The Uhenfels was the world's largest heavy lift ship for several years .
history
The motor cargo ship Uhenfels was ordered in 1958 by the Bremen shipping company DDG "Hansa" from Werft AG Weser and in 1959 under the construction no. 842 delivered from the Seebeck plant in Bremerhaven . The cargo ship was a single build and was based on the Bärenfels class . The Uhenfels was initially equipped as a liner with extensive conventional loading gear consisting of a 15-tonne loading boom, 18 × 3/5-tonne loading booms and a 50-tonne telescopic heavy-lift boom . The machinery was located aft far, the engine was a slow running two-stroke - diesel engine of the type MAN K7Z 70/120 VC 4,300 kW (5,850 hp) at 125 / min. The bridge superstructure was located directly in front of the front Stülcken tree, in front of it were two cargo holds.
In 1962, like all DDG ships, the ship was painted a light gray outboard instead of the black one.
At the end of the 1960s, the shipping company took account of the increased need for particularly high-performance heavy lift tonnage and at the turn of the year 1967/68 had the Hamburg shipyard Blohm + Voss equip the freighter with two 275-tonne cambered heavy lift trees, with the rear boom being designed to be pivotable. In addition, the Uhenfels still had 14 conventional loading booms after the conversion. During this conversion, the hull was widened by two side pockets, each 1.80 m wide, to increase the ship's stability . The side pockets extended in the middle area of the hull over about half of the hull and were designed as side tanks, with which a soft lifting and lowering of heavy cargo packages was made possible by flooding or bilging .
In the year it was converted to a heavy lift carrier, a stern -to- stern collision with the Norwegian gas tanker Havfrost occurred on the Scheldt on September 12, 1968 . The damage was repaired and the Uhenfels started up again.
About ten years after the conversion to a heavy lift ship, the Uhenfels was sold to the new owner Sea Calm Shipping in Panama on May 22, 1978 for DM 2.77 million and chartered back for another year. Sea Traders from Piraeus took over the management . After the charter ended, the ship was renamed Uhenbels and stayed in service for another five years. In 1985 it was sold to the Gerise Shipping company in Limassol. After a layover period from March 5, 1985 in Sharjah ( UAE ), the Uhenbels' last voyage was to India, where on July 19, 1985 the demolition at the scrapping yards near Alang began.
literature
Peter Kiehlmann, Holger Patzer: The cargo ships of the DDG Hansa . HM Hauschild, Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-931785-02-5 .
Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa . from liner services to special shipping. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1976, ISBN 3-7822-0105-1 .
Ralf Witthohn: The new German merchant fleet . Freighters, tankers and containers. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1976, ISBN 3-7979-1870-4 .
