Wilhelm Mercandin

Count Wilhelm Mercandin (* around 1840; † January 26, 1894 in Vienna ) was a captain who became known through numerous collisions and was nicknamed "Karambolagenkapitän". He sank a passenger ship in front of the Lindau harbor entrance.

Life

It is possible that the captain of Lake Constance, Count Mercandin, is identical to the one Wilhelm Count Mercandin, who as a lieutenant of the line was awarded the Military Merit Cross with the war decoration. Wilhelm Mercandin, however, regularly caused damage to the ships he commanded on Lake Constance . In 1884 he rammed the pier in Friedrichshafen with Austria . A year later, he bent the bow of the new saloon ship Kaiser Franz Josef I on the Lindau quay wall. He was then transferred to the Bregenz , a tugboat. After just a few days, a tow rope tore him in the port of Constance , whereupon two fully loaded barges got caught in the current of the Rhine . A ship from Baden rushed to the rescue and saved the two vehicles. Mercandin was only allowed to take over a passenger ship again in 1887, the Habsburg . A few days after he took command of this passenger steamer, the most serious collision of his career occurred.

The sinking of the city ​​of Lindau

The Habsburgs operated on Lake Constance since 1884. An accident had already occurred when the ship was christened; the grandstand for the guests of honor had collapsed and several people had fallen into the water. After that, however, there had been no further incident with this ship, which was mainly used on the Bregenz- Constance route, until October 8, 1887 . On the evening of the said day, the Habsburgs under captain Wilhelm Mercandin left Lindau ten minutes late. The count let the ship go at full steam in the direction of Bregenz, because a train connection was to be reached there. Like his helmsman Stettinger, he noticed that the steamer Stadt Lindau , returning from Rorschach , was coming towards him, but did not reduce its speed, but only ordered an evasive maneuver to port . Stettinger did not comply with this request immediately because he feared that he would then set the ship on one of the shoals in this direction. On the Count's renewed order, he let the ship turn in the desired direction. In the meantime, however, the oncoming city ​​of Lindau had also turned in order to be able to enter the port; Sailors on board the city ​​of Lindau signaled that the speed of the Habsburg should be reduced. Count Mercandin finally gave the order "Stop and full power back", but forgot to ring the bell that had to precede every machine maneuver. As a result, the instructions he gave over the mouthpiece were not even noticed at the machine stand. Even captain Christian Häberlin on the city ​​of Lindau could not stop his ship in time. The bow of the Habsburg bored into the foredeck of the town of Lindau in front of the port wheel arch and cut its hull in two more than the width of the ship. Three passengers from the city ​​of Lindau who had been in the front cabin were killed in the accident. Another passenger initially went down with the ship, but was then washed back to the surface and rescued by people on the steamer Ludwig , which rushed to the rescue . Eight other passengers and the crew of the city ​​of Lindau saved themselves on the Habsburg .

The passenger Strobel, who had been rescued by the crew of the Ludwig , reported in the Vaduzer Volksblatt on October 21, 1887 that he had been in the cabin with a Frau Noll and a factory spinner Bohne when the accident happened. After he heard the ringing of a ship's bell, there was an immediate violent shock, water had penetrated the cabin and beams and boards had fallen from above,

“The door to the cabin burst and the Austrian ship stood in the stairwell, so that our way was completely cut off. I overlooked everything, the bean wanted to get out of the cabin windows and I entered the hole that the Habsburg had made with full force. After a few minutes, when the »Habsburg« had twisted backwards out of the belly of the poor ship, I was [...] miraculously lifted from the air and thrown through the wheel arch [...] ...] on the deck, where I happily grabbed a bench by which I kept myself above the water [...] From the Austrian ship, which was very close, finally came a [...] sign of life ; a Bavarian sailor [...] threw me a rope [...] But during this time the ship "Ludwig" [...] had launched its lifeboat [...] As I found out later, the The Habsburg crew did not let their lifeboat into the lake, the water could not take the same thing [...] I do not allow myself to make any judgment about the captain and the crew, that it would turn out very badly; The former is said to have been walking around on the deck with the lit cigarette. "

The property damage that occurred when the town of Lindau was sunk was later put at 76,517 marks. The ship was still lifted in 1887, but could not be put back into motion. It was sold to an Austrian scrap company for 1,200 marks. The compass that Christian Häberlin saved from the sinking was later given to the Lindau .

The accident caused by Count Mercandin attracted numerous disaster tourists who visited the wreck, which lay for several weeks in a water depth of four meters in front of the Lindau harbor. Wilhelm Mercandin had to answer before the Feldkirch District Court , was found guilty and sentenced to nine months of strict arrest. The verdict was passed on April 11, 1888.

Mercandin died in Vienna in 1894 at the age of 54.

photos

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  The chimney of the submerged town of Lindau protrudes from the water.

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  The rescue of the city ​​of Lindau

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  The damage to the ship

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  The judgment on Wilhelm Mercandin

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  The Habsburg around 1900

Footnotes

1. ^ History of the KK Kriegsmarine during the war in 1866. Based on authentic sources , 1906, p. 333
2. ↑ So the information from Karl F. Fritz, for example, the rescued passenger Strobel apparently reported only two other occupants of the cabin.
3. ↑ Vaduzer Volksblatt of October 21, 1887 (PDF; 249 kB)
4. ↑ www.bodenseeschifffahrt.de
5. ^ So Karl F. Fritz, Adventure Steamship on Lake Constance , Meersburg ²1990, ISBN 3-927484-00-8 , p. 88, in accordance with an announcement in the Lichtensteiner Volksblatt of April 13, 1888. On www.bodenseeschifffahrt.de is the Talk of a nine-year prison sentence, also here ( memento of the original from November 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
6. ↑ Lichtensteiner Volksblatt of April 13, 1888 (PDF; 238 kB)