The saloon steamer Stadt Bregenz was a steamship that operated on Lake Constance . The commissioning took place on July 22, 1910. The home port of the ship was Bregenz in Austria . It was shut down in 1965 and scrapped in 1967.
In 1905 the kk state railways decided to build a so-called express steamer, which should only be used in the busy summer months. The shipyard in Linz on the Danube was awarded the contract in 1908 . When the order was placed, it was already recognized that the dimensions of this new building had to be matched to the dry dock in Bregenz harbor, which was built in 1892. Instead of a total length of 63 meters, the length was therefore limited to 60.15 meters, which later resulted in stability problems in ship operation. On July 22, 1910, the ship was ceremonially christened the city of Bregenz . The passenger capacity of 1,000 people was the largest of a Lake Constance paddle steamer, together with the city of Überlingen (Schiff, 1929) , but from 1960 onwards it was reduced to 945. Despite several modifications and the defects mentioned, the city of Bregenz remained a particularly noticeable ship on Lake Constance until its decommissioning in August 1965.
In the winter of 1937/38, the rear part of the ship's hull was widened from 7.00 m to 7.82 m to improve stability . In addition, the ship received a saloon structure on the upper deck . In 1952 there was a changeover from coal to heavy oil firing (760 PSi), and in 1956 two MAN flame tube boilers (850 PSi) were installed. The top speed increased to 29 km / h. The fuel change saved the need for a second ship heater and expensive imported coal, but a serious disadvantage of steamers compared to motor ships remained: it still took two hours until the necessary operating pressure of the boiler was reached and the ship was ready for use. Therefore, apart from the city of Bregenz, only the four Swiss steamers Säntis (1892) , the two sister ships St. Gallen (1905) and Rhine (1906) and the Schaffhausen (1913) were switched to operation with heavy fuel oil on Lake Constance , but no German steamers .
In the last few years of operation, the city of Bregenz usually traveled the route between Bregenz and Constance . The scrapping of this technically and visually interesting steamship in 1967 is considered short-sighted by today's standards.
literature
Arnulf Dieth: Red-white-red on Lake Constance - Austrian shipping through the ages . Hecht-Verlag, A - Hard 1995, ISBN 3-85298-013-5 .
Karl F. Fritz: Adventure steamboat trip on Lake Constance . MultiMediaVerlag Marcel Hinze, Meersburg 1989, ISBN 3-927484-00-8 .
Klaus v. Rudloff and Claude Jeanmaire: Shipping on Lake Constance Volume 2: The heyday of steam shipping , Verlag Eisenbahn, Villigen AG 1981, ISBN 3-85649-071-X
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