Training ship Pomerania
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The training ship Pommern was a sailing training ship owned by the German Training Ship Association , which had already broken down on its first training voyage in November 1928 and had to be abandoned.
Construction and technical data
The barque was built in 1893 at the Kingston Yard shipyard by Russell & Co in Glasgow with hull number 322 for D. McGillivray in Greenock and named Saxon . The steel three-master was 75.5 m long and 11.5 m wide, had a maximum draft of 6.3 m and was measured at 1.637 GRT and 1.527 NRT .
Career as a cargo sailor
The ship sailed under the British flag until 1910 , first until 1908 for D. McGillivray, then for the conglomerate JA Russell & Co. in Glasgow. In 1910 it was sold to CH Sørensen in Arendal ( Norway ). In June 1915 it was bought by Hans Borge in Tønsberg , who renamed it Amasis and sold it to Haakon Rachlew's Seil A / S in Sandefjord a year later, at a substantial profit . Rachlew managed the ship until 1924.
In 1924 the Hamburg shipping company Vinnen Gebrüder acquired the ship and gave it the new name Elfrieda , after the wife of the company owner Gustav Ulrich Vinnen. Under the experienced tall ship Kapitän Hermann Schipmann which made Elfrieda three extended trips with varying cargo, 1,924 to Australia and South Africa , 1925-26 to Australia, New Caledonia , New Hebrides , New Zealand , Australia and the Netherlands , and finally in the fall of 1926 to March 1928 to Argentina , Australia, Peru , Chile and England. On March 29, 1928 she reached London , where she awaited the news of another change of ownership.
Sail training ship
The German Training Ship Association had been looking for another sailing training ship since the previous year, as there was strong demand for sailing ship cadets, especially in coastal shipping in the North and Baltic Seas , where many smaller sailing ships were still in service. The Vinnen brothers wanted to say goodbye to the shipping business and the Elfrieda was up for sale. Although she was not ideally built and rigged for a sailing training ship , the very low purchase price of only £ 3,000 tipped the balance and the sale was sealed in February 1928.
The Elfrieda was first towed from London to Hamburg, renamed the Pommern school ship and then towed from Hamburg to Geestemünde . On June 21, 1928 she arrived at the former Tecklenborg shipyard of the Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft (Deschimag), where it was converted into a training ship. A. by installing sleeping and dining rooms for a crew of around 95 and cabin boys. In addition, 1500 tons of sand were brought on board as ballast , as no more cargo was to be carried. After this conversion the ship was measured with 1634 GRT and 1274 NRT. In addition to Captain J. Reimer, who had previously been the first officer on the Elfrieda , the crew consisted of four officers, a doctor, seven NCOs and two able- bodied seamen . There should also be up to 80 trainees.
The last ride
In mid-September 1928 the training ship Pommern was put into service and on October 4th she left for her first training voyage, which, however, did not go to the Baltic Sea , but to the Atlantic . In addition to 15 regular crew members, 64 cabin boys were on board. The exit was hindered in the English Channel by adverse winds and in the Bay of Biscay by very bad weather, and after a stopover in Madeira , Las Palmas in the Canary Islands was not reached until the beginning of November . The journey home was started on November 10th.
The weather in the North Atlantic was, according to the season, stormy and already on November 20, with wind forces 11 and 12 on the Beaufort scale , the ship lost the upper topsail and shortly afterwards also the lower topsail. On the morning of November 24, 1928, in a hurricane, the Pomeranian found herself about 40 nautical miles further south-east in the English Channel when she first sighted land and in very heavy seas. The ship heeled 30 degrees and more and then broke first the whole foremast , shortly afterwards the mainmast by Lee away, the latter also the topmast of Besanmasts down crack. Miraculously, none of the crew was harmed. Four lifeboats were smashed, the main bilge pump was no longer functional, and the broken rigging partly drove under the keel and smashed the last remaining lifeboat on the windward side. The incapacitated ship drifted towards the island of Guernsey off the French coast.
The German cargo steamer Rhön noticed the emergency signals and radioed salvage tugs . A first attempt by the tug Seefalke to tow the damaged vessel with its anchor chain failed and the training ship continued to drift in the heavy seas. The large salvage tug Heros der Bugsier appeared around 11 p.m. , but its repeated attempts to establish a tow connection during the night were unsuccessful.
Finally it was decided to remove the cabin boys from the ship. At 11 a.m. it was possible to establish a rope connection between the Heros and the training ship. With a water palette attached in the middle of the rope , the boys were drawn one by one to the hero . At 3 p.m. the tug had to cut the connecting lines and keep his distance because of the hurricane that was getting stronger again. When five steamships that had been added laid themselves up windward in front of the Pomerania and thus shielded them somewhat from the heavy breakers , the hero was able to resume the rescue operation. At 6 p.m. the lighthouse came into view on the cliffs of Les Hanois , and by 8 p.m., only 5 or 6 nautical miles from the cliffs, the hero, as the last of the 79 men, had also picked up Captain Reimers.
On November 26th, the Heros put the castaways ashore in Plymouth and on November 30th they boarded America , which brought them to Bremen.
The wreck of the training ship Pommern was later found near Granville by French fishermen, moored and looted as flotsam . Against all odds, it had drifted past the cliffs of Guernsey and Jersey , the Minquiers and the Îles Chausey without running aground. After two days, it was seized by the French authorities and towed to Saint-Malo . Since the expected repair costs were about six times the estimated residual value, the ship was scrapped in 1930 at the latest due to the inefficiency of the repair.
In the decision of the Maritime Office of December 20, 1928, it is stated that "significant damage to the hull was not found later", but that the abandonment of the ship was justified, "as the ship was stranded on the cliffs off the island of Guernsey and the loss of the ship and the crew was to be expected ”.
literature
- Gerhard Eckardt: The sailing ships of the German training ship association. HM Hauschild, Bremen, 1981, ISBN 3-92069-937-8
- Manfred Höft: The POMMERN training ship. In: The Pommersche Zeitung . No. 46/2013, p. 16
- Jürgen Meyer: Hamburg's sailing ships 1795 - 1945. Egon Heinemann, Norderstedt, 2nd edition, p. 216
- Otto Mielke : A heroic rescue. Barque "training ship Pommern" / tug "Heros". (SOS - Fates of German Ships, Volume 29), Moewig, Munich, 1954
- Johannes Reimer: Boys on board: journeys and fates of the "Pommern School Ship". Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, 1929
Web links
- Ronald Wöhrn: The life and fate of the barque "Schulschiff Pommern", ex "Elfrieda", ex "Amasis", ex "Saxon"
- Training ship Pommern, near training ship Germany (with photos)
- Deutscher Schulschiff-Verein , in: Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society , Volume 31, Berlin, 1930, pp. 17-18
Footnotes
- ↑ He had married Elfrida Marie Stephens in 1902.
- ^ First officer, two officers on watch and a purser .
- ^ Boatswain , carpenter , sailmaker , electrician, cook, baker and steward.
- ↑ Launched on June 17, 1921 with construction number 654 at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel as the 1778 BRT Freight Steamer Selma ; Renamed Rhön in 1924 ; sunk on September 8, 1946 with a load of gas ammunition in the Skagerrak south of Arendal at 58 ° 18 'N, 9 ° 37' E at a depth of approx. 700 m. ( http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/4508-bilder/gasmunition.htm )