Eduard Bohlen
Wreck of the Eduard Bohlen
The second Eduard Bohlen was a Blohm & Voss 1890/91 combi built ship of the Woermann Line (WL ). On September 5, 1909, the ship ran aground in fog in Conception Bay on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia today due. Due to siltation the wreck is now several hundred meters from the sea in the Namib.
History
1888 ordered the Woermann Line at the Blohm & Voss shipyard first four steamers with a larger passenger facility for their service from Hamburg to West Africa. The delivered before ten steamers of the shipping company offered only room for 15 or 30 passengers. The ordered new buildings should be over 2000 GRT for the first time in size and can accommodate 46 passengers. The first new building was on 15 September 1889 as the Eduard Bohlen from the stack and was delivered on 18 November 1889. The launch of the second ship Aline Woermann on February 18, 1890.
German East Africa Line
Was on April 19, 1890, in Hamburg, the German East Africa Line ( DOAL ) founded with the German Reich a subsidy contract for operating a Reichspostdampfer from Hamburg to Delagoa Bay graduated on May 9, without having their own ships. To meet the conditions quickly, the above two ships of the Woermann Line was sold to the led by Adolph Woermann DOAL. The Aline Woermann was renamed the Federal Council and already delivered under this name to the new shipping company. They remained until the fall of 1909 in the service of DOAL and was then scrapped. The Eduard Bohlen was renamed the Reichstag and entered the first trial trip of a mail steamer of DOAL to East Africa on 23 July 1890. Both ships met the conditions of the Reichspostdampfer contract and were used until after the turn of the century as Reichspostdampfer on the main line. Used since 1902 on the branch line from Durban to Bombay, the Eduard Bohlen was sold in the fall of 1910 in Turkey, where it received the name Sabah. 1911 seized by the Italians during the Italian -Turkish War, she ran until 1923 under the Italian flag as Libano, Fido and Ida before she was scrapped.
The " replacement buildings "
The two ships were delivered to the DOAL replaced by the two already ordered at Blohm & Voss other new buildings and were given the names of the votes ships. The second Eduard Bohlen was manufactured under the hull number 75, was on 23 October 1890 by the stack and was delivered on 28 January 1891 the Woermann Line, which is also occasionally from 1891 started off German South-West Africa and from 1893 a fixed line network from Hamburg operation to the African coast from Morocco to Angola. However, the Woermann Line ordered to 1900 mainly small cargo ships of Jeanette Woermann class and no new buildings for passenger traffic, but acquired older mail steamer of the Hamburg-Süd such as Adolph Woermann put into service Belgrano.
1895 was the German shipping company co-founded the Société Maritime du Congo, which they presented to the Eduard Bohlen 1898 available that ran at this time under the Belgian flag. The Belgian subsidiary was awarded in 1898 a house built in the UK Combined ship of 3757 grt with the name Bruxellesville. 1903 replaced the Eduard Bohlen, the previous small ships on the line of German South-West Africa to Cape Town. 1906 this line was through the use of the sister ship Aline Woermann, which was, however, sold 1908. On September 5, 1909, the Eduard Bohlen stranded on a voyage from Swakopmund to Cape Town in dense fog in the Conception Bay and could not be dissuaded again.