Saltpeter ride
The transportation of saltpeter by sea is known as the saltpetre trip. The term is mainly used for sailing ship voyages between Europe and Chile from the 19th to the first third of the 20th century. At this time, saltpeter was a valuable raw material for the manufacture of fertilizers and explosives .
Its importance declined in Europe with the start of the industrial production of ammonia using the Haber-Bosch process . Ammonia is also used as a raw material for fertilizers and saltpetre. When the German Reich was cut off from natural sources of nitrogen (Chile's nitrate) by the Allied sea blockade during the First World War , the Haber-Bosch process succeeded in maintaining ammunition and fertilizer production.
history
From 1810 the industrial mining of saltpetre began in the Atacama Desert (today's northern Chile). The overlapping interests of Chile, Peru and Bolivia led to the saltpeter war in 1879 , which was ended in 1884 with the Treaty of Valparaíso . The "white gold", now owned by Chile, was mined with British, US and German capital and brought the region considerable economic growth.
The South American saltpetre was primarily intended for export. In order to reach the Chilean ports from Europe, the ships had to circumnavigate Cape Horn from east to west against the prevailing westerly winds. Then the journey went north along the Chilean coast. When the ships carried general cargo to Valparaíso , a stopover was made there. Otherwise they drove under ballast directly to Iquique or Antofagasta , where the ballast was unloaded and saltpeter was taken over. Around 1890 up to a hundred ships were often in the roadstead at Iquique waiting for their cargo .
The mining of saltpetre, its processing, loading and transport took place under mostly inhuman conditions. In 1907 there was an uprising by saltpetre workers. They had been summoned to Iquique to reinforce their demands for a raise, humane treatment, and a lunch break. In the Santa Maria School they were slaughtered by army and naval units. The approximately 3,600 dead were buried or thrown into the sea.
It took about two to three months to load a sailor. Small transport boats brought the 60 kilogram sacks of saltpetre to the ships lying in the roadstead. Laeisz improved the processes and under great time pressure his ships were loaded in a week. For this purpose, among other things, the sails were already set while the loading was still going on, for which purpose the transport boats were dragged along a little. The captains Nissen and Hilgendorf were called "Düvel von Hamburg" because of their record runs. After about three trips with saltpeter, building a sailor had paid for itself. The service at sea was tough, and flogging was common. Many sailors deserted in Chilean ports, so that the ports and adjacent saltpetre deserts were overrun with them. The travel writer Kurt Faber reported that there were 90 percent of German seafarers .
Fully loaded, we went back to Europe on a south course around Cape Horn . The routes led through the Roaring Forties ( German : Roaring Forties , region between the 40th and 50th parallel ) as well as the Furious Fifties (German: Mad Fifties , region between the 50th and 60th parallel), which got their names bear from the frequent western storms in these areas. The term “saltpeter ride” is therefore also associated with the hardship and danger of these trips.
There is also a certain nostalgia for a time when the last large cargo sailors were in service. Until the 1920s and 1930s, the saltpetre trip was the last area of application, alongside the wheat trips to Australia, in which windjammers could be operated more profitably than steamships : the saltpetre was available as a cheap bulk cargo and was not time-critical in terms of delivery; because although many tall ships could be faster than the steamships of that time on long distances, their speed was dependent on the weather conditions and therefore could not be planned in advance. Because of the uncertain travel times of the freighters, a large part of the rest of the world trade was carried out by steamers as early as the end of the 19th century.
The British naval blockade in World War I put an end to German voyages until mid-1919 when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The lack of saltpetre was noticeable.
Only the further development and industrial maturity of the two large-scale syntheses Haber-Bosch process and Ostwald process made Europe increasingly independent of Chile's nitrate. In 1929, the global economic crisis almost stopped trade within a few months and also largely brought the mining of saltpetre to a standstill.