Whale (ship, 1938)
 Steam icebreaker Wal at Kiel Week 2007
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The Wal is a steamship that was used as an icebreaker on the Kiel Canal from 1938 to 1990 . Since June 1990 the ship has been used as a museum ship by the "Schiffahrts-Compagnie Bremerhaven eV" . It was listed as a movable monument in 2019 .
history
The ship was launched in March 1937 by the waterway management of the German Reich in Szczecin or works commissioned ( hull number 800) and ran there on May 5, 1938 from the stack . On June 20, 1938, it was delivered to the Rendsburg waterway machinery office , which put the whale into service for the icebreaker service on the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal.
During the Second World War , the whale was also used for the Navy in the Bay of Kiel and Lübeck . At times she drove with a military crew and was then subordinate to the 11th port protection flotilla in Kiel-Holtenau . During a boiler repair in the Rostock Neptun shipyard , the Wal went aground on April 26, 1942 after a bomb hit . The ship was lifted in May 1942 by the Bugsier-, Reederei- und Bergungsgesellschaft and then repaired by the Lübecker Maschinenbau Gesellschaft until January 1943 . In March 1945 the whale brought refugees from Gdansk across the Baltic Sea to the west as part of the Hannibal company .
Before the whale was returned to the Rendsburg waterway machinery office in 1950, the British military government used it with the ship identification KC 69 on the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (since 1948 the Kiel Canal).
In 1952 , the whale supported the reconstruction of the island of Helgoland with supply trips. After problems with the firing , the ship was rebuilt from March 1963 to December 1965 at the State Shipyard Rendsburg-Saatsee and the coal firing was replaced by two oil-fired boilers. Her last icebreakers used on the Kiel Canal drove the whale in February 1987. A guest ride on the 50th anniversary service in December 1988 was the last great journey of the icebreaker before it was decommissioned 1990th
The "Schiffahrts-Compagnie Bremerhaven eV" acquired the whale for 48,000 German marks and transferred it on 1./2. June 1990 from Rendsburg to Bremerhaven . The ship was restored within a year and converted for use as a museum ship. A voluntary crew maintains the traditional ship and offers rides on the Weser , to Helgoland , to the Kieler Woche , to the Dampf Rundum in Flensburg , to the Hanse Sail in Rostock or to the port birthday in Hamburg . On the Day of Lower Saxony , the whale stopped in Wilhelmshaven in 2019 .
Web links
- Description from "Schiffahrts-Compagnie Bremerhaven eV" (accessed on July 12, 2017)
- History at SchiffsSpotter.de (accessed on November 22, 2012)