SMS Eber (1903)
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| Construction data | ||
| Ship type | Gunboat | |
| Ship class | Polecat class | |
| Construction designation: | Gunboat B | |
| Builder: |
AG Vulcan in Stettin, construction no .: 257 |
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| Keel laying : | 1902 | |
| Launch : | June 6, 1903 | |
| Completion: | 1903 | |
| Building-costs: | 1.632 million marks | |
| Ship dimensions | ||
| Measurement: | 783 BRT 525 NRT |
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| Displacement : | Construction: 977 t Maximum: 1,193 t |
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| Length of the waterline : Length over all: |
L HCS = 64.1 m L oa = 66.9 m |
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| Width: | 9.7 m | |
| Draft : | 3.54 - 3.62 m | |
| Side height : | 4.71 m | |
| Technical specifications | ||
| Boiler system : | 4 coal-fired marine boilers |
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| Machinery: | 2 standing 3-cylinder triple expansion steam engines |
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| Number of propellers: | 2 three-leaf 2.4 m | |
| Shaft speed: | 181 min −1 | |
| Drive power: | 1,300 PSi | |
| Speed: | 13.5 kn (test drive: 14.3 kn) |
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| Driving range: | 3,400 nm at 9 kn | |
| Fuel supply: | 240 - 283 tons of coal | |
| Crew: | 9 officers and 121 men | |
| Armament | ||
| Sea target guns: | 2 Sk - 10.5 cm L / 40 482 shots, 122 hm |
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| Revolver cannons : | 6 × 3.7 cm 9000 shots |
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| Whereabouts | ||
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set Oct. 26, 1917 there on fire |
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SMS Eber was the last of six Iltis- class gunboats of the Imperial Navy .
The Polecat class
The sister ships, built between 1898 and 1903, were SMS Iltis , SMS Jaguar , SMS Tiger , SMS Luchs and SMS Panther . The ships were designed for service in the overseas colonies and were mostly used there. They displaced between 894 and 977 tons, were 66 m long, had a top speed of 14 knots and a crew of 9 officers and 121 men. The first two boats built, the Iltis and the Jaguar , had four 8.8 cm guns, the other two 10.5 cm guns. There were also six 3.7 cm guns.
history
The boar was put into service in September 1903, retracted and then taken out of service again in November 1903 and assigned to the so-called "material reserve".
Station service
It was not put back into service until April 1, 1910 to replace the old cruiser Sperber on the West African station. In April, after five years of service, he left the station area for home. Already on April 14th the departure of the boars from Wilhelmshaven began, which ended after visiting several ports on July 14th 1910 in Duala ( Cameroon ). From there she began her normal station duty. At the end of the year she went to Cádiz for the annual overhaul and not to Cape Town , as the second station ship, her sister ship the Panther, had done so far. From January 7th to March 6th 1911 the boat stayed in Cádiz and then ran back to the station area via many ports. It also visited Casablanca . In May, the boar returned to Duala, where it met the panther , who was being prepared for the return trip for major repairs. It then came to the so-called panther jump to Agadir .
Agadir
On July 1, 1911, the Panther entered Agadir . This visit was not logistically necessary because she had previously replenished her coal stocks in Tenerife . The German Foreign Office was planning a demonstration, because the small cruiser SMS Berlin under frigate captain Heinrich Löhlein had already left Kiel on June 28, 1911 with the same destination, passed the Dover-Calais line on the same day and arrived in Agadir on July 4 .
The two German ships remained in the roadstead , interrupted by brief stays in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife to supplement the coal stocks. It was reported to Berlin that the French flag was partly set on the Kasbah of Agadir, which contradicted the agreements between Germany and France from 1909. On July 25th, the panthers continued their interrupted journey home after the boar had arrived from Cameroon .
With a few short interruptions, the Berlin and the boars stayed before Agadir until the end of November. New commanders who had traveled there were also deployed on both ships. The Berlin returned via Mogador , Casablanca and Tangier , and the port visits went without any problems.
Renewed station service
In January 1912, the boars returned to their stationing port of Duala. In March she ran south, visited the ports of German South West Africa and arrived in Cape Town on March 29. The commandant and the first officer were seriously ill. The latter died in Cape Town, Commander von Hippel traveled home by ship. Until the arrival of the new commanding officer von Weise, the oldest officer on watch, Erich Schröder, led the ship. At the end of August and well into September the boar was on the lower reaches of the Congo and visited the Belgian Boma and the Portuguese Cabinda . At the end of November she ran to Liberia because of the unrest that had broken out there, where the sister boat Panther was already and the small cruiser Bremen arrived as further reinforcements.
The boar was not back in Duala until February . At the end of the month she marched home for a basic repair, as the overhaul originally planned in Cape Town would have been too expensive.
After carrying out the necessary repairs in Wilhelmshaven, the gunboat marched back to West Africa on June 25 and had an additional survey detachment on board to continue the survey of the Gulf of Guinea , which had not been continued since 1905 . The Spanish government had issued a permit for the Muni area . Christmas and New Year's Eve were spent in front of Cameroon. It came to a meeting with the sister boat Panther and the so-called "Detachierte Division" under Rear Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz with the ships of the line Kaiser and King Albert and the small cruiser Strasbourg , which marched over German South West Africa around Cape Horn to Valparaíso in Chile and then returned to Germany via Argentina and Brazil (December 9, 1913 to June 17, 1914). The boar then resumed its surveying work and drove to the southern station area in early summer.
Outbreak of war
At the beginning of the First World War , the boar was in the port of Cape Town , South Africa , where it was supposed to be docked. As a result of the warnings of an impending war with Great Britain , it expired prematurely. Since July 30, 1914, there was a radio connection with the coastal radio station Lüderitzbucht in German South West Africa , where the boar arrived on August 1st in the evening. After taking over coal, the boar left Lüderitz Bay on the morning of August 3, heading for South America to the Brazilian island of Trindade , 900 nautical miles off the Brazilian coast, accompanied by the German merchant steamers Alarich , Adelaide , Styria and Gertrud Woermann . On August 20, she met briefly there with the small cruiser Dresden . On August 23, the German passenger ship Cap Trafalgar of Hamburg Süd appeared and the Eber transferred its guns, ammunition and part of its crew to the Cap Trafalgar , which was then to wage a trade war as an auxiliary cruiser . On September 4, the ships separated, but a few days later, on September 14, 1914, after a battle with the British auxiliary cruiser Carmania , the Cap Trafalgar sank .
Whereabouts
The boar arrived under the command of her youngest watch officer, Leutnant zur See Carl Bünte, as a "merchant ship" without armament and ammunition on September 14, 1914 in Bahia , Brazil , and was laid up. A 15-man guard remained on board under the chief machinist Schaumburg. When Brazil entered the war against the Central Powers , the ship was set on fire on October 26, 1917 by its remaining crew in Bahia and sunk by opening the sea valves .
| Commanders | |
|---|---|
| September to November 1903 | Lieutenant Captain Albertus Petruschky (1866–1943) |
| April 1910 | Corvette Captain Franz Lustig (1873–1943) |
| October 1911 | Corvette Captain Wilhelm von Hippel (1876–1971) |
| March 1912 | Kapitänleutnant Erich Schröder (1883-19 ??) as the oldest officer on watch in deputy |
| April 1912 | Corvette Captain Clemens von Weise (1872–1920) |
| April 1913 | Captain Paul Schondorff (1880-19 ??) reduced crew during the major repairs |
| June 1913 | Corvette captain Julius Wirth (1875–1914) was killed with 50 other crew members when the Cap Trafalgar sank |
| August 1914 | Leutnant zur See Carl Bünte (1889-19 ??) as the youngest watch officer in charge of the ship |
literature
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Hildebrand, Hans H .: The German Warships: Biographies - A Mirror of Naval History from 1815 to the Present , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford,
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Strasbourg separated from Santos of the division, went to the West Indies and Mexico and returned exactly from there to the mobilization to Germany.
- ↑ Reinhard Klein-Arendt: "Kamina calls Nauen!" The radio stations in the German colonies 1904–1918 . Wilhelm Herbst Verlag, Cologne 1995, p. 277. ISBN 3-923925-58-1
- ↑ Pictures of the boars with the Cap Trafalgar ( Memento of the original from May 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
