Training ship

The Niobe

A training ship is a ship that is used to train professional seafarers and is operated by a sea academy or a similar organization.

Model of the DDG training ship Sturmfels with enlarged superstructures

In German merchant shipping

In merchant shipping today, training ships are only occasionally in use, as "practical" seamanship is hardly needed on board in everyday life. Today, prospective seafarers acquire the necessary practice on board through corresponding professions or internships, which are usually carried out on board merchant ships.

The first German merchant navy training ship was the Grand Duchess Elisabeth , which was commissioned in 1901 and was used for training with interruptions until 1945. The last German sailing training ship to sail at sea was the Ketsch Seute Deern . It was used for training trips from 1964 to 1967 by the German Training Ship Association and from 1967 to 1969 by the North German Lloyd . Since January 1, 1970, it is no longer mandatory for aspiring captains to study on a sailing ship.

Only the University of Applied Sciences Oldenburg / Ostfriesland / Wilhelmshaven still used a training ship at the locations Elsfleth and Leer (Ostfriesland) until 2007

The DDG Hansa possessed with the Sturmfels ( ST class ) to 1980 on a training ship in which up to 50 trainees (38 nautical and 12 technical trainees) and five trainers took place. There were also rooms for lessons and a training workshop, as well as a sports deck aft.

Since 2007, the time spent on traditional sailing ships has not counted towards the mandatory practical semesters at sea from the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH). Officially, there is no longer any training of merchant navy officers on tall ships. Due to the lack of qualified German seafarers, some shipping companies have now switched to equipping ships specifically for training or increasingly offering internships on board. For example, the Bremen company Beluga Shipping had an additional deck built into some of its newbuildings, on which a total of eight prospective seafarers could be accommodated and trained. With Chicago Express and Kuala Lumpur Express , container ships of the Colombo Express class , the shipping company Hapag-Lloyd also operates two training ships on which up to 13 trainees and two trainers are on board in addition to the core team. For this purpose, both ships were expanded to include a training deck with a training room. In addition to the usual ship's workshop, the engine room also has its own training workshop with 8 workbenches, so that the usual basic metal training can be continued on board.

The Bremen-based company Harren & Partner is taking a different approach, putting a training ship, the Hanse Explorer , into service in September 2006 ; this ship, which is more like a yacht , was specially built for the training of nautical personnel.

Swedish training ship Falken (1962)

Other merchant navies

In 1921 the Danish Merchant Navy put the København into service. She went missing in late 1928 / early 1929 on a trip from Buenos Aires to Melbourne . The Soviet Union and the Comecon countries used specially developed cargo-carrying training ships such as the Polish type Stocznia Szczecinska B-80 to be able to train the high demand for sea officers.

In many countries, the tradition of training sailing ships is also adhered to in civil shipping. On most of the sailing training ships operated by merchant navies, paying guests have the opportunity to take part in trips as a fellow sailor (trainee) . In the 1980s and 90s, for example, six largely identical training ships were built at the Danzig shipyard, and they are still in use today. These were Dar Młodzieży (Poland), Mir , Nadeschda and Pallada (all Russia) and Khersones and Druzhba (both Ukraine). The most famous ships of this class in Germany are the Chersones and the Mir , which also take fellow sailors on board, such as B. the Russian four-masted barque Kruzenshtern and Sedov . Affiliated to the private Pythagoras Maritime and Technical Schools , the former cargo ship Savilco was used as a training ship in Piraeus , Greece from 1978 to 1984 .

Inland shipping

In the city port of Duisburg-Homberg lies the Rhine training ship , on which prospective inland waterway skippers are accommodated while they are completing their theoretical training in the RHEIN vocational training college . The ship was built in 1984 by the Meiderich shipyard. Legally, the ship is declared as a floating installation together with "Rhein II", but the ship still has a European number .

In the Netherlands, prospective inland waterway skippers have been trained on a coupling association with the Prinses Máxima since 2006 . In Belgium , the Province de Liège paddock federation was put into service on May 4, 2012 . It consists of a motor ship with accommodation and training rooms for 20 prospective inland waterway skippers as well as a tank barge on which the practical training takes place.

The Olga

Navy training ships

In many of the world's navies, a number of cadets and / or junior officers are drawn together on a training ship in addition to a regular crew . Often in the context of trips abroad, they are trained in the usual military subjects and used for diplomatic and economic purposes (shipbuilding industry).

In the Reichsmarine , the Schleswig-Holstein served as a cadet training ship. In the German Navy , Hipper , Scheer and the “little cruiser” Germany were training ships. Today only the (unarmed) Gorch Fock is available for training purposes.

The Gorch Fock , from 1933, at the inauguration of the Laboe Naval Memorial (1936)

Sail training ships

The Gorch Fock , from 1958, in the boat harbor of the Mürwik Naval School (2015)

Sail training ships of war and merchant navies, but also of associations and organizations in driving held tall ships to form the seafaring offspring. These are either ships specially designed for training purposes (e.g. the Gorch Fock of the German Navy) or converted cargo sailors (e.g. the Krusenstern (ex Padua )). The first sailing training ship of the Prussian Navy was the Mercur . In the German Reich , the German Training Ship Association maintained a total of five of its own sailing training ships between 1900 and 1944. Until after the Second World War, civilian sailing training ships were mostly used for freight trips.

literature

Gerhard Koop, Siegfried Breyer: The ships, vehicles and planes of the German Navy from 1956 until today. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-7637-5950-6 .
Gerhard Eckhardt: The sailing ships of the German training ship association. A documentation. Hauschild, Bremen 1981, ISBN 3-920699-37-8 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Schulschiff - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

↑ training ship . In: Pierer's Universal Lexicon . tape 15 . Altenburg 1862, p. 466 ( zeno.org [accessed June 12, 2014]).
↑ DDG Hansa - Hansa Documentation by Peter Kiehlmann
↑ Bruno Bock, Klaus Bock: The Red Merchant Fleets. The merchant ships of the COMECON countries , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-7822-0143-4 , p. 73
↑ Training ship RHEIN
↑ Website of the German Navy on the sister ships of the Gorch Fock (II)
^ German sailing school ships , accessed on May 20, 2014.

[1] training ship . In: Pierer's Universal Lexicon . tape 15 . Altenburg 1862, p. 466 ( zeno.org [accessed June 12, 2014]).

[2] DDG Hansa - Hansa Documentation by Peter Kiehlmann

[3] Bruno Bock, Klaus Bock: The Red Merchant Fleets. The merchant ships of the COMECON countries , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-7822-0143-4 , p. 73

[4] Training ship RHEIN

[5] Website of the German Navy on the sister ships of the Gorch Fock (II)

[6] German sailing school ships , accessed on May 20, 2014.