SMS Geier (1894)
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 SMS Geier , condition around 1900 |
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| Construction data | |
| class | Buzzard- class |
| Ship type | Small cruiser |
| Shipyard |
Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven construction no .: 21 |
| Building name | New build cruiser F |
| building-costs | 2,588,000 marks |
| Launch | October 18, 1894 |
| Commissioning | October 24, 1895 |
| Whereabouts | Confiscated by the United States on April 7, 1917 . Rammed and sunk on June 21, 1918. |
| Technical specifications | |
| Displacement | Construction: 1,608 t maximum: 1,918 t |
| length |
KWL : 79.92 m over all: 83.9 m |
| width | 10 m |
| Draft | 4.8 m |
| Rigging | Schoonerbark |
| Sail area | 856 m² |
| Propulsion system |
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| Machine performance | 2,884 PSi |
| speed | 16.3 kn |
| Driving range | 3,610 nm at 9 kn |
| Armament |
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| crew | 166 men |
SMS Geier was a small unarmored cruiser of the Imperial Navy . The ship was launched on October 18, 1894 at the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven as the sixth and last ship of the Bussard class . At the beginning of the First World War , the already completely outdated Geier , which had been reclassified as a gunboat since May 1914, was in the South Seas. Because of problems with the machinery, she went to Hawaii , where she was interned. When the USA entered the war against Germany in 1917, the Americans confiscated the gunboat and renamed it the USS Schurz .
In 1918 the ship sank after a collision with a cargo ship off the east coast of the USA.
Technical specifications
The vulture was 76 m long, 10 m wide and went 4.8 m deep. Fully equipped, the cruiser displaced 1,600 tons. The building material was steel. Four boilers with a flashing flame generated steam for two horizontal triple expansion machines, which acted with a total of 2,880 PSi on the two propellers and enabled a top speed of 15 knots. The range was with a maximum coal supply of 300 tons and a cruising speed of 10 kn at 3,500 nm. By 1909 the ship had three masts with a barquentine rigging, then two masts and a topsail schooner rigging. The armament consisted of eight 10.5 cm L / 35 rapid-loading cannons, four on each side, on the raised fore section, in front of the bridge, between the second and third mast and on the raised aft section. The Geier was also equipped with two 45 cm torpedo tubes in the broadside, which were set up on deck between the chimney and the second mast. In addition, there were five 3.7-cm revolver cannons and two 8-mm Maxim machine guns on board.
The crew consisted of five naval officers, a naval engineer, a medical officer, seven deck officers and 114 NCOs and men.
Mission history up to the First World War
After commissioning on October 24, 1894, the Geier was initially assigned to the Baltic Sea station of the Imperial Navy with the port of equipment in Kiel , but was decommissioned on January 21, 1895.
First assignment abroad
On December 9, 1897, the cruiser, which was put into service again on December 1, started a voyage to Haiti in Kiel , as the Navy considered the use of an active warship in the West Indies to be necessary to protect German citizens and economic interests and the armored ship intended for this purpose Oldenburg did not appear sufficiently seaworthy. On January 3rd, 1898, the vultures arrived in Saint Thomas , then Danish , when the school ships Charlotte and Stein had already calmed the situation in Haiti. The vultures then visited Santiago de Cuba , Venezuela ( La Guaira and Puerto Cabello ) and Port of Spain (March 24 to April 6), where they received orders to visit Brazil and Argentina. When the Spanish-American War broke out , she had already visited Pernambuco and was in Bahia . From there she had to return to the war zone to observe the war and to protect German interests. With US approval, she helped evacuate foreign civilians from Havana , Cuba. She then visited Vera Cruz in Mexico, and eleven days after the war ended in New Orleans .
From there, on October 25th, the vultures started another trip to Argentina and the west coast of the continent. At the end of February 1899, it passed the Strait of Magellan and then ran north via a number of ports (including Valparaíso , Callao , Panama City ). From May 11 to May 27, she was partly with a British cruiser off Puerto San José , Guatemala , in order to enforce financial claims against the government of Guatemala. Then she ran south again and drove to Puntarenas in Costa Rica . From there Hermann Jacobsen traveled to the capital San José to officially visit the President of Costa Rica, Rafael Yglesias Castro .
In Guayaquil , the vultures turned north again, because the collapse of the Central American Confederation of Nicaraguan President Zelaya caused unrest and it was supposed to protect German citizens. After visiting several Central American states, the ship ran into San Francisco on August 14, 1899 while it was in a shipyard.
On September 8, the vulture ran out again, visited Esquimalt (British Columbia) and Vancouver in Canada and then turned south again from October 18. On February 14, 1900, after many other visits, she reached Puerto Montt in southern Chile, only to turn north again on February 21.
On July 9, 1900, they received the order in Acapulco to go to the cruiser squadron in East Asia because of the unrest in China ( Boxer Rebellion ) . It ran out on the 11th and reached the squadron via Honolulu and Yokohama on August 29th before Tschifu . In October 1900 the Geier ran for the first time to the German leasehold area Kiautschou and from there to Shanghai , where it remained stationed until January 1901. Then she ran up the Yangtze River to Chongqing to replace the sister ship Bussard . At the beginning of April 1905, she left the station on the river to replace the sister ship Seeadler , which was sent to Yap to support the run-up steamer Munich , on the central Chinese coast near Amoy and Swatou after a short stay in Tsingtau . After that, after the situation in China had eased, she visited a number of other ships in the station area with other ships from the squadron, including Korean and Japanese ports. In the autumn of 1902 she made another trip to the Dutch East Indies and Singapore . From March to April 1903 the necessary major repairs were carried out in Nagasaki . At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War , the vulture was mostly in front of Chemulpo . The new shipyard in Tsingtau has not yet been able to carry out necessary repairs . Therefore, the cruiser began its march back on January 14, 1905 after more than seven years of foreign service and reached home on March 16, where it was to be modernized.
Second foreign assignment
It was not returned to service until 1911. Leaving Kiel on May 8th, the vulture arrived on July 9th at the East African station, where she was on station duty with her sister ship Seeadler from Dar es Salaam ( German East Africa ). On October 2, after the outbreak of the Turkish-Italian war , she was sent to the Mediterranean, where she arrived in Piraeus on November 16 . She observed the development in Tripolitania and Palestine and was officially assigned to the Mediterranean station in 1912. In May 1912 she ran to Corfu , where the emperor was on vacation with the Hohenzollern and where he also visited the ship. Then she went to the then Austrian Trieste from July 12th to September 30th for an overhaul.
Then the vulture ran back into Turkish waters in the eastern Mediterranean. On January 31, 1913, during the visit to Haifa (Palestine), a coal dust explosion occurred on board, in which two crew members were killed. In August 1913, the Geier replaced the Breslau in the blockade service off the Montenegrin coast . After another overhaul from October 14 to January 4, 1914 in Trieste, she ran back to German East Africa to take over her station work and met on January 22 in Aden with the sister ship Seeadler , which was on its way home , which has been since the departure of the Geier had carried out station duty alone. The Geier remained off German East Africa until it was replaced by the small cruiser Königsberg on June 5, 1914, where it was reclassified as a gunboat at the beginning of May. Subsequently, the old ship set out for German New Guinea on June 12th , where the Condor to be relieved had already started her voyage home in November 1913 and the remaining gunboat, the sister ship Cormoran, had been in Tsingtau for a major overhaul since the end of May.
Start of war and internment
From July 25 to 29, 1914 the vulture was cared for in Singapore. On August 1, she received the order to go to Yap to the cruiser squadron. The freighters of the German-Australian Steamship Society (DADG) Elmshorn (4,594 GRT, Captain Peter Kiel) and Bochum (6,161 GRT, Captain J. Orgel) were sent with 1,700 tons of coal to support them, with whom they arrived on August 5th the island of Flores met and took over coal. The Elmshorn was released to procure more coal in the Dutch East Indies, while the former cruiser marched on with the Bochum . The vultures often had to be towed as there were multiple machine failures.
On August 20, 1914, she met the small cruiser Emden with its escort ship Markomania (4,505 GRT, HAPAG ) in the Moluccas region . The Geier learned from the commander of the Emden von Müller , who was already on his way to wage privateer warfare in the Indian Ocean , that the cruiser squadron under Maximilian von Spee was already on its way to South America. Although the old cruiser no longer had any combat value, the commander, Corvette Captain Carl Graßhoff, decided to remain in the station area for the time being. On August 23, the Elmshorn , which had only received 800 tons of coal in Dutch ports, because their authorities interpreted the rules of neutrality very strictly, hit the vultures again at Malakol . The Bochum was sent to Angaur to empty a coal store located there. She hit the steamer Tsingtau (1,685 BRT, NDL , Captain Heyenga), which had been sent to the cruiser squadron with supplies but had not reached it in time. The two DADG steamers gave up all unnecessary supplies and then ran to the still neutral Manila .
The Geier and the Tsingtau continued to run through the South Seas, which was not yet occupied, and on September 4, they found the British steamer Southport (3,586 GRT, 1900) near Kusaie , which was waiting there because of the weather conditions to take over a phosphate cargo to Stettin in Nauru to be able to. The British who had left Australia in June were unaware of the outbreak of war. The Germans made the machine unusable and continued their voyage on the 6th, with the vultures leaving the island in a different direction under sail well after the Tsingtau . On September 11, the two German ships reached Majuro . There they met the NDL steamer Locksun (1,675 GRT, Captain Gerlach), which had also been sent to the cruiser squadron with supplies and had remained in the archipelago in order to take care of the auxiliary cruisers Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Cormoran that had been left there.
Graßhoff decided to march to South America via Honolulu. Since the vultures had considerable problems with the machinery and were constantly losing boiler water, attempts were made to repair everything as far as possible and to use a lot of fresh water. On the 21st, the three ships started marching again, with the Tsingtau parting from the escorts the following day to call at Cebu . The former cruiser reached Honolulu on October 15, 1914, on Hawaii , where it was received by eight German merchant ships lying there, some of which had supplied the cruiser squadron, with the machine still running at most 8 knots, partly under sail or towed by the Locksun . They were ready to help the vultures prepare for their onward journey.
The possibility of leaving the port of the then still neutral United States disappeared when the Japanese ship of the line Hizen (the former Russian Retwisan ) and then the armored cruiser Asama (similar to Izumo ) began to patrol in front of the port on October 17, 1914 . On November 8, the American authorities finally interned the Vultures and the Locksun . The Americans classified the latter as a supply ship, even under British pressure, as they knew that on August 16 they would be entering Manila with 3,215 tn.l. Had left coal, now had only a small supply and, according to her correct guess, had supplied coal to warships at sea.
The crew of the vultures' only spoils of war - the Southport - managed to partially repair the demolished machine and to leave Kusaie by ship on September 18. However, only a slow voyage was possible and she only met another ship off the Australian coast on September 30, to which she was able to report the presence of the vultures in the South Seas.
Vulture becomes apron
Two months before the United States entered the war on February 4, 1917, the Honolulu Fire Department and American troops stormed the Vultures and Locksun because they had allegedly observed a fire. In fact, the authorities feared that the Germans would sink the ships themselves. The Americans found that the vulture had regularly relayed radio messages and also made slogans in English that Japan, Canada and Mexico could use against the USA or in cooperation with the American Navy. The German crews of both ships went into captivity and were taken to Fort Douglas near Salt Lake City , where the men of the auxiliary cruiser Cormoran , who had sunk their ship in Guam , also came.
After the American declaration of war on April 6, 1917, took over the US Navy , the vulture , equipped them around and put them on 15 September 1917 as USS Schurz into service (named after the German-American Carl Schurz ). Until the beginning of January 1918, the Schurz, classified as a gunboat, escorted four American submarines from the US west coast through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean.
Then she took over from her new base in Charleston from patrol duties off the east coast of the USA and in the Caribbean. On June 21, 1918, she was rammed near the lightship Cape Lookout Shoals off the coast of North Carolina by the escort steamer Florida . One crew member was killed in the process. The apron sank three hours later.
The wreck is a destination for divers.
Commanders
| October 1895 to January 1896 | Lieutenant Ludwig Bruch |
| December 1897 to November 1899 | Corvette Captain Hermann Jacobsen (1859–1943) |
| November 1899 to February 1901 | Corvette Captain Wilhelm Peters (1858–1943) |
| February to September 1901 | Corvette Captain Hermann Bauer |
| September 1901 to September 1902 | Corvette Captain Paul Hilbrand (1862–1934) |
| September 1902 to February 1903 | Corvette Captain Rudolf Berger (1864-19 ??) |
| February to December 1903 | Corvette Captain Georg Wuthmann (1863-1940) |
| December 1903 to March 1905 | Corvette Captain Ernst von Studnitz (1865–1907) |
| April 1911 to May 1913 | Corvette Captain Franz Halm (1874–1918) |
| May 1913 to March 1917 | Corvette Captain Carl Graßhoff (1876–1943) |
literature
- Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 Volume 1. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 . P. 121.
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships. Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Hans H. Hildebrand: The German warships: biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Koehler's publishing company, Herford,
- H. Ottiger-Emden: The happy Emden - first book. K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart 1936, p. 42.
- B. Weyer: Paperback of the German navy. JF Lehmann Verlag, Munich 1900, p. 45.
- B. Weyer: Taschenbuch der Kriegsflotten - XV. Born in 1914. Verlag JF Lehmann, Munich 1914, p. 12.
Web links
- Mission history of the vultures
- Gerhard Wiechmann: The Prussian-German Navy in Latin America 1866-1914. Dissertation, 2000
- Application history of the apron
- Archaeological project on the wreck
Footnotes
- ^ Picture of the vultures in Buenos Aires, 1899
- ^ Gerhard Wiechmann: The Royal Prussian Navy in Latin America 1851 to 1867. An attempt at German gunboat policy , in: Sandra Carreras / Günther Maihold (eds.): Prussia and Latin America. In the field of tension between commerce, power and culture (Europa-Übersee vol. 12), Münster 2004, p. 224, ISBN 3-8258-6306-9 .
- ↑ Picture of the vulture and longitudinal section
- ↑ the vultures in the Kiel Canal
- ↑ See pictures on wiki commons
- ↑ image of the Bochum
- ↑ In 1917 they were confiscated by the USA and used as Casco ex Elmshorn and Montpelier ex Bochum .
- ↑ Presentation of the process ( memento of July 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) and report on Grasshof diaries and reference to files in national archives (PDF; 43 kB)
- ↑ English article about the camp, see also English Wikipedia ( Memento from December 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
