Vassil Levsky (ship, 1943)
 The sister ship Empire MacAlpine as a MAC ship
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Vassil Levsky was a British cargo ship built in 1943 , which was initially used as a merchant aircraft carrier under the name Empire MacKendrick . The ship, which has been sailing under the Bulgarian flag since 1957, became famous when it was one of the 15 ships of the Yellow Fleet anchored in the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975 .
Construction and technical data
On behalf of the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) took place at the shipyard Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Scotland Burntisland the keel laying of the bulk cargo ship under the hull number 277 on 24 April 1943. It was smaller already at the shipyard as a commercial aircraft carrier, which was a temporary solution and mostly when the escort aircraft carrier was completed and was the second ship of the Empire MacAlpine class. When it was launched on September 29, 1943, it was named Empire MacKendrick after the commander of HMS Audacity Commander Douglas W. MacKendrick, who was killed when the ship was sunk in December 1941. The Empire MacKendrick belonged to the large group of Empire ships that were in the service of the government.
The ship was 131.1 meters long, 17.4 meters wide and had a draft of 7.4 meters. It was measured with 7933 GRT or 5106 NRT and had a load capacity of 8810 tons. The drive consisted of a six cylinder diesel engine , from John G. Kincaid & Company of Greenock , which was a Burmeister & Wain license build. This generated 3300 hp and enabled a speed of 12.0 knots via one screw . As a MAC ship, the crew comprised 107 men, about half each of which consisted of seamen from the merchant navy for ship operations and soldiers from the Fleet Air Arm for flight operations.
Four Fairey Swordfish aircraft were stationed on the ship as merchant aircraft carriers . The armament consisted of a 10.2 cm gun , two 40 mm Bofors guns and four 20 mm Oerlikon cannons .
history
Merchant Aircraft Carrier Empire MacKendrick (1943-1946)
With the completion, the handover took place on December 12, 1943. For the Ministry of War Transport , the shipping company Ben Line Steamers took over the management of the ship that sailed under the British merchant flag. As a merchant aircraft carrier, the Empire MacKendrick was given a twofold task: as an auxiliary aircraft carrier, it was supposed to help protect the convoys and, since shipping space was scarce, to transport freight at the same time.
From March 1944 to May 1945 the Empire MacKendrick took part as one of the security ships in Atlantic convoys, transporting supplies from the United States and Canada to Great Britain. Mainly she drove in the HX convoys from New York to Liverpool , in addition there were some trips in SC convoys from Halifax to Liverpool. There were enemy contacts around May 1944: On the journey of the convoy ON.237 from Liverpool to New York, the two accompanying merchant aircraft carriers Ancylus and Empire MacKendrick had contact with the German submarine U 853 in the North Atlantic on May 25, 1944 . Three Swordfish aircraft from the two carriers attacked the submarine with missiles, which were able to repel the attacks and escape.
Cargo ship under changing names and flags (1946–1957)
After the Second World War, the Ministry of War Transport sold the ship with the flight deck to the London shipping company Mediterranean & Atlantic Lines Ltd. in 1946 . of the Greek brothers Goulandris. The new owner named the ship Granpond and used it as a cargo ship without removing the flight deck. In 1951 the shipping company separated from the ship and sold to the Cia. Mar del Este from Panama, which renamed it Condor . Only now has the ship been converted back to a pure freighter. The renovation took place in Hamburg-Steinwerder . Just two years later, in 1953, she sold Condor again and Soc. Armadora del Norte, also from Panama, continued to use it under its previous name. In 1955 the shipping company Turnbull, Scott & Co. in London bought the freighter, which was now named Saltersgate . Turnbull, Scott & Co. also separated from the ship after two years. The ship's routes and cargoes are open for over ten years.
Bulgarian cargo ship Vassil Levsky (1957–1975)
The buyer of the ship was the Bulgarian state shipping company Navigation Maritime Bulgare , which at that time significantly expanded its fleet with used ships and the first new builds from domestic shipyards. When the ship was taken over on June 19, 1957 in Middlesbrough , it was named after Wassil Levski , a Bulgarian revolutionary of the Bulgarian freedom movement of the 19th century.
The first voyage from Scotland led to Rotterdam, where the ship loaded fertilizer for India. In the next two years, the Vassil Levsky made further trips to India, on which it brought cement to India and transported ore to Bulgaria on the way back. The Vassil Levsky wrote Bulgarian shipping history because it was the first Bulgarian ship to call in Buenos Aires on January 30, 1958 and in 1963 in a Brazilian port. The cargoes of the following years also consisted mainly of bulk goods : In September 1959, she drove from Bulgaria to Poti , where she loaded iron concentrate for Calais . From Calais it went to Amsterdam to take up phosphate fertilizer for Varna. She often transported agricultural products such as grain or sunflower seeds as export goods to Europe, and for example loaded Apatit for Bourgas in Murmansk - classic tramp shipping .
On a return trip from Asia to Bulgaria, the Vassil Levsky was trapped in the Suez Canal on June 5, 1967 when the Six Day War broke out . The freighter spent almost eight years at anchor with 14 other ships in the Great Bitter Lake : When several ships were combined into anchor groups in October 1969 to enable maintenance by fewer personnel, the Vassil Levsky remained individually anchored. At that time it was speculated whether she might have had weapons on board. As on the other ships, the crew on the Vassil Levsky was reduced, and they were changed about every five to six months. The ship was noticeably deteriorating and in May 1974 was regarded as "neglected". The other ships even collected provisions for the crew. When a violent sandstorm raged on the Bitter Lake on March 23, 1975, the ship tore itself loose, stranded at the exit of the Bitter Lake and was brought back to its position by the other ships. When the Suez Canal was closed in May 1975, the Vassil Levsky, like almost all ships, had to be towed to Port Said . There it was sold to breakers in July 1975 and from July 22, 1975 it was scrapped in Split .
literature
- William H. Mitchell, Leonard A. Sawyer: Empire Ships of World War II . Sea Breezes, Liverpool 1965, ISBN 1-85044-275-4 ( limited preview in Google Book Search ).
- HT Lenton: British Battleships and Aircraft Carriers, Vol. 1 , MacDonald & Co, London 1972, ISBN ISBN 0-356-03869-6 ( limited preview in Google book search ).
- JJ Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the 15th century tot he present , Casemate, Newbury 2010, ISBN 978-1-935149-07-1 ( limited preview in Google Book Search ).
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945 , edited by the Working Group for Defense Research and the Library for Contemporary History , Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching o. J. [1968], ISBN 3-88199-0097 ( extended online version ) .
- John D. Harbron: Communist Ships and Shipping , Adlard Coles, London 1962.
- Hans Jürgen Witthöft: Trapped in the Great Bitter Lake for eight years , ProMar, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-00-051599-6 .
- Chronicle of the shipping company "Navigation Maritime Bulgare" , Navibulgar news December 2012 – January 2013 (Bulgarian), ISSN 1313-8944 ( online version as PDF ).
Web links
- Aerial view of the Empire MacKendrick at uboat.net , accessed on August 4, 2020
- Extract from the construction list of the Burntisland shipyard at burntisland.net , accessed on August 4, 2020
- Empire Mackendrick at clydeships.co.uk , accessed August 4, 2020
- List of Empire ships at mariners-l.co.uk , accessed August 4, 2020
- Arnold Hague Convoy Database , accessed August 4, 2020
- Photo of Vassil Levsky at shipspotting.com , accessed August 4, 2020
- Reminder of the motor ship “Vasil Levsky” at morskivestnik.com (Bulgarian), accessed on August 4, 2020
Individual evidence
- ^ Mitchell, Sawyer, p. 168
- ↑ Excerpt from the construction list of the Burntisland shipyard at burntisland.net
- ↑ Lenton, p. 151
- ↑ Empire Mackendrick at clydeships.co.uk
- ^ Colledge, Warlow, p. 129
- ↑ a b List of Empire ships at mariners-l.co.uk
- ^ Arnold Hague Convoy Database
- ↑ Chronicle of the Naval War: May 7–31, 1944 North Atlantic
- ↑ Andriaki Shipping co. Ltd. andriaki.gr
- ↑ cf. Image of the Granpond from 1951 at deutschefotothek.de
- ↑ Harbron, p. 243
- ↑ a b Remembering the motor ship “Vasil Levsky” at morskivestnik.com
- ↑ On duty with Captain Stanchev on the motor ship "Vasil Levski" at morskivestnik.com (Bulgarian)
- ↑ Emergency stay of "Vasil Levski" in Gibralter at morskivestnik.com (Bulgarian)
- ↑ The last voyage with Captain Stanchev on the "Vasil Levski" at morskivestnik.com (Bulgarian)
- ↑ Witthöft, p. 96
- ↑ Witthöft, p. 105, p. 114
- ↑ Witthöft, p. 116
- ^ Witthöft, p. 139