Boots
Boots , from the Dutch word stevelen derived, which means as much as about Steven drive, called an old form of transportation in the inland waterways . The ship is allowed to go down into the valley without a drive. Another name is: Driving with cold pressure . This way of moving a ship downstream was previously widely used as it was the cheapest because it saved towing costs. As Naufahrt were referred to earlier locally the drifting downstream of ships on the Danube and its tributaries.
technology
Since every river has a natural gradient, the water surface forms an inclined plane. A ship drifts with the current to the valley and becomes faster than the current due to its mass over time and remains controllable with a correspondingly large rudder . The barges had a slide on the rudder with which the rudder area could be increased. Ships with a streamlined shape and a square cheek had the best prerequisites . When traveling from Andernach to Rotterdam , speeds of up to 14 km / h (compared to water) were measured. Booting was only possible with loaded ships, as they had more mass and were not as susceptible to winds. The barge was loaded slightly upside down , that is, the draft of the ship was greater in the bow area than at the stern. This improved maneuverability.
On tributaries and smaller rivers with small curve radii, people often worked with bundstaken or schoor trees. These were set in the ground at an angle in the direction of travel and fixed with a line at the upper end in the bow area of the ship, mostly between the double bollards. In the Oder region , this process was called zippeln . So the bow could be steered back from the bank into the fairway. At times, bow flaps - long oar oars like those used on rafts - were used to steer at the bow and stern . Important items of equipment continued to be anchors that were constantly ready to be dropped at the bow and stern , especially dragons, which were used to stop the ship and also to reduce speed. In narrow fairways, a heavy anchor chain section with several chain links on a wire line was stuck aft and left to drag on the river bed in order to reduce speed and when approaching bridges. In this way, the speed could also be reduced, but the ship could be kept controllable by moving slowly. In order to make the ship easily recognizable in difficult fairways, a flagpole several meters high, sometimes up to five meters high, with a large red pennant was placed on the bow. Another important aid was the dinghy, the plane , which was always ready for use . This small dinghy was needed to bring a load-bearing line ashore after the boat was anchored. There she was shackled in firmly anchored rings and chains and made it possible to surround her in a port entrance or in a branch channel without outside help. If the bank conditions were favorable, a pivoting boom could also be used.
A free moving, booted barge is worse to maneuver than a motorized cargo ship. Due to the ever increasing and ever denser motorized shipping traffic, shipping was endangered and booting on the rivers was gradually prevented. On the Rhine , booting was banned at night from 1939 and from 1955 onwards.
literature
- Hermann Schwabe: The development of German inland shipping up to the end of the 19th century . 1st edition. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller - Edition Classic, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8364-0247-7 (reprint of the association publication No. 44 of the “German-Austrian-Hungarian Association for Inland Shipping” published by Verlag Siemenroth & Troschel in 1899).