museum ship Gorch Fock (I) will be bought by city of Stralsund in order to repair and secure the ship

Uwek

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Forum Moderator
Joined
Dec 25, 2017
Messages
31,030
Points
1,238

Location
Vienna, Austria
The german museum ship Gorch Fock (I) is owned by a private association named "Tall-Ship-friends", the ship is possible to be visited in the harbour of city Stralsund.
The association already invested appr. 1,5 mio Euro into the ship, but it is not enough.

Unfortunately the status of the ship is getting worse and worse and a repair for appr. 6 mio Euro would be necessary in order to get her back on sail.

Positive news came up some days ago, that the City of Stralsund will buy the ship (price appr. 950 tsd Euro) from the association
and plan to finance the repair works together with some state financing, in order to keep one of the attractions of the area......


https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/meck...TS-rC1ufANZn_FChIQVh8snOO5DLf5Y4AxveCr5PAqwcE

The City:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stralsund


Gorch Fock on wikipedia:

Gorch Fock I (ex Tovarishch, ex Gorch Fock) is a German three-mast barque, the first of a series built as school ships for the German Reichsmarine in 1933. She was taken as war reparations by the Soviet Union after World War II and renamed Tovarishch. The ship was acquired by sponsors, after a short period under the Ukrainian flag in the 1990s and a prolonged stay in British ports due to lack of funds for necessary repairs, and she sailed to her original home port of Stralsund where her original name of Gorch Fock was restored on 29 November 2003. She is a museum ship, and extensive repairs were carried out in 2008.

gorch-fock-1-segelschiff.jpg

History and details
The German school ship Niobe, a three-masted barque, capsized on 26 July 1932 in the Baltic Sea near Fehmarn due to a sudden squall, killing 69. The loss prompted the German Navy to order a new training vessel built. The contract went to the shipyard of Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, where construction began on 2 December 1932. She was completed in only 100 days. On 3 May 1933 the ship was launched and named Gorch Fock in honor of German writer Johann Kinau who wrote under the pseudonym "Gorch Fock". Kinau had died in the 1916 Battle of Jutland aboard the cruiser SMS Wiesbaden.

Commissioned by the German Navy on 26 June 1933, Gorch Fock is a three-masted barque. She has square sails on the fore and main masts, and is gaff rigged on the mizzen. The steel hull has a sparred length of 82.1 m (269 ft), a width of 12 m (39 ft) and a draught of 5.2 m (17 ft). She has a displacement at full load of 1510 tons. Her main mast stands 41.30 m (135 ft) high above deck and she carries 23 sails totalling 1,753 m2 (18,869 sq ft). She is equipped with an auxiliary engine of 410 kW(550 hp).

The training ship was designed to be robust and safe against capsizing. More than 300 tons of steel ballast in the keel give her a righting moment large enough to bring her back in the upright position even when she heels over to nearly a 90°.

Gorch Fock served as a training vessel for the German Reichsmarine prior to World War II. During the war, she was a stationary office ship in Stralsund, until she was officially reactivated on 19 April 1944. On 1 May 1945, the crew scuttled her in shallow waters off Rügen in an attempt to avoid her capture by the Soviets, who already had fired at her for 45 minutes with tanks.

The Soviets ordered Stralsund-based company "B. Staude Schiffsbergung" to raise and salvage her, which after some difficulties was done in 1947 at a cost of 800,000 Reichsmark. She was under restoration between 1948 and 1950. She was then named Tovarishch (Russian for "Comrade") in 1951 and put into service as a training vessel. Her new home port was Odessa. She participated in many Tall Ships' Races and cruised far and wide on the seven seas. She made a voyage around the world in 1957 and won the Operation Sail race twice, in 1974 and 1976.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tovarishch sailed under the Ukrainian flag (home port Kherson) until 1993, when she was needed repairs and deactivated for lack of funds. In 1995, she sailed from Kherson to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where private sponsors wanted to have her repaired. This failed because of the high costs, and in 1999, the ship was transported to Wilhelmshaven, where she stayed in dock for four years until finally transferred to Stralsund in 2003. On 29 November 2003 the ship was re-christened Gorch Fock.

As of 2011 the ship is in poor but stable condition. There is about six million dollars worth of restoration work required to bring this ship back to sailing condition. The museum had a dismal tourist season resulting in a fifty thousand dollar loss in revenue from previous years. This has forced a layoff of five workers.



You can find the actual web-page of the "Tall Ship friends" the association (in moment) which is owner of the Gorch Fock (I) here:

http://gorchfock1.de/
 
Back
Top