SMS Barbarossa
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The SMS Barbarossa was originally built as Britannia for the English Cunard Line as a passenger and mail ship , but ended her career as a warship in the German Navy. She was a paddle steamer with an additional sail rig .
history
The Barbarossa was built on behalf of the Cunard Line at the Robert Duncan and Company shipyard in Greenock . It was launched on February 5, 1840 under the name Britannia . Her job was initially to transport mail and passengers in transatlantic traffic . In this context, she was allowed to use the prefix of the Royal Mail Ships , so that she became known as RMS Britannia . On July 4, 1840, the Britannia , loaded with mail, set out on her first voyage and reached Halifax on July 17. After 99 Atlantic crossings, the Britannia was sold to Germany in March 1849 as part of the creation of a Reichsflotte for 451 guilders , where it was converted into the Barbarossa warship .
At the Morgan shipyard in Liverpool, the frames were reinforced and additional deck beams were installed so that the ship could carry the intended armament on the upper deck. For reasons of neutrality, the ship was transferred to Geestemünde without military equipment, under a British flag and with a British crew , where it arrived on March 19, 1849. Further modifications, armament and equipment were carried out in Brake . After finishing the equipment, the ship was put into service under the name Barbarossa as the flagship of the Reichsflotte. On June 4, 1849, Admiral Karl Rudolf Bromme undertook an exploratory advance from Bremerhaven into the German bay with a course to the island of Heligoland , which in 1849 still belonged to Great Britain . On this voyage there was a sea battle near Helgoland , which the ship survived unscathed.
On December 31, 1851, the Federal Assembly decided to dissolve the fleet. The Barbarossa and the sailing frigate Gefion were handed over to Prussia on February 16, 1852 against payment of the estimated value. The ship was transferred to Danzig, where it was examined and it was found that the boiler and engine needed to be replaced, which seemed too expensive in relation to the construction of a new warship. It was determined that the Barbarossa should not be taken into active service, but should serve as a barracks ship. In 1854 the Royal Shipyard was converted to accommodate around 500 men. In 1856 the Barbarossa was put into service as a "non-seagoing watch ship". In 1865 she was towed to Kiel in the new Prussian war port, where she continued to serve as a training ship. From 1875 the ship only served as a dwelling hulk for ship boys.
On May 5, 1880, the Barbarossa was decommissioned and it was decided to use it as a target ship . On July 28th, the ship was sunk by SMS Zieten in the presence of the Crown Prince by a torpedo shot. The wreck was later lifted and demolished in Kiel.
technical description
The Barbarossa was made of oak and yellow pine wood as a steamship with a paddle wheel drive. Its shape resembled the general cargo sailors with two decks , transom stern and the typical Galionsbau . In addition to being steam powered, she had sails in the form of a barrage . Your machine was a side balancing machine with 440 hp and two cylinders , each 1829 mm in diameter and 2083 mm piston stroke . Four smoke tube boilers, each with three furnaces, delivered steam at a pressure of 0.633 bar. The coal consumption was 31 to 38 tons per day, a total of 376 tons of coal could be stored. The paddle wheels with a diameter of 8.53 m had 21 radial blades, made 16 revolutions per minute and allowed the ship a maximum speed of 8.5 kn. However, her average cruising speed was 8.19 knots .
Originally, it offered space for 115 first class passengers and a crew of 89 people, consisting of officers and men.
On the occasion of the conversion in a dry dock in Brake (Unterweser) , the ship received a schooner rigging , the stern was converted to meet the needs of a warship and a mast was removed. She received a new figurehead depicting Emperor Barbarossa . During the last conversion to a barracks ship, the ship was rigged to a brig . The chimney was removed, and the old figurehead that was brought to the naval department of the Museum of Oceanography was replaced with another figure. In 1873 the rigging was finally removed.
Her sister ships at Cunard were the Acadia , the Caledonia and the Columbia , in German service the Archduke Johann .
Sources and further information
Sources cited
The information in this article is largely based on:
- Lüder Arenhold: memorial sheets to the Royal Prussian Fleet (1848-1860). Reprint of the 1902 edition, dbm Media-Verlag, Berlin 1994.
- Hans Jürgen Hansen: The ships of the German fleets 1848-1945. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1998.
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Federal Fleet 1848-1853. in: German Navy. The first German fleet. Guide of the German Maritime Museum No. 10, Bremerhaven 1979, pp. 47–57.
See also
literature
- Robert D. Ballard , Ken Marschall : Lost Liners - From the Titanic to Andrea Doria - the glory and decline of the great luxury liners . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co., Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-12905-9 (English: Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. The ocean floor reveals its greatest lost ships. Translated by Helmut Gerstberger).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Approved licensed edition Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, p. 34.