SMS Hansa (1872)
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| Overview | |
| Type |
Casemate ship III. Ranges (armored corvette) from 1884: ironclad |
| Shipyard |
Royal and Imperial Shipyard , Danzig and AG Vulcan Stettin |
| Keel laying | November 16, 1868 |
| Launch | January 26, 1872 |
| delivery | 1873/74 Vulcan shipyard, Stettin |
| Commissioning | May 19, 1875 in Kiel |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
Construction: 3950 t |
| length |
KWL : 71.73 m |
| width |
14.1 m |
| Draft |
5.74 - 6.80 m |
| crew |
399 men |
| drive |
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| speed |
12 kn |
| Range |
1330 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament | |
| Rigging |
3-mast full ship |
| Sail area |
1760 m² |
| Bunker quantity |
310 tons of coal |
SMS Hansa was an armored corvette of the Imperial Navy , which was used in foreign service in Latin America from 1878 to 1880. The Latinized name of the ship refers to the Hanseatic League . The name was given in 1868 in honor of the three Hanseatic cities of Hamburg , Bremen and Lübeck as members of the North German Confederation .
The corvette was originally intended for the Navy of the North German Confederation . She was the first in Germany built ironclad , however, consisted hull construction still made of wood . Like many contemporary warships, it had a ram ram .
construction
The design of the Hansa went back to the Prussian fleet planning of 1861. The ship was specially designed for fighting down coastal fortresses overseas.
Since the German shipbuilding industry did not yet have much experience in building iron ships, the corvette was made of wood and provided with a 114 mm thick armor . The blueprint was based on British constructions. The keel was laid as a new building for the Navy of the North German Confederation.
The baptismal address on October 26, 1872 was held by the Deputy Commanding General of the IX. Army Corps in Hamburg-Altona , Lieutenant General Hermann von Tresckow ; The baptism was performed by his daughter.
On August 19, 1873, the ship was towed to Stettin and completed at the Vulcan shipyard. The work was finished in December 1874.
On January 3, 1875 it arrived in Kiel, where the remaining work was carried out in the floating dock there.
The Hansa was the first ironclad built in Germany. The first steel armored ship made in Germany was the SMS Oldenburg armored corvette .
use
In the armored squadron
On June 3, 1875, the Hansa began its service in the armored training squadron . At the beginning of July she was at Rügen by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, later Emperor Friedrich III. , visited. On 22./23. September 1875 she took part in a naval parade in front of Kaiser Wilhelm I in the roadstead of Warnemünde .
On November 4, 1875 the seasonal decommissioning took place. For unknown reasons, the next commissioning took place on July 22, 1878.
Foreign service in Venezuela
From October 1, 1878, the Hansa was equipped for foreign service on the West Indian station of the Imperial Navy. She was supposed to occupy the station regularly and was thus the first ironclad in the Imperial Navy to take on this task at an overseas station. During this trip, the Hansa was commanded by the corvette captain and later Vice-Admiral Karl Eduard Heusner (1843-1891).
On January 3, 1879, she reached the port of Charlotte Amalie in the Danish colony of Saint Thomas , at that time an important traffic hub in the Caribbean .
In January 1879, the Hansa stayed in the port of La Guayra , as attacks on German residents were feared due to a revolution in Venezuela .
After the unrest subsided, the Hansa made a tour and visited Curacao , several Antilles ports, Greytown ( San Juan del Norte ) in Nicaragua , Sabanilla in Colombia , Colón in what was then Colombia (now Panama ). She then traveled to Bahia / Brazil , where she arrived on June 22, 1879.
There she received the order from the German admiralty to first call at Valparaíso due to the saltpeter war between Peru / Bolivia and Chile to protect German interests , where the Hansa arrived in mid-August. Since no direct threat to German citizens could be determined there and since the war party Peru had meanwhile arrested the German freighter Luxor in the Peruvian port of Callao , Heusner decided to run there. The Hansa arrived there on September 8, 1879 .
In Peru. The Hansa in the Luxor affair
The Luxor affair is named after the steamer of the Hamburg shipping company Deutsche Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft Kosmos Luxor ; the ships of this line all had ancient Egyptian names.
The affair developed from the fact that the steamer a charge still on 15 April 1879 in Buenos Aires weapons and ammunition had taken for the Chilean government on board, although the outbreak of Salpeterkriegs on April 5, 1879 now also in Argentina known had become. The Luxor unloaded her cargo in Valparaiso and continued her voyage to Callao, although the German Prime Minister in Santiago de Chile had expressly warned the commander of the steamer not to continue the journey.
When the Luxor arrived in Callao, Chilean newspapers had already announced that the steamer had transported a cargo essential to the war effort for Chile. He was confiscated but released by the authorities shortly afterwards. Only when the successor to the Luxor line , the Ramses , broke off their journey in Valparaiso, the suspicion arose in Peru that the Kosmos was generally delivering weapons to Chile. As a result, the Luxor was again confiscated.
After the Supreme Court of Peru had finally confirmed the seizure of the steamer on October 16, 1879, Heusner started considering the violent liberation of the Luxor . But the navigational and strategic prerequisites for this in the heavily fortified port of Callao were not given.
As the Hamburg Senate put pressure on the Reich government in the matter and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck finally gave in despite considerable political concerns, the corvette SMS Freya and the gunboat SMS Hyäne were sent to Peru to support the Hansa in a liberation campaign.
But apparently an agreement between the new Peruvian government under General Piérola, the jefe supremo , and the local German consul , Gramatzki, had been reached behind the scenes through the mediation of the papal nuncio . On January 14, 1880, the Luxor was released. In return, Kosmos undertook to transport the wounded for the Peruvian government . Heusner was outraged by this agreement, but Gramatzki had deliberately left the commandant in ignorance of the negotiations in order to find a diplomatic solution to the affair.
After the end of the affair, Hansa remained in the war zone until the end of June 1880. On April 10, 1880, Heusner tried before Callao, together with the commanders of other foreign warships, at least postponing the bombardment of the port by the Chilean fleet under Admiral Rivero, but the admiral refused to accept this interference. The subsequent two-week bombing of Callao proceeded without major damage or loss.
On the return trip to Germany, the Hansa and the training ship SMS Bismarck, which has now also arrived on the west coast of South America , landed in Arica , where paramedics and doctors treated survivors of the Battle of Arica.
More functions
After returning from South America, the Hansa was decommissioned on November 8, 1880 in Kiel and thoroughly overhauled.
From February 1884 she performed in a double function as a guard ship off Kiel and as a machinist and stoker training ship . She regularly took part in exercises of the tank training squadron , including the celebration of the laying of the foundation stone for the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal on June 7, 1886.
Due to severe damage to the hull, the Hansa was decommissioned again in spring 1888 and removed from the list of warships in autumn .
The end
The hulk of the Hansa ultimately served as a barge , for which a central heating and electric light were installed. Her berth was the pier of the torpedo port in Kiel's Wik district.
In 1905 the Hulk was towed to Mönkeberg and used there for training as a stoker. In 1906 the navy sold the hull, which was eventually scrapped in Swinoujscie .
additional
Hansastraße, named after the above armored ship, has been located in the Ravensberg district of Kiel since 1893.
See also
literature
- Ottomar Fecht: The Imperial Navy 1871/80 in Ibero-American waters. In: Marine-Rundschau. Vol. 37, 1932, ISSN 0025-3294 , pp. 268-274.
- Günter Kroschel, August-Ludwig Evers (ed.): The German fleet 1848-1945. History of German warship construction in 437 pictures. 2nd improved edition. Lohse-Eissing, Wilhelmshaven 1963.
- Keyword: Hansa tank corvette. In: Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. One volume reprint of the seven-volume original edition. 3rd volume. Mundus, Ratingen 1983, ISBN 3-88385-028-4 , pp. 52-54.
- Otto J. Seiler: South America trip. German liner shipping to the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and the west coast of North America through the ages. Mittler, Herford 1992, ISBN 3-8132-0397-2 , ( Liner shipping of Hapag-Lloyd AG through the ages ).
Web links
- Mention of the Hansa in the article: THE BLOCKADE OF CALLAO. A CHILIAN FLEET PREPARING TO BOMBARD THE CITY. (PDF) In: The New York Times. May 6, 1880.
- Mention of the first release of the Luxor in the article: PERU AND CHILI IN ARMS. THE WAR IN SOUTH AMERICA. NEWS FROM THE BELLIGERENT STATES. INACTION AT PRESENT. A GREAT MOVEMENT EXPECTED (PDF) In: The New York Times. July 3, 1879, p. 5.
- Image of the Hansa at deutsche-schutzgebiete.de
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Gerhard Wiechmann: The Royal Prussian Navy in Latin America from 1851 to 1867. An attempt at German gunboat policy. In: Sandra Carreras, Günther Maihold (Hrsg.): Prussia and Latin America. In the field of tension between commerce, power and culture (= Europa-Übersee. Volume 12), Münster 2004, p. 163.
- ↑ Hans-G. Hilscher, Dietrich Bleihöfer: Hansastrasse. In: Kiel Street Lexicon. Continued since 2005 by the Office for Building Regulations, Surveying and Geoinformation of the State Capital Kiel, as of February 2017 ( kiel.de ).