On November 28, 1845, the merchant and chocolate manufacturer Ernst Louis Aulhorn, the plumber Carl Christian August Weigel and the skipper Carl Naumann founded the KS Elb-Dampfschiffahrt for the transport of people and goods between Hamburg and Prague . They received the concession with the restriction of a stopping ban between the Augustus Bridge , the only Dresden Elbe bridge at the time , and the Bohemian border. After several delays, the wooden ship built in Riesa arrived in Dresden on March 1, 1846. Its speed upstream was 3.2 knots . On this day it was supposed to be the first time to go to Aussig . The test drive was therefore postponed and should then lead from Dresden to World Russia . The ship was supposed to arrive there on March 21st. Due to technical problems, the test drive did not begin until March 25th. The Saxonia covered the route in several stages. On March 25, the ship left Dresden at 5 a.m. and reached Leitmeritz at 10 p.m. After a stop it reached on 26 March 1846 at 17 o'clock Mělník . It did not leave Mělník until March 28 at 4 a.m. and after 19 km at 10 a.m. it reached World Russia on the Vltava River . From April 19, 1846 the regular service should be started. The Dresden – Mělník route should be used every two days. The tickets were sold by the district police chief G. A. Lobeck at Wilsdruffer Gasse 32. However, the first trip ended after a steam pipe burst in Aussig . Nothing is known about further voyages of the ship. In 1848 the KK priv. Elbe-Dampfschiffahrt owned by John Andrews bought the ship.
The time after the sale
The ship was renamed Constitution and was used together with the Germania and the Bohemia . John Ruston, who took over the shipping company after the death of John Andrews, saw the Dresden – Prague railway , which opened on April 6, 1851, as competition and no longer a future for passenger shipping on the Elbe. For this reason, on February 3, 1851, in addition to the Constitution, he also sold the other two ships Bohemia and Germania including the shipping concession for 25,000 thalers to the United Saxon-Bohemian Steamship . In 1853 the ship was converted into cribs and the high-pressure steam engine was replaced by a low-pressure steam engine. After the renovation, the ship got its old name Saxonia back. On August 29, 1859, the operation of the steam boiler for passenger transport was prohibited. Then the ship was used as a tugboat. On July 23, 1860 it was sold to Hamburg.
The steam engine
The machine was a two-cylinder high-pressure steam engine with 5 bar steam pressure without injection condensation and an output of 135 hp. Like the steam boiler, it was built by the Kassel- based mechanical engineering company Henschel & Sohn . The origin of the low-pressure steam engine installed in 1853 is unknown. With some certainty it was an oscillating, low-pressure two-cylinder twin steam engine.
Captains of the ship
C. Hering 1855
E. Taubrich 1856
M. Müller 1857-1858
Ignaz Hora 1859
W. Steinberg 1860
literature
Hans Rindt: The Weisse Flotte Dresden . Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 3, pages 69–114
Frank Müller, Wolfgang Quinger: With steam and paddle wheel on the Upper Elbe . transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin, 1988, ISBN 3-344-00286-4 .
Address and business manual of the royal capital and residence city of Dresden 1855 to 1860
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