St. Denis (ship, 1908)
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The St. Denis was a British ferry between England and the Netherlands . It was first called Munich and last for a few years, including as a barge , Barbara .
Sister ships were the Copenhagen , launched in 1907 , which was sunk in 1917 by the German submarine UC 61 , and the St. Petersburg (later Archangel ) following in 1910 , which was stranded and abandoned in 1941 after being hit by a bomb near Aberdeen .
The ship
The ship was launched on 25 August 1908 with the hull number 384 at John Brown & Company in Clydebank ( Scotland ) with the name of Munich from the stack . It was 100.9 m long and 13.2 m wide, had a draft of 5.4 m and was measured at 2,570 GRT . Three Parsons turbines from John Brown & Co. with a total of 1,325 nhp gave a top speed of 20 knots over three screws . The Copenhagen and Munich were the first two turbine ships on the North Sea and the first smooth-deckers on the Great Eastern Railway . The ship had a dining room for 62 people and space for 320 passengers in first class sleeping cabins, of which more than 200 in double cabins, and 130 in second class sleeping cabins.
history
Munich
The Munich , built as a replacement for in the February 21, 1907 Hoek van Holland fall in Berlin , was delivered in October 1908, the Great Eastern Railway Company and from the latter to the line Harwich - Hoek van Holland put into service.
St. Denis
The slender ship, with its two chimneys sloping slightly backwards, was requisitioned by the Royal Navy after the outbreak of the First World War and, after appropriate refitting, was used as a hospital ship under the name of St. Denis until the beginning of 1919 .
In 1919, the ship was returned to its owner, the Great Eastern Railway, and used again on its traditional route, keeping the new name of St. Denis . With the merger on January 1, 1923, the Great Eastern Railway with six other railway companies to the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) also the St. Denis came to the LNER, for which it now served the route between Harwich and Hoek van Holland. The ship was taken out of service in 1932 and then used as a reserve and for summer special and additional trips.
After the beginning of the Second World War , the St. Denis served as a troop transport . When the German Wehrmacht began their attack on Belgium and the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 , the St. Denis was sent to Rotterdam to evacuate British citizens. There she was damaged by German bombs and on May 12 of her crew scuttled closer moved as German troops. Their crew came back to England on the LNER ferry Malines , which was also sent to Rotterdam .
Barbara
The ship was lifted in November 1940 for the Navy , who wanted to convert it into a mine ship. Because of the damaged machinery, this plan was not carried out, and the ship was instead used as Schiff 52 Barbara in Cuxhaven and then Kiel .
At the end of the war, the ship was in Kiel, where it was confiscated by the British occupation forces. It was initially used as makeshift accommodation for refugees and displaced persons . When the University of Kiel resumed teaching in November 1945, the Barbara , like the Spica (ex Orla ), the Hamburg and the Sofia , was used as an accommodation ship for the first students. Accommodation on the war-damaged ships was primitive and cramped. The chambers were occupied by twelve, six or four people each, and with the exception of the Spica , the rooms could hardly or not at all be heated. The ships were moored at the Seeburg on the west bank of the fjord , where the students ate lunch that was prepared in the Elac's factory kitchen .
In the end, the old ship was once again a makeshift shelter for displaced persons and was finally decommissioned in 1949. In 1950 it was towed to Sunderland for scrapping , where it arrived on March 2, 1950.
literature
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Foreign ships in German hands 1939–1945. Strandgut, Cuxhaven, 2004
Web links
- Munich at the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) Enzyclopedia
- Munich on www.clydesite.co.uk
- http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/LNER_GER1.html#anchor1624384
- Photo, 1945 as a barge in Kiel
