Teeswood
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
The Teeswood was a coal steamer owned by the Donking Steam Ship Company in Middlesbrough, UK . The sinking of the ship on 28 November 1951 in the Ems estuary two crew members were killed, thirteen men were from Borkum Lifeboat Borkum saved.
history
The Teeswood was launched in May 1915 at W. Harkess & Son shipyard in Middlesbrough for the shipping company RA Constantine & TH Donking from Middlesbrough. She was one of the numerous coal steamers ( Colliers ), which mainly transported coal from the mines on the British north-east coast to the gas and electricity works in Greater London. The ship was built in the three-island design customary at the time, with a deckhouse amidships and an aft engine. It had a measurement of 864 GRT, two cargo holds , each with a cargo boom . The boiler system of the three-cylinder steam engine made by Blair & Co. from Stockton-on-Tees was heated with coal.
The shipping company Constantine & Donking sold the ship during the First World War (1917) to the Commercial Gas Company, also based in Middlesbrough. In the post-war period, the Commercial Gas Company's transport requirements decreased, which is why it reduced the size of its fleet, which was increased during the war, from 1919 onwards. The Teeswood was sold again in 1923 to the Middlesbrough-based Donking Steam Ship Company, which then continued to operate the ship for several decades until after the Second World War .
At the end of November 1951, the ship was on a journey with around 1,000 tons of slag from Immingham to Emden . On the evening of November 28, the Teeswood was stranded in a heavy north-west storm in the Ems estuary off Borkum and soon broke in two. The lifeboat Borkum with a crew of three left Borkum and made a large number of attempts by the damaged vessel, with the starboard rudder blade becoming entangled with the anchor chain of the Teeswood and breaking off during one of the attempts . The rescue tug Seefalke , which was also added, assisted by illuminating the damaged vessel for the Borkum . Thirteen men of the Teeswood crew were rescued in the course of the night, a machinist and a steward, who did not dare to jump on board the lifeboat, were eventually washed overboard and perished.
The stranding and the dangerous rescue operation caused quite a stir at the time, and the lifeboat crew received several awards as a result. The British government gave the three men a gift with a dedication to thank them. The foreman Wilhelm Eilers received the gold medal of the DGzRS and the Federal Cross of Merit, the rescue man Folker B. Meeuw received the silver medal of the DGzRS and the Federal Cross of Merit and the rescue man Christoffer Müller received the silver medal of the DGzRS.
literature
- Fritz-Otto Busch, Hans Tress: The sinking of the steamer "Teeswood": after d. Original reports on the rescue d. Crew in front of Borkum on November 28, 1951 . Volume 4 of the series disasters at sea. German Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked People, Bremen 1972.
- Schwabedissen, Tim: Stranded: Ship accidents off the North Sea coast . 1st edition. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-7822-0893-5 .
- Wolf Schneider, Jörg Zogel: Stranding in front of Borkum: the sinking of the Teeswood . Burkana-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 3-9812209-9-4 .
Web links
- Entry on wrecksite (English)
- Ship details at teesbuiltships (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ D. Ridley Chesterton, RS Fenton: Gas and Electricity Colliers . 1st edition. World Ship Society, Kendal 1984, ISBN 0-905617-33-9 , pp. 13, 16 .