SMS Victoria
 The type ship SMS Augusta
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
SMS Victoria was a corvette (so-called smooth deck corvette) of the Prussian Navy , which was taken over in the Imperial Navy when the Empire was founded in 1871 . It was built in France in 1864 and later acquired by Prussia the same year . In 1884 she was reclassified as a cruiser corvette .
history
purchase
The Confederate States had ordered two ships for use in the Civil War from L'Arman Frères in Bordeaux . In order to disguise this and to prevent international entanglements, the ships were built under the (apparently Japanese) names Yeddo and Osakka . The real name of the Osakka would have been Louisiana . The delivery to the Confederates was through the personal intervention of Emperor Napoleon III. prevented, who wanted to avoid French involvement in the war. This led to the ship being sold to the Kingdom of Prussia by the shipyard .
Early career
After the Prussian government had bought the ship, which was already fully equipped except for the armament, the corvette, which had been renamed SMS Victoria after the Prussian Crown Princess Victoria on May 31, 1864 , was to be transferred to Bremerhaven for arming and commissioning . The handover of the sister ship Augusta had already taken place at this time. Now, however, the Danish government intervened with British support and caused the French government to withdraw its consent to deliver a warship to Denmark's belligerent enemy, Prussia. The Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had to intervene and was able to convince the French to bring the unarmed ship under the French flag to the Netherlands , where it was picked up by a Prussian crew and brought to Bremerhaven.
The Victoria arrived there on September 3rd, was armed and officially accepted into the Prussian fleet on September 14th. The crew then carried out sea trials and target practice in Jade Bay . After the successful conclusion of the German-Danish War, Kiel became the main base of the Prussian fleet and most of the fleet was moved there. So did the Victoria , which reached Kiel on October 4th.
At the end of the year Victoria visited Plymouth and then Brest with the Vineta and the school ships Niobe , Rover and Musquito . She was back in Kiel on December 22nd. In 1865 she embarked the crew for the new tower ship Arminius , which was built in Great Britain for the Prussian Navy. Victoria accompanied Arminius on the return trip to Kiel, where they arrived on May 15, 1865.
Several missions followed in the Baltic Sea , for example in May 1865 when the ship ran aground off Fehmarn , and from May 26th to June 1st when she carried the ship that carried the corpse of the Russian Crown Prince Nikolaus , who was staying in the south of France died, accompanied to Russia. In the middle of the year the crew was reduced and the Victoria was decommissioned on September 16 in Kiel. As the danger of war with Austria increased in the course of the year, Victoria was put back into service on January 1, 1866 and assigned to the Baltic Sea Squadron. While she was towing the corvette Arcona , the hawser tore and got caught in her propeller, which led to another visit to the shipyard. Victoria and Augusta later carried out target practice in front of Sønderborg . After the ship had not been used during the war, it was decommissioned again on October 31. In 1867, their smoothbore armament was replaced by rifled guns of the same caliber.
First use overseas
On September 7, 1868, the Victoria was put into service to be used as a stationary on the West Indian - foreign station of the Prussian Navy. She left Kiel on September 29th, but severe storms in the North Sea delayed the voyage and forced the ship to stop in Portsmouth for repairs from October 15th to 27th . It was not until November 26 that she arrived in Saint-Pierre , Martinique. The ship was in Havana on December 12 , as unrest loomed in the country and a tobacco shipment bought by a German company was blocked. She then went to Port-au-Prince , where European property had been confiscated by the government. She managed to force the Haitian government to surrender the confiscated property. On January 9, 1869 Victoria promoted the sales representative of the North German Confederation from Havana to La Guaira . The Venezuelan government was trying at that time to force foreign companies to pay fees that should finance the Venezuelan military. Victoria stayed in Venezuelan waters to stop this practice. Renewed unrest in Cuba during the Ten Years' War forced the ship to return to Havana from March 25 to April 22 to protect German nationals in the region.
Subsequent outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera burdened the crew and the ship's hull was meanwhile in need of maintenance. The captain therefore asked permission to have the ship repaired at a shipyard in St. Pierre or Rio de Janeiro , but received no answer. So the Victoria continued her journey to Colombia . When the ship was in Veracruz in June , there were rumors that a war between France and the North German Confederation had broken out. Victoria therefore steamed to Havana to receive news about the political situation. The crew learned there that there was no war, but instead received the order to return home. The ship started on July 25th with stops in Norfolk , Faial in the Azores and Plymouth. After repairs there after a storm, the Victoria arrived in Gdansk on October 8 , where it was decommissioned on the 19th of the month.
Second foreign assignment
The Victoria remained after the outbreak of the Franco-German War in July 1870 initially in reserve, however, was provided in January 1871 as its sister ship Augusta , the trade war against France participate. Instead, they, however, remained due to the blockade of the port by clearly superior French ships to November in Gdansk and was then to Kiel relocated to cm 15 there in a dry-dock period from December 5 with more modern and 12-cm ring cannon to be fitted . It remained in reserve until December 1874 and was relocated to Wilhelmshaven . From March 20 to April 8, 1875, the crew carried out firing tests with the new guns. On October 11th, the ship was put back into service for another voyage to the West Indies and she left Wilhelmshaven on October 26th. On November 29, she reached Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies , where she replaced Augusta as a stationary . Victoria then visited a few ports in the Caribbean until unrest in Haiti required her presence in May 1876. From the end of June she continued her journey south and visited ports in South America as far as Montevideo until December 14th . Then she returned to Saint Thomas.
From February 14 to March 3, 1877, the Victoria cruised in Venezuelan waters. Because of a conflict between Guatemala and El Salvador and the simultaneous Mexican Revolution by Porfirio Díaz ( plan from Tuxtepec ) Victoria moved first to Sabanilla , Colombia, from March 8th to 14th and then to Havana from March 21st to April 3rd to be close in case their intervention in either conflict was necessary. However, both crises passed without a threat to German interests, and so Victoria returned to Saint Thomas on April 3. There she received orders to go to the Mediterranean. The ship reached Port Said on June 14th . At that time the Ottoman Empire was involved in the Russo-Turkish War and the German government feared that anti-European unrest could break out in the Levant and threaten German property in Jerusalem . Victoria joined the corvette Gazelle and they visited several ports in the area. On July 2, the ship was recalled because of a disease that broke out on board and reached Wilhelmshaven on July 29. There she was taken out of service on August 10 for a thorough overhaul that reduced her rigging. With her modified rig she carried out sea tests from August 12th to 13th, 1879 and was taken out of service again on September 6th.
Third assignment abroad and fate
On July 1, 1880, Victoria was commissioned for another assignment in the West Indies under the command of Corvette Captain Victor Valois . She sailed from Wilhelmshaven on July 16, but received orders during a stay in Plymouth from July 19 to 22 to go to Malta . The background was that the German explorer Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs , who had led an expedition to explore the northern Congo Basin, had been attacked in the area of control of the Ottoman Empire near the Kufra oases of Sanusiya and forced to turn back. The Victoria reached Valletta on August 1st and was ordered to travel to Benghazi to negotiate protection for the expedition and financial compensation. After the negotiations were successfully concluded, Victoria left the city on August 29 and returned to Valetta.
Her next mission was to the Adriatic Sea , where Victoria took part in an international naval operation designed to force the Ottoman government to cede the city of Ulcinj to Montenegro in accordance with the provisions of the Berlin Congress of 1878 . This was refused by Albanian forces, supported by the Ottoman government. Under the command of British Vice Admiral Beauchamp Seymour , around twenty ships from Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia took part in the blockade, which began on September 20. On November 27, the Ottomans gave in to their demands and sent troops to force the Albanians to give up the city. On December 3, the international squadron was disbanded.
On the night of December 5th to 6th, Victoria left the Adriatic and resumed her original route to the West Indies. On December 23rd she reached Gibraltar for some repairs . There she received orders to sail to Liberia , as coastal residents there attacked and looted the German steamship Carlos after it ran aground off the coast. Victoria left Gibraltar on February 7, 1881, picked up the ship's captain in Funchal and in Monrovia embarked the German consul and two representatives of the Liberian government to the scene of the accident, which they reached on March 4. There Valois had a coastal village bombarded and dispatched a landing force on land, which arrested nine men and took them aboard the ship to be tried in Monrovia for the attack. With the Liberian government also willing to pay damages for the attack, Victoria returned to her original mission, stopping at Porto Grande on Cape Verde on March 17, and then visiting numerous ports in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. During a visit to São Francisco do Sul , the ship ran aground, which prompted Valois to investigate the port.
During her stay in Rio de Janeiro, the Victoria was ordered to return to Monrovia because the Liberian government had failed to meet its financial obligations because of the Carlos incident. She left Rio de Janeiro on October 8th and arrived in the Liberian capital on October 27th. Valois threatened to shell the city, resulting in an immediate payment. Victoria left port on November 2nd and reached Porto Grande again six days later. There she received the order to return to Germany and arrived in Wilhelmshaven on December 21, where it was due to be taken out of service for overhaul work from January 4, 1882.
In 1883 Victoria was due to be put back into service as a training ship, but her crew quarters were considered too small to accommodate enough trainees and so her place was taken by the corvette Freya . Instead, she served as a fisheries protection ship from July 1 to 31, 1884, from March 27 to August 6, 1888, and from March 18 to September 14, 1890 . The ship was present at the official transfer ceremony of the island of Heligoland from Great Britain to the German Empire on August 9 and 10, 1890. Victoria was struck from the maritime register on April 14, 1891 and sold to Hamburg for scrapping the next year .
literature
- Mirko Graetz: Prince Adalbert's forgotten fleet. The North German Federal Navy 1867–1871. Lulu Enterprises Inc. Morrisville, NC (USA) 2008, ISBN 978-1-4092-2509-6 , pp. 69-70.
- Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. A mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present day . Volume 8. Mundus Verlag. Ratingen. 1993. ISBN 3-78220-237-6 .