SMS Mars (1877)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SMS Mars was an artillery training ship that served in the German Imperial Navy from 1881 to 1908 .

prehistory

Artillery training ship Mars 1894

Since 1872, the navy had owned the artillery training ship Renown , which was taken over by the Navy of the North German Confederation , a wooden ship of the line bought by the British Royal Navy in 1870 , which, after appropriate conversion, was used to train gun operators and candidates for naval officers. The Renown , built in 1857 , did not have its own machinery and therefore had to be brought into position by a tender or tug and was otherwise so outdated that the Navy needed a modern replacement. For this purpose the Mars was procured.

Construction and technical data

The ship was launched on 15 November 1877 at the Imperial Shipyard in Wilhelmshaven with the hull number 5 from the stack . It was 80 m long and 15 m wide and had a draft of 5.8 m. The water displacement was 3320 t . The drive consisted of an expansion steam engine with 2000 hp, which allowed a top speed of 11 knots . The armament of the ship changed over the years, according to the development in ship artillery and the requirements of the Navy. Initially there were two 15 cm, two 17 cm, one 21 cm and one 24 cm guns, all of which had been taken over by the Renown . The crew numbered about 348 men.

fate

The Mars came to the North Sea naval station in Wilhelmshaven in March 1881 and took over the armament and equipment of the Renown , which was then decommissioned on March 31, 1881. On April 1st, the Mars was put into service under the command of Captain Count Haake. Only a few weeks later, on April 26th, a serious explosion occurred on board during a target practice, which left ten dead and a number of injuries. A memorial erected on the former garrison cemetery still reminds of this today.

Otherwise, the use of the ship, according to its task, was not very varied. Exceptions to routine service were rare. In the autumn of 1890 promising attempts were made with a tethered balloon to test the extent to which this method could be suitable for sea observation. In 1894 the ship was conducting remote target shooting exercises in southern Norway . In 1895 it took part in the inauguration of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal . At the Dover - Helgoland anniversary regatta in June 1897, the Mars served as the target ship; Kaiser Wilhelm II and his yacht Hohenzollern lay right next to her in order to closely observe the finish line. On September 10, 1904, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Admiral Karl Rudolf Bromme , the first in command of the German Imperial Fleet , Wilhelm II invited all senior German naval officers to a feast on Mars, which lies in front of Brunsbüttelkoog .

When the navy's artillery training increasingly took place on combat ships that were temporarily assigned to the artillery training ship squadron for this purpose, the Mars was primarily used as a drill and accommodation ship. As early as 1906, the Schwaben ship of the line was assigned to inspect the ship's artillery and replaced the Mars there.

Commanders

1890 Captain Franz Strauch

The End

From 1908 the Mars was only used as a residential hulk for the naval station of the Baltic Sea . In 1914 she was removed from the list of warships. The hull was sold in 1921 and demolished in Lübeck.

Trivia

The ship received three nicknames. With the fleet staff on board, which was regularly the case during the autumn maneuvers of the high seas, it was called "rubber armor", as an artillery training ship it was called "cannon circus", and within a fleet formation it was nicknamed "simulaker".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Online project memorials for fallen: Wilhelmshaven (former garrison cemetery) ; the 1966 abandoned cemetery is located on Wilhelmshavener Gökerstraße.
  2. ↑ Klaus Kramer (ed.): From the gondola parade to the ocean race: when Kaiser Wilhelm II brought yachting to Germany; a documentation on German yachting history 1815–1915 (=  series of publications on yachting and shipping history . Volume 2 ). Klaus Kramer Verlag, Schramberg 2002, ISBN 3-9805874-4-4 , p. 148 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ http://www.chroniknet.de/daly_de.0.html?year=1904&month=9
  4. ↑ Communications from the field of maritime affairs . tape 35 . C. Gerold's Sohn, Vienna 1907, OCLC 33905968 , p. 429-430 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ↑ Hans-H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships , 10 volumes, Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, ISBN 3-8364-9743-3 , volume 7. P. 139ff.
  6. ^ High command of the navy: Ranking and quarters list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1891. Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son
  7. ↑ H. Merleker: Ships also have nicknames , in Die Seekiste No. 2 1951, p. 82/83

Web links