SMS Freya (ship, 1897)
.jpg) |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
SMS Freya was the third ship of the Victoria Louise class , a class of five cruisers II class ( armored deck cruisers) of the Imperial Navy . In 1899 the ship wasreclassifiedas a large cruiser .
Construction and first period of use
The replacement Freya was laid down as the third ship of her class on January 2, 1896 at the Imperial Shipyard Danzig and was ready for launch on April 27, 1897. After a speech by Prince Heinrich of Prussia , the new building was christened by Queen Charlotte of Württemberg and was given the name of a Germanic goddess .
During the forthcoming after the completion of the ship yard trials that the boiler used were defective and in their supplier, the Berlin mechanical engineering AG "Germania" turned out reclaims be had. This in turn made recourse claims against the French manufacturer Niclausse, who agreed to a limited free replacement. Only a little later, however, it turned out that the Maschinenbau-AG “Germania” had made serious mistakes in the installation of various boiler components. The difficulties with the boilers of Freya and Hertha as well as the large number of boiler types used in the Imperial Navy finally led the Reichsmarinamt to develop a standard boiler based on a design by the British company Thornycroft , which was simply called a marine boiler .
Due to the problems with the boiler system, the Freya could not be put into service until October 20, 1900 as the last ship of her class to carry out test drives. The cruiser was formally assigned to the 1st Squadron as a replacement for the armored ship SMS Sachsen , but only took part in squadron maneuvers from time to time. In March 1901, the ship was lightly rammed in Kiel near the Germania shipyard by a Turkish ironclad under renovation after the mooring broke on it. The test drives ended on June 8, 1901 in Wilhelmshaven with the decommissioning of the ship.
On May 3, 1902, the Freya was put back into service and assigned to the artillery test command formed in December of the previous year. This had the task of further developing the artillery technology and used the cruiser as a test ship. This activity was interrupted in August because the ship took part as a reconnaissance aircraft in the fleet's autumn maneuvers, during which it suffered boiler damage at the beginning of September. On September 15, the Freya was again available to the test squad. In a collision with a tender serving SMS Brummer on November 13, the ship suffered no damage. After the operation in 1903 was the same as in the previous year without any special events, the cruiser was decommissioned on January 11, 1904 in Wilhelmshaven.
Service as a school cruiser
The increasing age of the cruiser frigates of the Bismarck class used as training ships made it necessary to replace the ships that were no longer capable of this task with more modern units. Since the Navy lacked the financial means to build special ships, it resorted to units of the Victoria-Louise class, which were only a few years old, but already outdated by developments in warship construction and therefore no longer suitable for frontline service. The Freya was prepared for the new purpose from 1906 by the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven , whereby the armament was changed, among other things. In contrast to the four other ships in the class, however, the ship's three funnels were retained.
On April 4, 1907, the Freya was put back into service. After the completion of test drives, the first midshipmen and ship boys came on board at the beginning of May and the ship embarked on a short cruise to the western Baltic Sea and then took part in the Kiel Week , which this year celebrated its 25th anniversary. On July 19, the first major training trip of the Freya began , which led to the North Sea and the North Atlantic and across the Canary Islands to the Mediterranean . On March 18, 1908, the cruiser was back in Kiel . Just two months later, the second major training voyage began, aiming at US and Caribbean waters. After almost ten months of voyage, the ship reached its home port of Kiel on March 8, 1909.
The third voyage began on June 2, 1909 and initially led to Norway . After brief stays in Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven, the Freya continued into the Mediterranean via Funchal and Tenerife . In Alexandria , the ship's crew was able to help fight a fire. The journey ended on March 28, 1910 in Wilhelmshaven, where the cruiser's annual overhaul was carried out. After the end of July, a two-month training trip to Norwegian waters followed.
The Freya ran out on August 1, 1910 for a trip to Mexico , where it was supposed to represent the German Reich at the celebrations on the occasion of Mexico's 100th anniversary. The ship reached Veracruz on September 3rd with a special embassy on board . Sea captain Schaumann, the commander of the Freya , went to Mexico City with his staff on September 7 and was received three days later by Mexican President Porfirio Díaz . On September 16, a monument to Alexander von Humboldt , donated by Kaiser Wilhelm II, was unveiled in the city . On September 22nd, the Freya finally left Veracruz and continued her training during a cruise through the Caribbean. On March 13, 1911, the ship was back in Kiel and was decommissioned in Danzig on March 28 . Shortly thereafter, the Imperial Shipyard there began the second modernization of the cruiser, during which the Niclausse boilers, which were still prone to failure, were exchanged for eight marine boilers and the third chimney was omitted. After the work was completed, the ship remained out of service as a reserve material for the school cruisers.
Use in the First World War
With the outbreak of World War I , the Freya was reactivated and assigned to the Baltic Sea Coast Guard Division. Due to severe damage suffered on August 11, 1914, the ship had to be temporarily taken out of service and was repaired by September 12. It then served as a training ship for stokers and was used again as a training ship for midshipmen and ship boys from April 1915 after the educational inspection, which was dissolved at the beginning of the war, had been re-established. The cruiser was moved from Kiel to Flensburg - Mürwik to the torpedo station there, where it continued to serve as a training ship. The SMS Grille was assigned to it as an accompanying ship. In the propaganda film Hein Petersen, from ship's boy to sailor , which was made in 1917 at the torpedo station, the Freya was also filmed. She served the training ship until the end of the war and was finally decommissioned on December 18, 1918.
Whereabouts
The Freya initially served in Hamburg as an accommodation ship for the local police. It was deleted from the list of warships on January 25, 1920, sold in 1921 and then scrapped in Hamburg-Harburg .
To replace the Freya one was Battlecruiser the Mackensen class placed on the stack. Due to the war, however, the construction was ultimately canceled 21 months before completion, the hull was temporarily lowered into the water on March 13, 1920 and demolished in Hamburg the following year.
Commanders
| October 20, 1900 to June 8, 1901 | Sea captain Hugo Westphal |
| May 3, 1902 to January 11, 1904 | Frigate captain / sea captain Hermann Jacobsen |
| April 4, 1907 to March 1908 | Sea captain Franz von Holleben |
| April 1908 to March 1909 | Sea captain Leberecht Maaß |
| March 19, 1909 to March 28, 1911 | Sea captain Carl Schaumann |
| 4th to 27th August 1914 | Sea captain Max Schlicht |
| September 12, 1914 to March 1915 | Corvette Captain Eduard Bartels |
| April 1 to August 13, 1915 | Sea captain Ernst-Oldwig von Natzmer |
| August 1915 to June 1917 | Sea captain Wilhelm Goetze |
| June 1917 to December 18, 1918 | Frigate Captain Oskar Böcker |
Known crew members
- Werner Ehrhardt (1898–1967), was from 1957 to 1960, as rear admiral , first commander of the command of naval training (KdoMarAusb)
- Bernhard Rogge (1899–1982), was from 1957 to 1962 as Rear Admiral in command of Defense Area I.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 73-75 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 3 : Ship biographies from the Elbe to Graudenz . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 101-103 .