Ship camel
A ship camel (Dutch ship camel ) was a wooden floating body that was temporarily connected to a ship to reduce its draft . Because of the increasing silting up of the estuaries on the Dutch coast, larger sailing ships could only call at the ports in a barge . Ship camels were also used in Russia off St. Petersburg and in Venice .
history
The ship camel was a development by the Amsterdam city carpenter Meeuwis Meindertsz Bakker , who first used this construction in April 1690 to bring the Amsterdam-built warship Princes Maria over the shallows of Pampus . Bakker received an annual salary from the Admiralty of Amsterdam for his achievement, which was one of the most important in Dutch shipbuilding at the time . Cornelis van Yk, master shipbuilder of the Dutch East India Company, already treated this instrument in 1697 in his work De Nederlandsche scheeps-bouw-konst open gestelt . Before the camels were used, the ships were only leveled or slightly raised with air-filled water barrels. The ships were then towed from Marken with water boats (Waterschepen of the Wijdschip type) over the shallow areas of the Enkhuizer sand and the pampus . The income for this service was higher for their skippers than normal lighter or other transport tasks. Subsequently, camels were also built for the cities of Hoorn , Enkhuizen , Medemblik and Harlingen .
Working method
A ship camel was a two-part floating dock about 40 to 50 meters long, the parts of which were connected by chains. These pontoons were with rowing , Bratspillen , hand pumps, watertight compartments in the hull and sometimes an intermediate deck with Logis and galley provided for the operating crew. The pontoons owe their name to the fact that the two pontoons with a floated ship reminded of the pack animal camel with two humps. Both halves were designed as watertight floats that could be flooded and drained . If these were flooded, the ship to be lifted was floated between them and fastened. For this purpose, strong cables were pulled under the ship and beams were inserted through the gun ports, which then rested on the camel's pontoons . Then the compartments of the camels were emptied using pumps, similar to modern floating docks. With the draft reduced by up to three meters, the pontoons and the ship could then enter the port without the ship having to be partially unloaded (lightened). As soon as the shoal was passed, the floats were flooded again and the ship swam free. The shape of the floating body was concave on the inside to accommodate the ships well. In order to protect the hull structure of the ships, there were camels in different sizes for the respective dimensions of the ships in order to achieve the greatest possible positive fit. The team was moved by the sails of the raised ship and towing water ships.
Instead of the ship's camels , conventional barges were also used , which were attached to both sides of the freighter with chains or beams, removed their ballast water and thus raised the ship.
Ship camels were in use in the Netherlands until 1825. In order to permanently solve the problem of shipping in the increasingly silting Zuidersee , the Noordhollandsch Kanaal was built from 1819 to 1824 , which the largest seagoing ships of the time could navigate. This made camels superfluous.
Similar to the ship camels , the large ships of AG Vulcan Stettin were guided through the mouth of the Oder into the open sea with the help of side-mounted lifting pontoons at the beginning of the 20th century . This procedure was no longer necessary after the shipyard established a new branch in Hamburg , where the ships could reach the sea without any problems.
Lie in front of the pampus
When the water depth decreased even more and the wind did not blow from the east, the ship camels did not help either. Then the ships lay useless off Pampus for days. Hence the Dutch idiom before pampus lies (voor pampus liggen) = to be unable to do anything.
Web link
How a ship's camel works (ndl.)
literature
- JP Sigmond: Nederlandse zeehavens tussen 1500 en 1800. De Bataafsche Leeuw, Amsterdam 1989, ISBN 9067072109 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ab Hoving, models vertellen , Rijksmuseum Amsterdam / Uitgeverij Van Wijnen, 2012, ISBN 9789051944396 , p. 51 ff.