Wahehe (ship, 1922)
 Wahehe
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The second Wahehe of the Woermann Line (WL) was their first new passenger ship after the First World War for the West Africa service. In September 1922 she started in Hamburg on the shipping company's first trip with passengers to West Africa after the World War. However, until 1927 German ships were forbidden to call at their former colonies of Togo and Cameroon .
The Wahehe sought refuge in Vigo in 1939 , from where they tried in February 1940. break through home. It was stopped and seized by the British cruiser HMS Manchester and the destroyer HMS Kimberley southeast of Iceland .
Renamed Empire Citizen , the ship was used on the Allied side and torpedoed and sunk by U 107 in the North Atlantic on February 3, 1941 .
History of the Wahehe
After the people of the Hehe in German East Africa , the steamer Hilda Woermann, completed in 1915 at the Reiherstieg shipyard, was renamed Wahehe when the Woermann family sold their shares in the Woermann line. The 7,372 GRT first Wahehe never entered active service with the shipping company during the First World War , but was delivered to Great Britain in March 1919, where it was used as Marella by the Burns, Philp & Co shipping company from 1920 to 1949 . Sold to Panama, it changed its name three times from 1949 to 1952 and was finally scrapped in Bruges from the end of 1954. The Woermann-Linie and the DOAL have been operated in personal union since 1917 and merged as the "German Africa Service" on May 20, 1922, even if the ships still carried different chimney brands and shipping company flags. The new build program of the shipping companies was based on the resumption of pre-war services and provided for the procurement of four to 9,000 GRT passenger ships for the main lines (now known as the South Africa service) and two 5,000 GRT passenger ships for the West African service, which were commissioned after the peace agreement were.
The order for the West Africa ships was placed with the Reiherstieg shipyard in Hamburg. Both were given different names when they were launched than when the order was placed in 1920. With Wahehe and Wadai they were given the names of two ships completed during the war that had to be delivered and had not been used for the Woermann line.
The Wahehe was 110.1 m long, had a quadruple expansion engine which, supplied with steam by three cylinder boilers, developed 2100 hp and enabled the ship to travel at a speed of 10.5 knots (kn) . A passenger facility for 60 passengers in 1st class is available. After laying the keel as Wadigo on October 17, 1920, the ship was launched as Wahehe on May 6, 1922 and was delivered to the Woermann Line on August 23, 1922. The sister ship Wadai (keel laying as Warangi ) followed on December 2, 1922 in the service of the shipping company.
Mission history
On September 10, 1922, the Wahehe set out on its maiden voyage to West Africa. However, it was not allowed to call at the former German colonies of Togo and Cameroon . The French mandate did not allow this again until 1927. In addition to the sister ship Wadai from December 1922, the Tsad (ex Dania , 1904, 3927 BRT, 136 passengers) and Otavi (ex Lulu Bohlen , 1904, 5504 BRT, joined the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft in 1922 42 passengers) in service, which from 1923 also carried the chimney brand of the Woermann line. However, the two West Africa ships bought back by Hapag were sold again in 1924.
In the autumn of 1928, the passenger service was significantly strengthened through the use of the two older ships on the main line ( Wangoni and Ussukuma ), which were no longer needed due to further newbuildings on the main line to South Africa. The use of 7800 GRT ships did not prove to be economical and they returned to the South African service. From July 1930, however, a ship of this service ran monthly to the European ports of Freetown , Takoradi , Accra and Lagos before continuing its voyage to South Africa.
In the joint timetable with the Woermann Line to West Africa, two new combined ships of the Holland-West-Afrika Lijn also drove from 1929 . The Amstelkerk and Maaskerk of 4,300 GRT were built by Nüscke in Stettin , had steam turbine drives and space for 36 passengers in the first class. The two Woermann ships Wahehe and Wadai were thoroughly overhauled again in 1931, were given a larger cooling system for transporting bananas and still offered space for 60 cabin guests. From 1934, Wangoni and Ussukuma were again used to the ports on the West African coast, the offer of passenger seats with 90 in the first class and 160 in the tourist class was much larger. The unbundling of the German shipping companies in 1934 led to the abandonment of the Africa services of North German Lloyd and Hapag, but did not result in any new units in passenger service to West Africa. Wahehe and her sister ship, somewhat different from the large ships, now ran from Hamburg via Rotterdam , Antwerp and Boulogne via Las Palmas , Freetown, Monrovia , Port Bouet , Takoradi, Accra, Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar to Douala . On the return journey Calabar, Port Harcourt, Antwerp and Rotterdam were left out.
When war broke out in 1939 which are currently looking Dende on the departure ran Wahehe the Spanish Vigo on. A number of German ships gathered there, including the Wangoni and Usaramo of the German Africa Lines (DAL) deployed in the east coast service through the Mediterranean . In February 1940 the Germans tried to transfer six of the ships from Vigo home. On the night of February 9th to 10th, Rostock (2542 BRT), Morea (4709 BRT), Orizaba (4354 BRT), Wangoni (7848 BRT), Arucas (3359 BRT) and Wahehe left Vigo and tried to cross the North Atlantic To reach the coast of neutral Norway. The Wahehe was stopped on February 21, 1939 between Iceland and the Faroe Islands by the British cruiser Manchester and the destroyer Kimberley , applied and directed to Kirkwall . The Wangoni was the only one of the ships that left Vigo to reach Germany, which finally reached Hamburg on March 1st. The DAL's Usaramo remained in Vigo due to a boiler damage and only moved to southern France in the autumn of 1940, which has now been occupied by the Germans.
Renamed Empire Citizen , the Wahehe was used on the Allied side. After she had lost the connection to the convoy OB-279 , the lonely ship was on February 3, 1941 in the North Atlantic at the position 58 ° 12 ′ 0 ″ N , 23 ° 22 ′ 0 ″ W by U 107 . The crew was able to leave the ship after the first hit. Only then did the submarine sink the formerly German ship. The Flower corvette Clarkia , dispatched to the site of the sinking, was only able to save five men; 78 people lost their lives in the sinking of the Empire Citizen , including all 12 passengers.
Sister ship
| Surname | Construction no. | GRT | Launched in service |
further fate |
| Wadai | No. 519 | 4696 | 17.08.1922 02.12.1922 |
1939 on the journey home in the North Atlantic, reached Murmansk on September 14, 1939 , transferred to Hamburg from September 25 to October 7, 1939, living and target ship of the torpedo school , 1945 British spoils of war, used as Empire Yare , 1946 given to the Soviet Union, there Used as Gogol in the Black Sea and East Asia, demolished in Japan in 1970 |
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schmelzkopf: Handelsschiffahrt , p. 48
- ↑ Schmelzkopf: Handelsschiffahrt , p. 46
- ↑ Kludas: Passenger Shipping, Vol. IV, p. 127
- ↑ Kludas: Africa Lines , p. 90
- ↑ Kludas: Afrikalinien , p. 56
- ↑ Kludas: Passenger Shipping, Vol. IV, p. 135
- ↑ Timetable West Africa 1st half 1937 with Holland West Africa Line
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , p. 31
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 31
- ↑ Rothe: Passenger Ships 1919-1985 , p. 51
- ↑ Rothe, p. 47
- ↑ Rothe, p. 86
- ^ Kludas, Afrika-Linien, p. 84
- ↑ Rothe, p. 75
Web links
- Sinking of the Empire Citizen ex Wahehe (English, accessed February 28, 2014)
- Page on the history of the shipping companies Deutsche Afrika-Linien, John T. Essberger, u. a. as well as the trading house C. Woermann under construction
- Timetable for the first half of 1931
- Timetable 1936 and West Africa 1937
- Timetable West Africa 1st half 1937 with Holland West Africa Line
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Africa Lines 1880 to 1945 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1867-4 .
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 21
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Vol. V An era comes to an end from 1930 to 1990 , writings of the German Maritime Museum, volume 22
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . Steiger Verlag, Moers 1987, ISBN 3-921564-97-2 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-0097
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Die deutsche Handelsschiffahrt 1919–1939 , Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X