Schleswig (ship, 1902)
 The Schleswig as a hospital ship
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Schleswig of the North German Lloyd (NDL) in Bremen was a single ship. The relatively small passenger ship was built in Stettin in 1902 for the shipping company's South American service. From 1904 the ship was used for various lines in the Mediterranean and for cruises.
In 1914, the Schleswig was converted into a hospital ship and later used as a troop transport. After the war it was used for repatriation trips under the German flag. At the end of 1919, the ship, which had already been delivered to Great Britain, was assigned to France as spoils of war and from 1922 onwards was used by Messageries Maritimes under the name General Duquesne . At the end of 1932 the ship was taken out of service and scrapped in La Seyne-sur-Mer .
history
The Schleswig was a single ship built by AG Vulcan in Stettin for the NDL, which was slightly smaller than the imperial mail steamer of the Feldherren class developed at the same time . It was supposed to pull passengers on the route to South America to the NDL and was the largest German ship in this trade area when it was commissioned. The twin screw steamer had two masts and a chimney and an elongated deckhouse.
On September 14, 1902, the Schleswig began her maiden voyage from Bremerhaven via Antwerp to La Plata . Since she remained the only passenger ship of the NDL on this route, the success of the ship fell short of expectations.
In 1904, the NDL decided to convert the Schleswig into a luxury steamer in order to use it from Marseille via Naples to Alexandria . This line was primarily intended to serve tourism in the Mediterranean and could also be used as a passenger-friendly feeder to the imperial mail steamer lines to East Asia and Australia. On November 9, 1904, Schleswig took up this service. It was the largest feeder ship, after the NDL had already undertaken such attempts with various smaller steamers ( Braunschweig , Adler , Sperber , Stettin , Danzig ) since the post steamer lines came into existence . In addition to the Schleswig , the Hohenzollern (ex Kaiser Wilhelm II ) was used as the second ship on this route in 1904 .
The Schleswig carried out her first cruise in 1904 when the NDL offered the ship a special trip to Sicily, Greece and Asia Minor. In the following years the ship remained mostly in the Mediterranean and offered liner services, which were often changed in order to appeal to more customers or to adapt to the conditions of the wars. In addition, there were separate pleasure trips, most of which led through the Mediterranean but also as far as the Black Sea.
The Hohenzollern failed as a partner due to stranding in April 1908 and was temporarily replaced by the former mail steamer Preussen from the end of August . On December 16, 1908, the converted former Prince Heinrich drove from Marseille to Alexandria for the first time as a new partner of Schleswig . In 1910, the route was reinforced with the Prinzregent Luitpold, which had also been converted in the meantime, to three ships, each of which served slightly different routes.
At the beginning of 1911, Genoa became the starting point of the Schleswig , which now also regularly called at Bizerta . When the Schleswig returned to liner service in November after cruising in the summer, Marseille was again the starting point for the three ships on the line. From autumn 1912 Venice was the new starting point of the Mediterranean line of the NDL served by Schleswig , while the two former mail steamers continued from Marseille via French North Africa to Egypt.
In 1914, the Schleswig carried out two cruises in the Mediterranean from the end of April to the beginning of June and then moved back home to carry out three Norway cruises.
War missions
At the beginning of the war in 1914, the Schleswig was at home and was taken over by the Imperial Navy as hospital ship F on August 26 and stationed in Danzig . The ship had been equipped with 383 hospital beds for this task and had 76 medical personnel. Wounded from the fighting in East Prussia were treated on the ship. At the end of February 1916, the Navy returned the ship to the NDL. In autumn it was again requested by the Navy for service and the Schleswig was one of the troop transports that were used to occupy the Baltic islands . Since she was one of the first ships to be unloaded, she ran back to Libau loaded with Russian prisoners on October 15, together with four other steamers ( Bahia Castillo , Friedrichsruh , Badenia and Scharnhorst ) in order to board the second squadron of landing forces to take. Their disembarkation before Ahrensburg then took a considerable amount of time. In the spring of 1918, the Schleswig was then also involved in the transport of the Baltic Division to Finland.
Delivery of the Schleswig
On August 18, 1919, the Schleswig was delivered to Great Britain, where Ellerman's Wilson Line was to take over the management of the ship. The ship laid up in the Tyne was not used, however.
In December 1919 the ship was handed over to France. There it was renamed General Duquesne and, after modernization, was first used on July 20, 1922 for Messageries Maritimes on the “Marseille-Océan India” mail line. It was now measured at 7290 GRT and could carry 58 passengers in first class, 80 in second and a further 48 passengers in third class. The loading capacity was then 7,500 dwt. The operational route was now from Marseille via Port Said , Suez , Djibouti , Diego Suarez and Tamatave to Réunion and Mauritius . The way back was via Réunion, Tamatave, Sainte Marie , Diego Suarez, Nosi Bé , Majunga , Mayotte , Zanzibar and Djibouti. The ship stayed on this route with the exception of two voyages to Lebanon and Syria in 1926. When the shipping company converted its ships to oil-firing, it was sold to La Seyne at the end of 1932 to be scrapped.
literature
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Arnold Kludas : The History of the German Passenger Shipping Volume III Leap growth 1900 to 1914 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 20
- Arnold Kludas: The ships of the North German Lloyd. Volume 1: 1857 to 1919. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1991, ISBN 3-7822-0524-3 .
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships. 1896 to 1918 . Steiger Verlag, Moers 1986, ISBN 3-921564-80-8 .
Web links
- G.Tams: From the saloon steamer to the hospital ship
- Hospital ships in the theaters of war (PDF; 318 kB)
- Le paquebot General Duchesne
- paquebot General Duchesne
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d e f Kludas, NDL, p. 136.
- ^ Kludas, Passenger Ships, Vol. III, p. 88.
- ↑ a b Kludas, Passenger Ships, Vol. III, p. 113.
- ↑ Kludas, Passenger Ships, Vol. III, pp. 186ff.
- ↑ a b c Kludas, Passenger Ships, Vol. III, p. 118.
- ↑ a b c Kludas, Passenger Ships, Vol. III, p. 119.
- ↑ Rothe, p. 86.
- ^ Herbert, p. 148.