SMS Pommerania
 Pommerania in 1887
| |
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Operators | |
| Preceded by | SMS Falke |
| Succeeded by | SMS Zieten |
| Completed | 1 |
| Retired | 1 |
| History | |
| Name | Pommerania |
| Builder | AG Vulcan |
| Laid down | 1864 |
| Launched | September 1864 |
| Commissioned | 27 April 1871 |
| Decommissioned | 16 October 1889 |
| In service | 1 May 1865 |
| Renamed | Adler, 1892 |
| Stricken | 10 August 1890 |
| Fate | Sold, 1892, converted into a merchant ship and sank with all hands, 20 January 1894 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Unique aviso |
| Displacement |
|
| Length | 55.2 m (181 ft 1 in) loa |
| Beam | 6.9 m (22 ft 8 in) |
| Draft | 2.35 m (7 ft 9 in) |
| Installed power | |
| Propulsion | |
| Speed | 14.5 knots (26.9 km/h; 16.7 mph) |
| Range | 300 nautical miles (560 km; 350 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) |
| Complement |
|
| Armament | 2 × 8 cm (3.1 in) hoop guns |
SMS Pommerania was a
naval register in 1890, sold in 1892, and was converted into a sailing schooner. She was renamed Adler, but was lost with all hands on her first voyage as a merchant ship
in January 1894.
Design
The early history of Pommerania is poorly recorded, as few official records concerning her construction have survived. The ship was originally built for the
Characteristics
Pommerania was 50.5 m (165 ft 8 in)
The ship was a good
head sea, and she tended to ship large quantities of water forward. To supplement her steam engine, she carried a schooner rig, but it contributed little to her performance. These problems were typical of paddle steamers. The ship had a crew of four officers and sixty-one enlisted men. She carried four smaller boats of unrecorded type.[1]
Pommerania's propulsion system consisted of one vertical, oscillating 2-cylinder
metric horsepower (690 ihp) and a top speed of 14.5 knots (26.9 km/h; 16.7 mph). She could carry up to 75 t (74 long tons) of coal, which allowed a cruising radius of 300 nautical miles (560 km; 350 mi) at a speed of 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph).[1]
The ship was armed with a pair of 8 cm (3.1 in) 23-
Hotchkiss revolver cannon in 1880.[1]
Service history
Pommerania was
launched in September that year and entered service on 1 May 1865 with the North German postal service, operating on the Stettin–Stockholm route for the next five years. During this period, she ran aground off Hiddensee in early September 1868 and had to be pulled free. By the late 1860s, the aviso Loreley was worn out and in need of a lengthy reconstruction; on 2 July 1870, the naval command instructed Korvettenkapitän (KK—Corvette captain) Franz von Waldersee to examine Pommerania to determine if she could be a suitable replacement while Loreley was out of service. Waldersee's trials were underway when war with France broke out on 19 July, and the North German Federal Navy requisitioned the vessel on 20 August at no cost. Crew shortages and a lack of equipment during the conflict delayed conversion of the vessel into a warship until 27 April 1871, by which time the war had ended in German victory and creation of the German Empire.[1][4]
The German Fisheries Association requested a commission to conduct research in the North and Baltic Seas and the navy—now the
Helgoland. From there, she proceeded to Wilhelmshaven and then back through the Skagerrak and Kattegat to Kiel, arriving there on 10 September, having traveled 2,500 nmi (4,600 km; 2,900 mi). She was decommissioned there on 21 September. The two expeditions provided the basis for the Fisheries Act of 1874. Pommerania was recommissioned in 1873 to conduct surveys of the Mecklenburg coast, but she had to return to port for repairs in May after suffering machinery problems.[5]
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Pommerania remained out of service until 1 May 1876, when she was recommissioned to join the
Salonika in the Ottoman Empire in response to the murder of the German consul there. On the way there, Pommerania stopped in Algiers on 12 June, which was one of the first times a German warship had stopped in a French port following the Franco-Prussian War. The German ships were joined by French, Russian, Italian, and Austro-Hungarian warships in an international demonstration condemning the murder. Most of the German vessels left in August, but Pommerania and the ironclad Friedrich Carl remained in the eastern Mediterranean, first off the Levant and then stopping in Smyrna. On 15 November, Pommerania went to the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, where she served as the second station ship along with Loreley. She remained there until early March 1877, when she returned to Smyrna. On 16 May, Pommerania steamed back to Constantinople in response to the start of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. She stayed in Constantinople until 12 June 1879, when she began the voyage back to Germany, arriving in Wilhelmshaven and being decommissioned there on 9 August.[2][6]
The ship was recommissioned on 25 August 1881 to serve as a
naval register on 10 August 1890. She was sold in 1892 to a Hamburg-based company and converted into a three-masted sailing schooner. Renamed Adler, the ship was operated by the firm Paulsen & Ivers, based in Kiel. On her first voyage, she sank in a storm on 20 January 1894 with the loss of her entire crew.[1][7]
Notes
References
- Dodson, Aidan (2016). The Kaiser's Battlefleet: German Capital Ships 1871–1918. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-229-5.
- ISBN 978-0-87021-790-6.
- Hildebrand, Hans H.; Röhr, Albert & Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart [The German Warships: Biographies − A Reflection of Naval History from 1815 to the Present] (in German). Vol. 6. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7822-0237-4.
- Sondhaus, Lawrence (1997). Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power Before the Tirpitz Era. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-745-7.