SMS Bismarck
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SMS Bismarck was a covered corvette of the Bismarck class that was built for the Imperial Navy in the late 1870s . It was named after the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck . She was the eponymous type ship of the class, to which five other ships belonged.
The Bismarck- class corvettes were ordered in the early 1870s as part of a large naval construction program. They were supposed to serve as a fleet scout and on extended missions in the overseas areas of interest of the German Empire . The keel of the Bismarck was laid in November 1875, the launch took place in July 1876 and it was put into service in August 1878. As the main armament, the ship had a battery of ten to sixteen 15 cm ring cannons and a complete sailing rig to supplement the steam engine that was also available on long missions overseas.
The Bismarck completed two large overseas missions during her service. The first from late 1878 to late 1880, during which the ship first visited South American ports and then patrolled the Central Pacific, where the German Empire had economic interests but no colonies at the time. The ship then returned to South America to protect German interests there during the Saltpeter War. After her return to Germany she was overhauled and given new armament. In 1883 the Bismarck was reactivated for the second mission, which lasted from 1884 to 1888. At this time the German Empire began to take part in the race for Africa and the acquisition of Pacific colonies. The Bismarck was during the acquisition of Cameroon in 1884, the control of borders to German East Africa in 1885/86 and the German intervention in the Samoan Civil War in 1887 involved. During this entire trip abroad, the Bismarck served as the flagship of the German overseas cruiser squadron under the command of Eduard von Knorr and later Karl Eduard Heusner . After her return to Germany in 1888, the ship was decommissioned in 1891 and deleted from the sea register. After that it was used as a residential ship until 1920 and then scrapped.
history
Construction and commissioning
The keel for Bismarck was laid in November 1875 at Norddeutsche Schiffbau AG in Kiel under the contract name "B", as it was a new addition and not a replacement for a ship in service for the fleet. It was created by the July 25, 1877 Admiral Albrecht von Stosch , head of the Imperial Admiralty , in the name of Bismarck baptized. The ship was put into service on August 27, 1878 and then began test drives. These were completed by October 1st. The ship was then activated for use overseas and ordered to Wilhelmshaven to be equipped for this mission .
First use overseas
Bismarck left Wilhelmshaven on November 22nd under the command of Captain Karl August Deinhard , crossed the Atlantic to Montevideo from January 12th to 20th, 1879 and drove through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific Ocean with a stop in Valparaíso . After some hydrographic studies there, the ship continued its voyage through the Pacific, visiting the Society Islands and Raiatea , Bora Bora and Huahine . There, Captain Deinhard signed a friendship treaty with the local ruler, which was signed at the German consulate in Papeete, Tahiti. On May 19, the Bismarck reached Apia , where the ship replaced the previous stationary there , the corvette Ariadne .
Bismarck began a trip to various islands in the Central Pacific on May 22nd to familiarize the crew with the conditions in the region. The gunboat Albatross also reached the Central Pacific region on July 30th as a stationary boat and enabled the Bismarck to make a necessary overhaul in Sydney from August 8th. After the repair work was completed, the Bismarck was urgently ordered back to Samoa , as German traders were threatened by unrest on the island. On November 1, the Bismarck promoted the recently appointed German Consul General for Samoa from Tongatapu to Apia. She then sailed to Levuka on Ovalau Island to replenish her coal supplies before returning to Samoa. A colonial conflict had arisen there between the three powers interested in Samoa (Three Powers) , the German Empire, the USA and Great Britain over the island group. SMS Bismarck and the gunboat Nautilus represented the German Reich in this dispute to project power on site in order to force the competing factions to recognize the Talavou, preferred by the Germans, as the ruler of all Samoans (" Malietoa "), which resulted in the signing of a corresponding one by the Three Powers ratified declaration on board the Bismarck on December 15, 1879 also succeeded.
Since eight crew members died of tropical diseases on board the Bismarck in early 1880 , the Admiralty decided to recall the ship to Germany. On January 26, 1880, the ship left Apia, but after another stop in Levuka to replenish coal, it got into a severe storm and had to call at Sydney again for repairs. During the stay there, the Admiralty changed its original route and ordered them back to the west coast of South America to support the Hansa armored corvette , which was supposed to protect German interests in the region during the ongoing Nitrous War. After arriving there, the Bismarck patrolled Chilean and Peruvian ports from May 26th to July 12th. On July 18, she finally left Chile, crossed the Strait of Magellan again and, after stops in Port Stanley and Plymouth, finally reached Wilhelmshaven on September 30, 1880. There she was decommissioned on October 14th. The ship's namesake, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, invited the commandant Deinhard to his manor in Friedrichsruh to find out about the events of the trip.
Second foreign assignment
In early 1881, Bismarck went to the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven to have their propulsion system completely overhauled. During this overhaul, bow torpedo tubes were also installed and their original 15 cm ring cannons replaced with more modern rapid-fire guns of the same caliber. In June 1882 the ship had been activated for the reserve due to the tension caused by the Anglo-Egyptian War . A series of sea trials was carried out from August 2 to 13, 1883.
Like all six ships in its class, the Bismarck was reclassified as a cruiser frigate in 1884.
In the mid-1880s, the European powers began the race for Africa. German companies, including Jantzen & Thormählen and Woermann-Linie , urged the German government to acquire colonies specifically in the West African region. The companies tried to use attacks by local rulers there against the German traders in the region in order to get the government to take protective measures and to bring the region under German control. In fact, as a result of these incidents, Otto von Bismarck decided, despite his long dislike of colonies overseas, to send a squadron to the Bay of Biafra in West Africa in order to better protect German interests.
On September 17, 1884, the Admiralty put the West African squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Eduard von Knorr into service to reinforce the stationary there, the gunboat Möwe . On October 15, Knorr hoisted his flag on board the Bismarck . Bismarck's sister ship Gneisenau and the corvettes Olga and Ariadne also belonged to Knorr's squadron . The four corvettes left Germany on October 30, 1884. For supplies in the remote region, the navy also sent the civil steamship Adler as a tender and hospital ship. On the way, Ariadne was ordered to Cape Verde and Gneisenau to East Africa, as reports say the situation in West Africa had calmed down. Bismarck and Olga reached the Wouri River on December 17th . Shortly before their arrival, two anti-German groups had burned the village of a pro-German tribe and Knorr decided to intervene.
At the beginning of 1885 the unrest subsided and on March 31, 1885 the gunboat Habicht arrived, so that Olga could return to Germany accompanied by Adler . Meanwhile, Bismarck continued to patrol Cameroon, hoisted flags and explored the hinterland. Knorr was only able to carry out the order to go to East Africa via South West Africa on July 7th, after the arrival of the first Imperial Governor for Cameroon, Julius von Soden . In the meantime, the crew carried out survey work in the Wouri Delta and helped mark the official border between the German colony of Togo and French Dahomey . At this time, the second station ship, the gunboat Cyclop , arrived in West Africa.
1885–1886, East Africa and the Central Pacific
Bismarck left West Africa on July 7th and sailed via Sao Paulo de Luanda and Lüderitz Bay in South West Africa, which is now also German, for overhaul to Cape Town . There Bismarck rejoined the Adler , which had been chartered again by the Navy as a tender. Knorr was instructed to re-take command of a cruiser squadron in order to strengthen the German position during complicated negotiations with Barghasch ibn Said , the Sultan of Zanzibar . This had denied German claims to protectorates in the coastal region proclaimed as German East Africa . Bismarck and Adler left Cape Town on August 5th and reached Sansibar on August 19th , where they joined the corvettes Gneisenau , Stosch and Prince Adalbert and other German ships under the sea captain Karl Paschen . The association was now referred to as the East African Cruiser Squadron .
After the end of the mission, the East Africa cruiser squadron was initially disbanded on January 9, 1886 and Admiral Knorr received the order to go to Australia with the Bismarck , Gneisenau and Olga . The background to this was the decision by the Admiralty to strengthen the German presence in the newly acquired areas in German New Guinea . The three ships reached Sydney on February 28 and then sailed via Auckland and the Tonga Islands to Samoa, where civil war was raging again at that time. Tupua Tamasese Titimaea, one of the Samoan chiefs who fought for power, tried unsuccessfully to get Knorr and the German consul to his side. Knorr did not intervene and sailed to the Marshall Islands at the beginning of May , where they joined the gunboat Nautilus . Bismarck stopped in Majuro , where a parade was being held, and then sailed on to New Guinea with Olga . In the port of Matupi , where a German citizen was murdered, Knorr sent a landing party ashore to punish those responsible for the killing. Bismarck then sailed on to Finschhafen alone , while Olga drove to New Mecklenburg . Bismarck , Gneisenau and Olga met again on July 23 in Hong Kong . There they also met the Nautilus , the gunboat Wolf and the corvette Carola, who had arrived to replace the Gneisenau . Bismarck and Carola then went to Port Arthur and then, after several cases of typhus had broken out among the crew members of the squadron, to Nagasaki , where the sick crew members were treated.
During his stay in Nagasaki, Knorr was ordered to return with the squadron to East Africa in order to clarify new border disputes with the Sultan of Zanzibar on the basis of the London Treaty of October 29, 1886. While the other ships of the squadron carried out individual orders there, the Bismarck stayed in Zanzibar until March 1887. Subsequently, increasing tensions between Germany and France prompted the Admiralty to order Knorr's squadron to Cape Town, where it was closer to the German possessions in West Africa, which bordered French colonies.
1887–1920, Central Pacific and Fate
Bismarck and the rest of the squadron stayed in Cape Town from March 15th to May 7th until tensions subsided. On April 15, Knorr transferred command of the squadron to Captain Karl Eduard Heusner, who in turn made the Bismarck his flagship. Heusner received orders to return to the Central Pacific and the squadron left Cape Town on May 7th.
After the end of the operations in the Pacific, the Bismarck went to Nagasaki for an overhaul on March 7th. During this work, Heusner received the order to bring the squadron back to East Africa and to release the Bismarck after three and a half years of service abroad.
On July 16, Bismarck reached Aden , where she met the corvette in Leipzig . The two ships began their return journey to Germany the following day and arrived in Wilhelmshaven on August 19.
Bismarck was decommissioned on September 1st. A general overhaul was planned for 1889, but it was canceled. On September 21, 1891 she was deleted from the sea register and used as a residential ship for the II. Torpedo Boat Division based in Wilhelmshaven. In this function it was rebuilt again in 1903 and remained in this function and was only scrapped after the First World War in 1920 at Rüstringen .
According to the naval historians Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr and Hans-Otto Steinmetz, there was actually no legitimate reason to put the ship out of service after only twelve active years of service, which is also proven by the fact that her hull could be used until 1920. The authors therefore assume that the decision by Kaiser Wilhelm II was intended as a personal swipe at the namesake of the ship, which Wilhelm II was opposed to.
Commanders
| August 27, 1878 to October 14, 1880 | Corvette captain / captain at sea Karl August Deinhard |
| August 2nd to 13th, 1883 | Corvette Captain Friedrich von Levetzow |
| October 4, 1884 to September 1885 | Sea captain Guido Karcher |
| September 1885 to April 1888 | Sea captain Franz Kuhn |
| April to June 1888 | Captain Gustav Schmidt (deputy) |
| June to September 1888 | Corvette Captain Ernst Aschmann |
literature
- Gröner, Erich / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 70 f .
- Hildebrand, Hans H. / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 2 : Ship biographies from Baden to Eber . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 68–75 (Approved licensed edition Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, approx. 1990).
Individual evidence
- ^ Christian Buhlmann, Antje Märke: A German "model colony" - Samoa under the cosmopolitan Wilhelm Solf. ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2015 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. Federal Archives , From the Archives, Prehistory (I)
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