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U-995 at Laboe, set D

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Men of Poseidon
Life at Sea Aboard the USS Rall
Graves, Richard W.

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Allied Warships

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In 1851 Früchtenicht and Brock started at Bredow, near Stettin the very first German shipyard for iron made ships. Some smaller ships were constructed and the yard started to enlarge. In 1856 the founders of the yard got into financial problems. A group of eight entrepreneurs and politicians from Stettin and Berlin took it over the beginning of the next year under the name Stettiner Maschinenbau AG Vulcan. After some time they did get in financial trouble as well but saw the end of the problem by constructing more locomotives instead of ships. Ship construction continued however and in 1864 the yard had its first contact with the U-boat idea. When the famous Wilhelm Bauer returned from Russia he asked the Vulcan AG to make an offer for the construction of his project Küstenbrander. However it looks as that Bauer could not sell his project.

From 1867 on the yard also became active in the construction of warships. In 1876 they finished the Panzerkorvette Preussen and in 1878 the Panzerschiff Sachsen. In 1880 the yard had its first floating dock but in 1883 much was destroyed in a big fire. Reason in fact to modernise the wharf and to buy new grounds to enlarge the yard. Next to the existing 3 slipways 4 new larger ones were constructed. In 1895-1897 they constructed the biggest ship of its time, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with 14.349 BRT. By the turn of the century the yard was the biggest private one of Germany with over 7.000 employees. With the construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm II of 19.360 BRT this was the largest possible ship to be built on the shipyard at Stettin.

In 1905 the wharf decided to go to Hamburg for the construction of large ships and works on this wharf started in 1907, finishing two year later. There were two large slipways and two floating docks. Work started in 1910 with the construction of the Linieschiff Friedrich der Grosse. On the other slipway started the construction of the famous liner Imperator and its enormous 52.116 BRT! Other Linieschiff followed and during the First World War the Hamburg wharf worked for the Kaiserliche Marine only.

In 1912 the yard tried to get its piece of the U-boat cake, but didn’t get any orders. On the 23 November 1914 the wharf did get the first order for 10 U-boats of the UC-type. More orders for U-boats followed, and it has to be noticed that most of the U-boats produced over here were of the UB and UC types. The idea was that the wharf would be used to construct in 1919 the big U-Kreuzer and the UE types.