" (also "Weyprecht-Payer Polar Expedition", officially "Polar Expedition Admiral Tegetthoff"). The addition S / X is a shipyard designation.

Ship data

The ship was an ice-going, wooden schooner bark with a coal-powered steam engine (so-called auxiliary sailor with a distinctive chimney behind the main mast) as an auxiliary drive, a reinforced hull and a special hull shape to avoid ice compression. The ship was completed in August 1871 under construction number 41 at the Joh. C. Tecklenborg shipyard in Geestemünde (Bremerhaven). The maiden voyage via Tromsø into the Arctic Ocean was her only voyage.

It was 300 GRT / 230 NRT in size, had a load capacity of 520 t . Its length over all (Lüa) was 38.39 m (44.81 m with jib boom ), the width 7.30 m and the draft 3.47 m. She carried four square sails (simple mast and topsails ), three fore sails (mainsail, mainsail, mizzen and mizzen topsails), two staysails (between mainmast and foremast ) and three headsails. She carried three lifeboats with her.

Course of the expedition

On June 13, 1872, an Austro-Hungarian polar expedition set out for the Arctic Ocean with Captain Carl Weyprecht (in Austria today Karl Weyprecht), expedition leader Julius von Payer , a crew of 19 and eight sled dogs along with polar equipment . The trip went via Tromsø in Norway , where the ice master captain Elling Olaf Carlson was taken on board.

Weyprecht's reason to go with the icy sailor Admiral Tegetthoff from Bremerhaven to the Barents Sea ( Arctic ) was a mistake with grave consequences. After an exploration in 1871, Weyprecht came to the opinion that an open - i.e. temporarily ice-free - polar sea existed, over which one could drive past the North Pole to Japan. The ship with which the expedition troops started their journey into this hostile zone was a sailor built according to Weyprecht's plans with auxiliary propulsion, which was able to both sail and be maneuvered with a steam engine.

The ship was often exposed to extreme temperatures in winter and prevented from continuing its journey by the approaching ice masses. The crew tried in vain to get the ship free. When the ice had partially melted again in the polar summer, the captain noticed that a huge ice floe had pushed itself under the ship in winter. So the Admiral Tegetthoff drove the entire polar summer north. In 1873, the expedition participants came across an archipelago, which they named " Franz-Josef-Land " after Emperor Franz Joseph I.

The enormous achievements and hardships of the 24 participating seafarers from Istria and Dalmatia (partly Croatian, partly Italian descent), Hungary , Bohemia and Austria were not over yet. The expedition members had to endure one more winter in the ice. During this time the geographer Julius Payer decided to undertake an additional sledge expedition north with two companions to cross the 82nd parallel north. After 17 days they reached the northernmost point of the archipelago on April 12, 1874 at 81 ° 50 ', and so he and his men had advanced further north than any human before.

Leaving the Admiral Tegetthoff , from Die Gartenlaube (1875)

When the ice melted again the next polar summer, they were forced to start their journey back to the ship. With luck they succeeded. When the captain saw the supplies running out and they could not survive the next winter, he decided to abandon the ship and start the dangerous return journey across the unpredictable clod field. In May 1874 they left the Admiral Tegetthoff . The dinghies were loaded with the remaining supplies and the arduous journey started on foot south to the ice edge. This venture was risky, as never before had a polar expedition escaped the eternal ice on foot. Machinist Otto Krisch died of pulmonary tuberculosis during the expedition on March 16, 1874 and was buried on the coast of Wilczek Island in what is probably the northernmost grave of the world.

The decision of the captain to leave the ship trapped in the ice and start the march over the pack ice back to Siberia on foot led to one of the most spectacular team performances in the history of international polar exploration. The men were on the road for more than three months until they were taken on board by the Russian fishing schooner Nikolaj on August 24, 1874 off the Siberian coast in a bay on the island of Novaya Zemlya and transported as quickly as possible to Vardø near the North Cape for a fee (3. September 1874). From there, the journey to Hamburg could be started two days later with the full ship Finnmarken .

Arved Fuchs (* 1953) found a document from this expedition under a stone pyramid during his North Pole expeditions (from 1977) . An analysis by the Federal Criminal Police Office proved that it actually came from the pen of the two expedition leaders. Today the document is in the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven .

Representations

On August 10, 1973, the Austrian Post issued the 2.50 Schilling special postage stamp 100 Years Discovery of Franz Joseph Land , designed by Adalbert Pilch based on a picture by J. Payer.

On June 8, 2005, on the occasion of the Tegetthoff polar expedition , the Austrian mint issued a 20-euro piece made of 900 fine silver .

The fate of Admiral Tegetthoff is the subject of the 1984 novel “ The horrors of ice and darkness ” by the Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr .

literature

  • Carl Weyprecht: The North Pole Expeditions of the Future and Their Safe Results . Hartleben's Verlag, Vienna 1876
  • Otto Krisch: The diary of the machinist Otto Krisch . Leykam-Verlag, Vienna 1973 (Ed. Egon Reichart)
  • Otto Krisch: Diary of the North Pole driver Otto Krisch . Wallishauser'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Vienna 1875
  • Christoph Höbenreich: Expedition Franz Josef Land. On the trail of explorers to the north . Expedition picture book about the Payer-Weyprecht-Gedächtnexppedition 2005, the Austro-Hungarian north polar expedition 1872–1874 and the polar journey of the icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn 2006. Verlag Frederking-Thaler, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89405-499-1
  • Andreas Pöschek: Secret North Pole. The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition 1872-1874. Vienna 1999; poeschek.at (PDF)
  • Adolf Achtsnit, Willibald Meischl, Michael Wenzel: Polar ship Admiral Tegetthoff - the Austro-Hungarian polar expedition 1872–74 . Verlag Österreich, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7046-1023-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. shipyard detection in Baunummernverzeichnis the Tecklenborgwerft ( Memento of 10 August 2007 at the Internet Archive )
  2. Homepage for Prof. Adalbert Pilch ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. > Postage stamps. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / apilch.de