SMS Musquito

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Was Ensign of Prussia (1816) .svg War Ensign of Germany (1867-1892) .svg
SMS Musquito.jpg
Construction data
Shipyard Royal Dockyard, Pembroke
Launch July 29, 1851
takeover October 19, 1862
Commissioning April 15, 1863
Decommissioning September 30, 1891
Deletion December 21, 1891
Whereabouts Sold in 1906, consumed as a coal hulk
Technical specifications
Measurement
(volume) 		310 GRT
194 NRT
Displacement Construction: 509 t
Maximum: 627 t
length KWL : 34.1 m
over everything: 40.5 m
width 10.3 m
Draft 4.05 - 4.6 m
Armament 10 × smooth 24-pounder
after conversion:
10 × 8 cm L / 23 Rk
Rigging brig
Sail area 1035 m²
Construction Cross- frame crawler construction
speed 12 kn
crew 8 officers and 142 men

SMS Musquito was a brig of the Royal Prussian and Imperial German Navy . She was built in Great Britain in 1851 by the Royal Dockyard in Pembroke in South Wales , bought by the Prussian Navy in 1862 and used as a sailing training ship for ship boys from 1863 to 1891 .

History of the Musquito

The British Royal Navy received from 1841 to 1853 seven sloops of Helena class with 16 guns. Launched in 1851 at the state shipyard in Pembroke , the HMS Musquito was the sixth ship of this class. The Helena- class sloops were rigged as briggs and were therefore also referred to as first class brigs . The HMS Musquito transverse spreader crane displaced 549 t, was 40.5 m long and 10.3 m wide. The armament consisted of 16 32pdr cannons. The shipyard in Wales built five briggs in this series with Helena (1843), Atalanta , Camilla (1847), Musquito (1851) and Rover (1853); in addition there were the Siren , built in Woolwich in 1841 , and the Jumna, completed in Bombay in 1948 . The Musquito and the Rover were ordered in April 1847. The construction of the Musquito began in May 1849. After being launched on July 29, 1851, the ship was transferred to Plymouth at the end of August 1851 . As of July 1853, Musquito and Rover were in Plymouth in reserve and were not armed.

Sale to Prussia

The young Prussian Navy lost the schooner Frauenlob in 1860 and the sailing corvette Amazone with the entire crew in November 1861 . Both ships had been used as training ships. The Prussian state parliament then approved the purchase of suitable training ships in Great Britain in order to quickly meet the existing need for well-trained seafarers. In 1862 the British Admiralty succeeded in purchasing the sailing frigate Niobe and the sloops Musquito and Rover of the Helena class. The Royal Navy, which was being converted to a fully steam-powered Navy, gave up the wooden, pure sailing ships, none of which had previously been in active service. In the purchase contract for the ships of July 9, 1862, the price for the Musquito was £ 11,828.

Officers were sent to Great Britain to transfer the ships they had bought. Arcona and Thetis , returning from East Asia, had to provide the necessary teams . The covered corvette Arcona under sea ​​captain Henrik Ludvig Sundevall had already arrived in England in August from Cape Town and was in the dock in Devonport for repairs. After surrendering parts of the crew for the purchases, she continued her journey home on September 17, 1862. The sailing frigate Thetis under Captain Eduard Jachmann arrived in Plymouth in mid-October after completing a special order in South America . She gave more seamen for the transfer teams. On October 19, the two briggs Musquito and Rover and on October 21 the frigate Niobe were taken over for the Prussian Navy. On October 25th, the Thetis continued their journey home. On October 28, the sister ships Musquito and Rover also began their transfer voyage to Gdansk , where they arrived at the end of November and were taken out of service again in December to be prepared for their duties as training ships in the Royal Shipyard . The transfer commander of the Musquito was Second Class Lieutenant Adolph Berger, who commanded the ship again from May 1866 to September 1867 and from April to October 1873.

The ship boy training ship Musquito

On April 15, 1863, the Musquito was the first of the new training ships to be commissioned under Corvette Captain Friedrich Hassenstein. The other two ships followed in the following two months. The ships kept their British names. The musquito kept its name despite the spelling Mosquito used in Germany for the tropical mosquito that gave it its name . Since a different spelling (mosquito) prevailed in England too, the ship was often incorrectly named in official German documents.

In August 1863 a training squadron of the three new acquisitions was formed for the first time, which Prince Adalbert demonstrated to the Prussian Crown Prince couple Friedrich Wilhelm and Victoria on the Grille in front of Rügen . After association exercises, they then began a trip abroad to the Atlantic in autumn, which was canceled on November 16 in Plymouth due to tensions with Denmark. The Musquito had to repair sea damage there and could only follow the other ships after a week and reached Swinoujscie on December 5th. There she stayed with a reduced crew even during the German-Danish War as a barge for drafted reservists.

In the autumn of 1864 the school squadron left Kiel for the Atlantic with all three ships . Because the war with Denmark had just ended, the covered corvette Vineta and the smooth-decked corvette Victoria accompanied the outgoing school squadron to Plymouth. There the Niobe separated from the Briggs and continued their journey to the West Indies, while the two escort corvettes returned to the Baltic Sea. The two shipboy's school ships ran into the Mediterranean via Gibraltar and Palermo to Nauplia . Bad weather conditions delayed the return voyage in Malta , and it was not until May 17, 1865 that the Musquito arrived back in Kiel with her sister ship.

In the following years, there were short training trips in the Baltic Sea in the summer and then a winter trip to the south of several months. In 1865/66 the winter trip to Cape Verde took place , with the Niobe also taking part in the trip. In 1866/67 the Musquito made the winter voyage with the Rover from October 9, 1866 to the beginning of May 1867 in the western Mediterranean. The Musquito was commanded since May 1866 by its former transfer commander Adolph Berger, who was promoted to corvette captain on the journey. After returning to Kiel there was a short trip with the Crown Prince couple on board, accompanied by Major General Albrecht von Stosch , who later became the First Chief of the Admiralty of the Imperial Navy , who participated in the everyday life of a warship for the first time on the brig. On the following voyage, the commander Berger changed on October 12, 1867 in Plymouth from the Musquito to the school frigate Niobe , whose commander died after an accident on September 24. The Musquito took over Corvette Captain Mac Lean, who was in England to transfer the armored frigate Kronprinz . While the Niobe traveled back to the West Indies, the two school briggs sailed to Lisbon , from where they made several shorter trips over the winter before arriving back in Kiel on May 3, 1868. The Musquito and the Rover spent the following two years off Portugal and the Atlantic ports in southern Spain. On April 28, 1870, the two ships returned to Kiel. They then moved to Danzig and decommissioned there in July because of the Franco-German War .

On May 21, 1871, the Musquito was put back into service. At the same time, the similar new building SMS Undine at the royal shipyard in Gdansk came into service with the Navy for the first time. In the winter of 1871/1872, both ships carried out a winter voyage of several months to Cape Verde. The Musquito remained in service alongside the active Rover in the summer of 1872 , so that all three briggs remained in service in the Baltic Sea in the summer. The Musquito visited Karlskrona as the only foreign port. The small school ships should no longer be used on long journeys and should only be used during the first phase of training at home. In the following years from 1873 to 1877 the Musquito was also used as a ship's boy brig from the beginning of April to mid-October, traveling to Norway in 1877 and visiting Christiania (now Oslo ) and Bergen . In 1878 Swedish ports, including Stockholm, were visited.

After a general overhaul in 1878 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel , further operations were carried out from spring to autumn in the years 1879, 1880, 1882 and 1883.

After another year of rest, the Musquito was used in 1885 for training in the second year of cabin boy training and started on June 1, 1885 on an Atlantic voyage with the flat-deck corvette Luise , which was also used as a training ship for cabin boy training , and who had already undertaken such a voyage in 1881 / 82. The two school ships reached Bahia as the southernmost port of their voyage on October 21, and used Barbados as a base from the beginning of December to January 1886 , where the two ships with the school squadron formed for the winter from the cruiser frigates Stein and Moltke as well as the corvettes Sophie and the Ariadne , Luise's sister ship , met in January. The Musquito and the Luise then ran north along the Antilles. Musquito resided in Fort Monroe , Virginia from April 19 to May 4, 1886 . Both ships took part in a fleet parade in Cowes in July , where the brig was inspected by a number of high-ranking people. While Luise then visited Scotland , the Musquito ran alone to Kiel, where she arrived on August 29, 1886. On September 16, 1886, she was decommissioned in Danzig.

In 1889 and 1891, SMS Musquito was still used in the summer half-year for ship boy training in the Baltic Sea. In 1889, the sister ship Rover was deployed at the same time . In 1891 the operation of the Musquito was the last operation of a pure sailing ship as a training ship for the Navy, as the SMS Rover and SMS Niobe procured with her were activated for the last time in 1890 and then deleted from the fleet list in autumn. On September 30, 1891, the flag was raised for the last time on the Musquito and the ship was removed from the fleet list in December.

The end of the musquito

After its decommissioning on December 21, 1891, the hull of the Musquito was used as a mountain hulk and was used several times to salvage run-up ships of the Imperial Navy in the Baltic Sea. In March 1906 the hull was sold in Swinoujscie. The former Musquito was used up as a coal hulk and later broken up in Swinoujscie.

Commanders

Of the commanders of the Musquito , twelve later rose to the ranks of admirals, including

literature

  • Erich Gröner: The German warships 1815-1936. Munich, Lehmann 1937.
  • Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Koehler's publishing company, Herford, seven volumes
  • Rif Winfield: British Warships in the Age of Sail 1817–1863: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates , Seaforth publishing, 2014, ISBN 1-4738-4962-4

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JJ Colledge and Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy; P. 327 ( Siren , 1841 Woolwich Dockyard), p. 181 ( Helena , 1843 Pembroke DY), p. 27 ( Atalanta , 1847 Pembroke DY), p. 66 ( Camilla , 1847 Pembroke DY), p. 268 ( Musquito , 1851 Pembroke DY), p. 346 ( Rover , 1853 Pembroke DY), p. 209 ( Jumna 1848, Bombay DY)
  2. ^ A b Rif Winfield: British Warships in the Age of Sail 1817–1863: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates , p. 262
  3. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Volume 2, pp. 91f.
  4. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Volume 1, pp. 90ff.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Hildebrand u. a., Volume 4, p. 142
  6. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a., Volume 1, p. 97
  7. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Volume 5, p. 147
  8. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Volume 4, pp. 141f.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f Hildebrand u. a., Volume 4, p. 143
  10. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Volume 3, p. 25.
  11. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Volume 6, pp. 26, 30.
  12. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a., Volume 5, p. 15.
  13. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a., Volume 6, pp. 21f.
  14. ↑ a b c Hildebrand u. a., Volume 4, pp. 141f.
  15. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a., Volume 4, p. 98.
  16. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a., Volume 5, pp. 131f.
  17. ↑ Hildebrand et al. a .: The German Warships , Vol. 4, pp. 141f. and person index of all seven volumes