The 20.98m long and 4.4m wide St Georg, drawing 1.2m, is the only historic steamship still in daily service in Germany. Built in Hamburg in 1876 as Falke, it has just begun its 22nd season as a tourist excursion boat on Hamburg’s Alster. And because it carried 35,500 passengers in round the clock operation last year it now also holds the record as Europe’s busiest steam ship.
“It just goes to show how reliable steam engines are, even after so many years”, St Georg engineer Sven Albrecht told Maritime Journal.
He is the technical head of the Verein Alsterdampfschiffahrt e.V. a non-profit organisation which operates the steamer and restores historic boats. The group saved St Georg from the scrapyard in 1988 and had it restored at the Dresdner Schiffswerft in Laubegast.
St Georg was built in 1876 at Hamburg’s Reiherstiegswerft, which no longer exists, and has just been overhauled at the Theodor Buschmann Werft, a yard on roughly the same site.
During its latest overhaul the oil-fired Loos boiler from 1971 with a steam capacity put at 1 t/h, was renovated and the crankshaft and slide control on St Georg’s 1922 75hp two-cylinder steam engine were renovated. Interiors were also spruced up. An overhaul a year ago at Buschmann also included conservation of the steel hull. The ship got a second duplex pump fitted in 2009/10.
After first serving in Hamburg St Georg was sold to Berlin after WW2, converted first into a motor ship with a 150hp Modag Diesel and later lengthened before being acquired and restored by the Verein Alsterdampfschiffahrt.
The organisation has also acquired the hulls of two further old steamships and hopes eventually to restore them as well. However Sven Albrecht told Maritime Journal plans for Winterhude and Nixe were on ice for now.
“If you want to restore an old inland ship today then the same EU rules apply as for a new ship”, he explained. He added that those rules “… make a restoration in today’s EU impossible”. Efforts were being made to come up with a special permit for restoring traditional inland ships but that could take “a long time” Albrecht acknowledged.
He revealed however that prospects were bright for the rescue and restoration of Tarpenbek a 1935 prototype of the first passenger motorship to sail on the Alster and still almost exactly how it was when built. The Verein has been trying to acquire the boat for several years and Albrecht said hopes were high as Maritime Journal went to press that an acquisition might soon be possible.
By Tom Todd
