Built as a tanker under yard No 473 by Armstrong Mitchell & Co., Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England for Reederei Wilhelm Anton Riedemann at Geestemünde, Germany.
25 November 1885 keel laid down.
16 June 1886 launched under the name GLUCKAUF.
Tonnage 2.307 gross, 3.020 dwt., dim. 91.59 x 11.34 x 7.07m
One reciprocating triple expansion steamengine 912 ihp., two boilers, one screw, speeds during trials 10.5 knots.
10 August 1886 completed.
Maiden voyage from the Tyne River to New York in ballast, to load a cargo of oil.
When she arrived at New York the shore labour and longshoremen, oilmen and coppers, all claimed that the loading was going to quick; her loading time of three days would have taken ten times as long with a dry cargo vessel.
The shore labour refused her (bunker) coal, and she had after leaving New York to call at St John’s for her coal bunkering, before crossing again the North Atlantic to Geestemünde for discharging.
She is generally accepted as the prototype of today’s supper tankers. Her engine was placed aft. On the other hand, she still followed a conventional trend by supplementing her engine power through sails on three masts.
She is the first ocean-going vessel special designed to carry oil in bulk.
A single longitudinal bulkhead and the usual transverse ones divided her cargo space. A fore and aft expansion tank placed between her two decks was flanked by tanks for lighter oils. Altogether she had 8 tanks. Her unloading took around 12 hours.
During her lifetime she mainly sailed between America and Europe.
Her owner, Riedemann, was a German oil merchant who subsequently played a major role in the early years of Standard Oil’s German Affiliate – Deutsche Petroleum Gesellschaft – today’s Esso’s (AG) Hamburg.
04 April 1890 sold to newly founded Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft, at Bremen.
During a voyage in ballast during heavy fog she stranded in the night of 23/24 March 1893 on Blue Point Beach, Long Island, her crew was saved but efforts to salvage the tanker failed.
Paraguay 1976 20g sc?, scott 1678.
Angola 1999 KZr 950.000.00 sg ?, scott?
Source: Sailing Ship to Supertanker by W.H.Mitchell and L. A. Sawyer. Jaarboek Scheepvaart.