Floating dock of the Woermann line in Duala

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The floating dock of the Woermann Line in Duala on October 30, 1904 with Duchess Elisabeth (photo by Carl Hohl).

The floating dock of the Woermann line in Duala was a floatable and lowerable dock for draining ships in the port of Duala in the German colony of Cameroon . It was operated from 1904 to 1914 by the Hamburg Woermann Line .

construction

The dock was 62 meters long and 17.5 meters wide. The clear width between the side walls was 13 meters. The dock consisted of five pontoons with a height of two meters. The foremost pontoon was trapezoidal to provide less drag when towing. To accommodate a ship, water tanks were partially filled until the dock sank so far that a ship could enter between the two side walls of the dock. To raise the dock, the water ballast was pumped out, which gave the dock a lift. The dock - including the ship inside - was lifted out of the water. Its load capacity enabled ships weighing up to 1,200 tons to be lifted. The construction costs were around 500,000  marks .

The dock was equipped with a 17-ton crane and two steam spills for hauling in the ships.

history

The Woermann floating dock in a tug on the way to Cameroon (sketch by Willy Stöwer)

Ship connections to and in West Africa were a central market for the Woermann Line. The fleet had grown so much around 1900 that maintenance and repairs of the ships in the African coastal service were necessary. Since there was hardly any port infrastructure in colonial West Africa, a separate floating dock was commissioned. Duala, which had a protected natural harbor in the Cameroon estuary , was chosen as the berth . Duala was a port of the West African station of the Imperial Navy, whose gunboats went to the British Cape Town for docking . The berth was therefore also of military interest.

The dock was built under construction number 173 by the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg. It was the shipyard's first floating dock that was not used for its own use. The delivery to the Woermann line took place on July 17, 1904. In contrast to the German floating dock for Dar es Salaam , the dock for Duala was not transported in individual parts, but towed from Hamburg to Africa. The tugboat left the port of Hamburg on the day of delivery in July 1904. The tugs Ocean and Zuiderzee from the Dutch company L. Smit & Co. brought the dock to Cameroon. The marine painter Willy Stöwer captured this unusual journey in a sketch.

In October 1904, the Woermann Line started dock operations in the port of Duala. In the first two months of operation, five ships with a tonnage of 300 to 950 tons were docked, including the Duchess Elisabeth (548  GRT ). In addition to the Woermann Line's own ships, other ships were also serviced in the dock, whereby the inquirers belonged to three groups: Woermann's representatives, the German administration and international shipping lines. British ships from Lagos and Spanish ships from Fernando Póo were docked. The berth of the dock was located close to the shore between the wharf and the German government building in water depths of approximately 6 meters.

According to the files of the colonial administration of Cameroon, the Woermann Line informed the governorate in August 1912 that it wanted to move the dock to Lagos. Alternatively, the governorate of Cameroon could take over the dock itself. In the colonial lexicon , which was about to be published in 1914, however, it says: "The Woermann company has a floating dock in the port [Duala]."

In September 1914, shortly after the start of the First World War in Cameroon , the dock was apparently captured by the Entente powers. Little is known about their whereabouts. In an issue of Kehrwieder magazine from 1960, the floating dock was mentioned as being functional for ships of up to 1,000  GRT .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Hans Jürgen Witthöft : Tradition and Progress - 125 Years of Blohm + Voss. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-7822-0847-1 , p. 74.
  2. ^ Gustav Adolf Fischer: Docks , in: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon . I. Vol., Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 470.
  3. ↑ Without author: From our colonies. Cameroon - The Cameroon floating dock, In: Deutsche Kolonialzeitung. Volume 21 (1904), Issue No. 42 of October 20, 1904, p. 417 ( online in the Colonial Library of the University of Frankfurt am Main ).
  4. ↑ Christian Grotewold: Our colonial system and its economic importance. Ernst Heinrich Moritz, Stuttgart 1911, p. 36 ( online at the State and University Library Bremen ).
  5. ↑ a b c Hans Jürgen Witthöft: Tradition and Progress - 125 Years of Blohm + Voss. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-7822-0847-1 , p. 518.
  6. ↑ Without author: From our colonies. Cameroon - Floating Dock of the Woermann Line, In: Deutsche Kolonialzeitung. Volume 21 (1904), Issue No. 28 of July 14, 1904, pp. 278 f. ( online in the colonial library of the University of Frankfurt am Main ).
  7. ↑ Without author: The Woermann floating dock for Cameroon, in: The month - octave edition of Über Land und Meer . Vol. 3, Issue 9-12, P. 404 ( online at Googlebooks ).
  8. ↑ Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (ed.): Review of the development of Cameroon in 1905. Headquarters for educational media on the Internet e. V., accessed on July 21, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Kurt Schwabe (ed.): The German colonies. Volume 1: Togo - Cameroon - German South West Africa. Weller & Hüttich, Berlin 1909, p. 43. ( online in the colonial library of the University of Frankfurt am Main ).
  10. ↑ Plan of Duala with the location of the floating dock , Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon on the pages of the University Library in Frankfurt am Main.
  11. ↑ Governorate of Cameroon: Official use of the floating dock of the Woermann line in Duala. Digitized version accessible online via the Archive Guide German Colonial History.
  12. ^ Siegfried Passarge: Duala , in: Heinrich Schnee (Hrsg.): German Colonial Lexicon. Volume I, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 477 ff.
  13. ↑ Without author: Der Hafen Kamerun, in: Kehrwieder , Issue No. 2 from February 1960, p. 19 ( online at the State and University Library Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky ).

Web links