SMS Mercur
 Drawing of the Mercury by Lüder Arenhold around 1905
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SMS Mercur was a merchant ship of the Prussian sea trade and a transport and training ship of the Royal Prussian Navy . After the Korvette Amazone , the Mercur was the second warship of the Prussian Navy.
Further technical data
Commissioned by the Prussian Navy: July 1, 1850
Origin of name: Mercurius , Roman patron god of merchants and thieves.
Decommissioned: November 14, 1860
use
The Mercur was built as a cargo ship for the Prussian sea trade. Her first overseas voyage led in ballast to Rio de Janeiro in 1848 . On the voyage the ship had proven to be very slim. According to an expertise by the London shipbuilder Young, the Mercur was built too sharp in the front part and constantly needed ballast. Due to the Danish blockade of the German coasts, the ship had to remain in the roadstead at Cowes from April to September 1848 and then called at Hamburg.
On November 18, 1848, the Mercury left for Batavia . Two crew members were killed on the return journey; Details are not known. After the actual maritime deal was dissolved, it was purchased by the Prussian Navy on March 26, 1850, as the existing training ship Amazone was not considered sufficient for the training of future seafarers .
In the spring of 1850, the ship was rebuilt at the Zieske shipyard in Szczecin . Since Prussia did not yet have its own dock , some changes had to be made in Karlskrona , Sweden . The first in command of the ship was the sea captain Johann Otto Donner .
On November 4, 1850, the Mercur left Swinoujscie on her first training voyage with the destination Bahia . Still in the Baltic Sea , problems arose with the iron ballast , which in Danish Elsinore had to be changed jams. In Falmouth there were renewed problems with the ballast, so that at times it was uncertain whether the Mercur was even suitable for an Atlantic crossing . Finally Bahia was called via Funchal and Tenerife , where she arrived on January 23, 1851. At the beginning of March she left Bahia with the destination Cape Town , but had to break off the trip due to unfavorable wind conditions and call for emergency repairs on the island of St. Helena . On May 29, 1851 she arrived in Stettin . The rest of the year the Mercur was used for training trips in the Baltic Sea. On November 30, 1851, it was taken out of service in the naval depot in Stettin and was overhauled. The previous carronades were replaced by six light field guns. It is unclear whether carronades remained on board or were abolished. According to an official list of ships, she owned 12 cannons in 1857 .
On October 21, 1852, the Mercur was put back into service and sailed in the squadron formation under the leadership of Commodore Jan Schröder together with the frigate Gefion and the Amazone to West Africa and South America . In addition to educational purposes, the trip also served to explore colonization opportunities in Argentina . After a stay in Monrovia , she arrived in Rio on March 3, 1852. After a temporary separation from the other two ships, the squadron reunited on March 12 in Montevideo . On May 4, the Mercur was released from the squadron association and started sailing home alone, while Gefion and Amazone called via Caribbean ports in Norfolk . It reached Danzig on June 4, 1853 and was again overtaken.
At the end of September 1853 the Mercur left Danzig to fly the flag with the Gefion and the Radkorvette Danzig in the eastern Mediterranean . However, the trip had to be canceled due to the Crimean War in March 1854. In Portsmouth , the training ship gave seven midshipmen to the Royal Navy , who should be trained there. On May 7, 1854, she returned to Danzig.
For the next few years the Mercur served either as a school ship or barracks ship in the Baltic Sea. In June 1856 she collided with the Danzig during a squadron exercise . In March 1858 she was declared unseaworthy, but still served as a stationary training ship and was also used for short-term training trips. However, when the sinking of the ship was feared, it was decommissioned on November 14, 1860. The Mercur was already auctioned in December and broken up in 1861.
Illustrations
As far as is known, there are no contemporary images of the Mercury . The Commander Lüder Arenhold made around 1904 to a reconstruction paintings of the ship, which was published in his book on the ships of the Prussian Navy. A reproduction of the painting was published in the work of Hans Auerbach in 1993.
literature
- (Paul) Koch: SMS "Mercur" , in: Marine-Rundschau , 5th year, 1894, pp. 1–9, 45–52.
- L (üder). Arenhold: memorial sheets to the Kgl. Prussian Navy 1848–1860 , Berlin 1904, Reprint Berlin 1995.
- Entry Mercur , in: Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Herford 1979ff. (One-volume reprint of the seven-volume original edition, Ratingen 1984, Vol. IV., Pp. 117f.)
- Hans Auerbach: Prussia's way to the sea. Pomerania, the cradle of the Royal Prussian Navy , Berlin 1993, pp. 80–84.
- Gerhard Wiechmann: The Royal Prussian Navy in Latin America 1851 to 1867. An attempt by German gunboat policy overseas , in: Sandra Carreras / Günther Maihold (ed.): Prussia and Latin America. In the field of tension between commerce, power and culture, Munich 2004, pp. 105–144.
- Johann Friedrich Meuss: The undertakings of the royal sea trading institute to bring up the Prussian trade at sea. A contribution to the history of maritime trade and the maritime system in Prussia in the first half of the 19th century , Berlin (Mittler) 1913, pp. 110–117.