Scharnhorst (ship, 1904)
 The Reichspostdampfer Scharnhorst , date unknown
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The Scharnhorst was a Reichspostdampfer (RPD) of the North German Lloyd (NDL). She is the fifth of a total of eleven ships of the generals class that were launched between 1902 and 1907 and were signed by the NDL in accordance with the specifications of the contract signed in July 1885 by Reich Chancellor Bismarck and Hermann Heinrich Meier , Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the NDL Post steamship connections to East Asia and Australia subsidized by the German Reich were operated.
In 1914, the Scharnhorst was the only mail steamer in the class that was at home. Initially used as a hospital ship, she was used as a transport during the occupation of the Baltic Islands in autumn 1917.
In 1919 she had to be extradited to France. After operations to repatriate French troops, she was used as La Bourdonnais on the North Atlantic from 1921 to 1931 .
Construction and technical data
The ship was built in 1902 at the shipyard Joh. C. Tecklenborg in Geestemünde with the hull number 181 to set keel after the sister ship Roon had gone there from the stack. The Scharnhorst was launched on May 14, 1904 . Like her previous sister ships, she had a chimney and two masts . She was 143.79 m long and 17.00 m wide, had a draft of 11 m and was measured at 8131 GRT . Two triple expansion steam engines with a total of 6300 hp enabled a speed of up to 14 knots via two screws . The ship could accommodate 114 passengers of the first class, 115 in 2nd class, 122 in 3rd grade and 2,059 in steerage . However, the intermediate deck was only used for cargo in the Reichspostdampfer service. The crew numbered 170 men.
career
Mail steamer service
On August 31, 1904, the Scharnhorst ran on her maiden voyage from Bremen via Southampton and through the Suez Canal to Fremantle , Adelaide , Melbourne and Sydney in Australia , and on May 25, 1905 she sailed for the first time to East Asia . Her first North Atlantic crossing to New York began on December 5, 1908.
Before the outbreak of World War I , she made 19 tours to Australia, three to East Asia and five to New York.
First World War
When the war broke out, ten of the eleven ships of the general class were abroad, and only the Scharnhorst was in Germany. It was requisitioned by the Imperial Navy on August 11, 1914 and equipped as a hospital ship, but was returned to the NDL on February 20, 1915. On September 8, 1917, she was taken over by the navy again and called Transporter 11 used as a troop transport in the Baltic Sea - initially in October 1917 at the Albion company , which occupied the Baltic islands of Saaremaa (Ösel) , Hiiumaa (Dagö) and Muhu ( Moon) , and then in April 1918 during the Finland intervention , the landing of the Baltic Sea Division and other troops in Hanko and Loviisa to support the bourgeois troops under General Mannerheim in their fight against the "Red Guards" in the Finnish Civil War .
French spoils of war
Immediately after the end of the war, the Scharnhorst was used as a transport ship for the exchange of prisoners. It was confiscated on February 6, 1919 in Cherbourg by the French government as part of the expected reparations . It was handed over to the shipping company Chargeurs Réunis , which exchanged the ship with Messageries Maritimes for the Buenos Aires of Hamburg Süd , which was also taken over as spoils of war . On February 17, 1919, it was put into service by Messageries Maritimes. It made three trips to bring demobilized colonial troops home: Cherbourg - Casablanca (March 1919), Marseille - Haiphong (June - October 1919) and Marseille - Shanghai (December 1919 - April 1920).
In 1921 the ship was handed over to the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) and renamed La Bourdonnais . Now equipped for 122 cabin passengers and with space for 500 more in 3rd class, the La Bourdonnais ran for the first time from Le Havre to New York on April 2, 1921 . She sailed on this route for the last time on January 20, 1923. From March 3, 1923, she then operated the route from Bordeaux to New York together with the sister ship Roussillon .
In addition to the former Scharnhorst , the CGT had also acquired the sister ship Goeben, completed in 1907 by AG Weser , as Roussillon, in 1920 and used the sister ships on the Le Havre-New York line and from 1923 between Bordeaux and New York. The Roussillon was in 1930 launched and scrapped in France 1,931th
On January 31, 1931, the former Scharnhorst went on her last journey with emigrants from Bordeaux via Vigo and Halifax to New York.
Whereabouts
After returning from this voyage, the ship was laid up in Bordeaux on March 5, 1931 and sold for scrapping in 1934 . It arrived in Genoa on October 11, 1934 , where it was subsequently scrapped.
literature
- Edwin Drechsel: North German Lloyd Bremen, 1857–1970; History, Fleet, Ship Mails. Volume 1. Cordillera Publ., Vancouver, 1995, ISBN 1-8955-9008-6 , p. 343.
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg, 1934.
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping. Volume 3: Rapid growth 1900 to 1914. Ernst Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-8225-0039-9 ( writings of the German Maritime Museum 20).
- Arnold Kludas: Die Seeschiffe des Norddeutscher Lloyd, Volume 1: 1857 to 1919. Koehler, Herford, 1991, ISBN 3-7822-0524-3 , p. 130.
- Christine Reinke-Kunze: History of the Reichs-Post-Steamers. Connection between the continents 1886–1914. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1994, ISBN 3-7822-0618-5 .
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships. 1896 to 1918 . Steiger Verlag, Moers 1986, ISBN 3-921564-80-8 .
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ↑ a b c d e f Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. III, p. 158
- ^ Herbert, p. 145
- ↑ http://www.messageries-maritimes.org/cephee.htm
- ↑ It was named after the French admiral Bertrand François Mahé de La Bourdonnais (1699–1753).
- ↑ paquebot ROUSSILLON ( Memento from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive )