Construction at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel began on April 15, 1871. It was launched on September 20, 1874. The Friedrich der Große was the first ship built at the Kaiserliche Werft.
The ships of this class were originally planned as casemate ships and were therefore called armored frigates. But even before construction began, it was decided to build them as tower ships. The name was therefore changed to armored ships .
The ships were the first armored ships built in Germany with rotating turrets to accommodate the guns, built at a time when the Imperial Navy was beginning to break away from its dependence on foreign shipyards. The ships were 96.59 meters long and, with a construction weight of 6,821 tons, displaced 7,718 tons when fully equipped. They had wrought iron armor that was mounted on teak planks (so-called backing ). The iron plates of the citadel and the towers were 203 mm thick, those of the belt armor, which protected the ship's sides in the waterline, measured 102 mm fore and aft, and 228 mm in the middle of the ship. The ships had 1,834 square meters of sail area in full ship rigging as well as steam engines and reached a top speed (under steam) of 14 knots. The crew consisted of 46 officers and 454 men.
From 1876 Paul von Reibnitz was repeatedly in command. The Friedrich der Große was in fleet service until 1891, was then used in port service and later as a coal bunker and was broken up in Rönnebeck in 1920 .
literature
The baptism of "Frederick the Great" in Kiel . In: The Gazebo . Volume 44, 1874, pp.713-716 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
Gröner, Erich , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p.28-30 .
.jpg)
.svg){kind=small}
