MOLTKE SMS

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aukepalmhof
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Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

MOLTKE SMS

Post by aukepalmhof » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:29 pm

Built as a flush-decked corvette by the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig for the Imperial German Navy.
1875 Laid down.
18 October 1877 launched as the SMS MOLTKE one of the Bismarck class, she was named after the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke.
Displacement 2,843 standard, 2,994 full load, dim. 82.0 x 13.7 x 6.3m. (draught)
Powered by a 3-cyl steam engine, 2,500 ihp, one shaft with a lifting screw, speed 12.5 knots.
Armament 16 – 15.0 cm guns.
Three mast ship rigged, total sail area 2,210 m².
Crew 404-469.
16 April 1878 commissioned.
After commissioned served as training vessel for cadets and midshipmen of the German Navy, and made numerous voyages abroad.
The German expedition under command of Carl Schrader sailed from Germany on 3 June 1882 on board a passenger ship to Montevideo. After arrival Montevideo she boarded the SMS MOLTKE under command of Captain Johannes Heinrich Pirner they sailed to South Georgia which they reached on 20 August 1882.
After a station was constructed in Moltke Harbour on the north coast of the island, the MOLTKE sailed away and left the expedition behind, which were picked up the next year on 6 September 1883 on board of the corvette SMS MARIE.
The MOLTKE was the first engine powered ship arriving in South Georgia.
On 28 October 1911, MOLTKE was renamed ACHERON. A new battlecruiser had been commissioned on 30 September 1911 to carry the distinguished name MOLTKE in the Imperial Navy. ACHERON was reclassified and converted to serve as hulk for U-boat crews at the Kiel naval base. The hulk ACHERON was broken up in 1920.

The £1.25 stamp features Karl Schrader of the German International Polar Year Expedition and the expedition ship MOLTKE. In 1882 the expedition set up a research station on land at Moltke Harbour in Royal Bay. Eleven men overwintered in the first land-based scientific expedition on South Georgia. It was part of a worldwide programme of mainly geophysical studies which included an observation of the Transit of Venus.

Source: South Georgia Post.


South Georgia 2015 £1.25 sg?, scott?

Source: Wikipedia and internet.
Attachments
Moltke_(1877)_01.jpg
2015 South Georgia.JPG

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