Tovarishch II

Post by **john sefton** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 12:54 pm

The 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 USSR after World War II and renamed Tovarishch. 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, the ship was acquired by sponsors and sailed to her original home port of Stralsund, where her original name of Gorch Fock was restored on November 29, 2003. She is a museum ship, and extensive repairs were carried out in 2008. She is now seaworthy again and visited the Port of Belfast from 8 to 12 April 2009 where the public were allowed to board and view the vessel.
The Federal German government built a replacement training ship, the Gorch Fock (1958), which is still in service.
The German school ship Segelschulschiff Niobe, a four-masted barque, capsized on July 26, 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 December 2, 1932. She was completed in only 100 days. On May 3, 1933 the ship was launched and baptized 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 June 26, 1933, the "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 hull steel and 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°.
The 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 April 19, 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 ("Comrade" in Russian) 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, the 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 November 29, 2003 the ship was re-christened Gorch Fock.
See under Gorch Fock:
http://www.shipstamps.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=2&t=5891
Wikipedea
Azerbaijan SG353ms (According to Gibbons this is WRONGLY inscr “Tovarishch) Korea SG2662N Russia SG5170