Werkendam (ship)
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The Werkendam was a passenger ship put into service in 1881 under the name British King , which was used as a transatlantic liner on the North Atlantic by the Dutch shipping company Holland-America Line from 1889 to 1900 and carried passengers , freight and mail from Rotterdam to New York . It was then sold to Chinese interests and sunk as a block ship in Port Arthur in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War .
The ship
The later Werkendam was built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast , Northern Ireland , and was launched on January 22, 1880. On March 29, 1881, the 3,559 GRT steamship was handed over to its owners under the name British King (II). The British King was a 128.10 meter long and 11.82 meter wide, iron- built passenger and cargo ship, which had three decks , four masts and the rigging of a schooner bar. The four-cylinder compound steam engine drove a single propeller and was able to guarantee a maximum speed of 12 knots. The engine output was 400 hp and the passenger capacity was 112 passengers in the first, 78 in the second and 430 in the third class.
Owner of the vessel was in 1864 by businessman and shipowner in James Beazley (1819-1891) Liverpool shipping company founded British Shipowners Company . This shipping company was unusual for its time in that it regularly chartered its ships for longer periods to other shipping companies, for example to the Anchor Line , American Line , Cunard , New Zealand Shipping or Shaw, Savill & Albion .
The British King had three sister ships : the British Empire (I) (3,607 GRT, 1878), the British Crown (I) (3,607 GRT, 1879) and the British Queen (I) (3,558 GRT, 1881). These three ships later also went to the Holland-America Line and were named Rotterdam (II), Amsterdam (II) and Obdam .
history
On April 9, 1881, the British King ran from Liverpool to Philadelphia on her maiden voyage on the American Line . The last crossing on this route began on May 29, 1882. From January 20, 1883 she was chartered by the Shaw, Savill & Albion Steamship Company for their service from London to New Zealand . In December 1884 she returned to the American Line for four crossings. With the exception of a single Atlantic crossing in the service of the Guion Line in May 1885 from Liverpool via Queenstown to New York , the steamer remained in the Liverpool-Philadelphia service of the American Line until November 1889.
Before the end of the year, the British King was sold to the Dutch Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij NV (NASM), better known as Holland-America Line (HAL), as were other older ships from the British Shipowners Company and the White Star Line bought up and renamed. The British King was named Werkendam and left Rotterdam on February 22, 1890 for her first HAL crossing to New York.
On March 8, 1900, the last voyage of the Werkendam for the Holland America Line began. Then it was sold to the Chinese Eastern Railway and renamed Harbin . In March 1904 the ship was sunk as a block ship in Port Arthur .