Vikings (ship)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The whaling factory ship Wikinger was completed in 1929 by the Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Wallsend as Vikingen for the Norwegian whaling company "Viking" in Newcastle upon Tyne . The shares of this company were the first to be traded by a whaling company on the London Stock Exchange, as the Norwegian whaling shipper Johan Rasmussen from Sandefjord needed British capital to finance the new construction. From 1934, the ship was used under the Panamanian flag in order to reduce investor taxes. In 1938 the German Reich was able to buy the ship when Rasmussen got into financial difficulties. Under the name Wikinger , it was used by the "Hamburger Walfang Kontor" in the 1938/1939 fishing season in the Southern Ocean.
After the Second World War , the ship was delivered to Great Britain , where it was renamed Empire Venture and used in the Southern Ocean in the first post-war winter . In 1946 it was handed over to the Soviet Union , which used it as a Slav until 1970. In 1971 the ship was demolished in Taiwan .
Building history
The ship was built at the Swan Hunter shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne on behalf of the Norwegian whaling shipowners Johan Karsten Rasmussen and Torger Moe. Johan K. Rasmussen (1878-1966) was one of the most important whaling speakers in Norway, along with Anders Years (1891-19) and Lars Christensen (1884-1965), who, like the aforementioned competitors, controlled several whaling companies. The companies A / S "Rosshavet" were already under his management - deployed from New Zealand's Paterson Inlet Bay on Stewart Island as a base with the factory ships CA Larsen (12,759 GRT) and Sir James Clark Ross (8,179 GRT), which from the Stromness land station A / S "Vestfold" operating on South Georgia and A / S "Sydhavet", which was deployed with the factory ship Svend Foyn I (4,136 GRT) in the South Atlantic off the Antarctic coast.
Rasmussen and Moe had the idea of installing additional decks on a tanker hull for processing the captured whales and the necessary equipment. The Norwegian shipowner Anders Jahre pursued the same idea, whose somewhat larger Kosmos , built at the Workman, Clark & Co shipyard in Belfast , was completed shortly before the Vikingen as the first modern whaling factory ship constructed as such and came into service under the Norwegian flag.
For the new factory ship, Rasmussen also had five whalers named Vikingen I to Vikingen V built at the British special shipyard Smith's Dock in Middlesbrough , which were 35.4 m long and 7.4 m wide, had a size of 250 GRT and had 850 hp Reached 12 kn. In 1935 the shipyard delivered a sixth fishing boat, the Vikingen VI , which was 38.9 m long and 7.6 m wide, had a size of 299 GRT and reached 13 knots with 1300 hp. It was followed in 1936 by the 355 GRT Vikingen VII (40.1 m × 8.0 m, 1400 hp, 13 knots).
In order to obtain the necessary capital for the new buildings, Rasmussen founded with the help of Erling Dekke Næss (1901-1993) the "Viking Whaling Company Ltd", which in January 1929 became the first listed whaling company on the London Stock Exchange. Næss had previously been able to attract British capital for his father-in-law's Norwegian whaling company A / S "Hektor". Their actions in Norway were seen in part as betrayal and the beginning of the sell-off of Norwegian-ruled whaling. Rasmussen and Næss considered the procedure necessary because Norway did not have sufficient shipbuilding capacity and free capital.
Mission history
The newbuildings proved their worth because they could easily take the killed whales on board with their rear towing , had the necessary width to process the whales and the production process was optimized. The processing could also be carried out more comprehensively and in more difficult sea conditions than with the previous factory ships. The Vikingen achieved excellent results on its first two fishing trips and the company was able to pay substantial dividends. In addition to the newbuilds, the use of a large number of converted larger tankers and passenger ships with also improved processing options and the use of tankers that removed parts of the catch during the fishing season led to a huge increase in whale oil production. In just five years, production quadrupled, which, in addition to the global economic crisis in 1931, led to a collapse of the whale oil market, especially since the main customer, the Unilever Group, was not willing and able to pay the prices, some of which had been agreed in advance.
In 1931 , the Vikingen was part of the Norwegian whaling fleet, which was launched and abandoned whaling in the southern summer of 1931/1932. For Rasmussen the situation worsened due to the fact that for his other companies at Furness Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. Sir James Clark Ross (14362 BRT / 1930), Vestfold (14.547 / 1931) and Svend Foyn (14795 BRT / 1931) ordered new buildings in Haverton Hill , of which the latter two could be launched and could not be used immediately and payments to the creditors could not were possible. Rasmussen was forced to change the organization of his group. Only A / S "Rosshavet" remained a Norwegian company, while A / S "Sydhavet" moved to "St. Helier Shipowners Ltd. ”, whose ships are based in London. A / S Vestfold, newly formed after Stromness was sold to Christian Salvesen, with the new factory ship that gave it its name, also initially became a British company.
Whaling under the Panamanian flag
The "Viking Whaling Company Ltd" had the problem from the start that Norwegian shareholders were taxed twice. This had already led to a temporary relocation of the administration to France . With the support of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Næss succeeded in finding a solution by registering in Panama for the renamed “Viking Corporation”, the “Vestfold Corporation” and registering the two factory ships and their fishing boats in Panama in 1934. The Norwegian crews kept their employment contracts and received an additional amount to make up for losses in the Norwegian pension scheme. The "Viking Corporation" not only administered the Vikingen and its fishing fleet, but also Rasmussen's various interests in other British and Norwegian companies. The distribution of property and relationships between the companies controlled by Rasmussen and Næss were complex and intricate, largely disintegrating old Norwegian societies. The old Tønsberg Hvalrederi had also come under Rasmussen's influence.
The catch restrictions in place since 1932 were taken over by Rasmussen and in 1932 the Vestfold was first used as a factory ship and the Vikingen as a tanker. The difficulties of the whale oil market and the independent production of Germany and Japan brought the Norwegian whaling companies and the Rasmussen Group into ongoing difficulties. In addition, there was a relatively bad fishing season in 1937/1938. After the fishing season, therefore, with British support, the Vikingen and five of their fishing boats were sold to Germany, which saved Rasmussen from bankruptcy, while the competitors Jahr and Christensen were not allowed to sell.
Sale to Germany
In 1938 the Vikingen and five of its fishing boats were sold to Germany, which, however, did not pay with money because of the scarce foreign exchange reserves, but with the construction of a new tanker. The new owner was "Deutsche Oelmühlen Rohstoffe GmbH", which renamed the factory ship to Wikinger and the fishing boats to Wiking 1 to Wiking 5 . In addition, the company chartered the fishing boats Vikingen VI and VII as well as the Vestfold IV (273 GRT, 35.8 × 7.4 m, 850 hp, 12 kn), built in 1927 at Kaldnaes MV in Tønsberg as Herkules 1 . These were to be replaced in 1939 by three new builds ordered from Seebeck in Wesermünde , Wiking 6 to Wiking 8 , (381 GRT, 40.4 - 8.1 m, 1700 HP, 14 kn, 15 men), two of which were for the Southern Seas ordered boats when Wiking 9 and Wiking 10 came. The crew leader took the "Hamburger whaling office", which is also the use of the rented factory ships CA Larsen and Skytteren and purchased in the previous year South Sea coordinated, for 1939, two each additional fishing boats from the Seebeck type under the name Wal 8 to Wal 11 to Were available. In the spring of 1939, Captain Carl Kircheiß took command of the ship for 90 days.
Remaining after the Second World War
The Vikings were in Hamburg when the war broke out. During the war she was used by the Navy as a so-called base ship. At the end of the war in 1945 it was captured by British troops in Kiel and then used for whaling in the southern summer of 1945/1946 by the "Kerguelen Sealing & Whaling Co." under the name Empire Venture . Three old boats ( I , II , III ) and four of the German buildings ( 6 , 8 , 9 , 10 ) from 1939 were available as whalers, all of which had been used as auxiliary ships in the navy during the war. They all had their old numbers next to the new name Empire Viking .
In the first post-war season, three factory ships were in service under the British flag. In addition to the Empire Venture , the formerly German Empire Victory (ex Unitas ) and the new Southern Venturer . The three factory ships each produced around 90,000 barrels of whale oil.
In 1946 the former Vikingen was given over to the Soviet Union, which it then used under the name Slawa until the 1958 season as the only Soviet factory ship in the Southern Ocean. The ship's home port was Odessa . The first ten fishing boats Slava 1 to Slava 10 with home port Vladivostok also came from the German spoils of war ( Rau VII , Wikinger 6 , - 8 , - 9 , - 10 , Wal 10 , - 11 , Wikinger 1 , 2 , 3 ). The number of the Slawa fishing boats used rose mid-1950s, to 15 to 18 and they reported record catches. It was not until 1959 that the Sowjestkaya Ukraina (32,024 GRT) was the first Soviet new build, which was followed by others. The old Slava was withdrawn from the Southern Ocean in 1965 and hunted whales in the North Pacific for three years. The ship, which was then decommissioned, was sold to Japan in 1971 , but was demolished in Kaohsiung / Taiwan in July 1971 .
literature
- Julia V. Iwaschenko, Phillip J. Clapham, Robert L. Brownfell Jr .: Soviet Illegal Whaling: The Devil and the Details (PDF; 5.1 MB)
- Roger W. Jordan: The World's Merchant Fleets , Naval Institut Press, Annapolis (2006), ISBN 1-59114-959-2
- Joh. N. Tønnessen, Arne Odd Johnsen: The History of Modern Whaling , University of California Press (1982), ISBN 0-520-03973-4
Web links
- Website about Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson (English)
- Vikingen Lardex.net
- Image as Vikingen
- Image of the Slava
- The Slav
- Slava 1 whalers
- Slawa 6 whalers
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Construction list of the shipyard, construction number 879-881,890 / 891
- ↑ Vikingen VI , Building No. 991
- ↑ Vikingen VII , building no. 1010
- ↑ Sir James Clark Ross , Building No. 158
- ↑ Vestfold , Building No. 189
- ↑ Svend Foyn , Building No. 190
- ↑ Tønnessen, p. 450.
- ↑ Tønnessen, p. 450, MT Norness , 9577 BRT, 14,800 tdw, delivered in spring 1939
- ↑ Hercules 1
- ↑ The Wiking V was used from February to May 1940 as a transport boat in the north base and between this and Murmansk .
- ^ British Whalers poor season , The Glasgow Herald (April 26, 1946)
- ^ Tønnessen, p. 666.
- ^ Tønnessen, p. 576.