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HISTORY
On May 3, 1933 the
new ship was launched and baptized Gorch Fock in honor of the
German writer Johann Kinau who wrote under the pseudonym "Gorch
Fock", and commissioned to the German Navy on June 26, 1933.
The Gorch Fock is a three masted barque: she has square sails on
fore and main mast and is gaff rigged on the mizzen. The hull is
made of steel and has a sparred length of 82.1 m (270 ft), a
width of 12 m (40 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 high above deck and she carries 23 sails totalling 1753
m² (18870 ft²) She is equipped with an auxiliary engine of some
410 kW (550 hp).
The ship was designed to be especially robust and safe against
capsizing: over 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 90°.
The Gorch Fock served as a training vessel for the German
Reichsmarine. During the second World War, she was a stationary
office ship in Stralsund, until she was officially reactivated
on April 19, 1944. On May 1, 1945, the crew scuttled her in
shallow waters off Rügen in an attempt to avoid capture by the
Russian troops.
However, the Russians raised and salvaged her in 1947 and
restored her from 1948 to 1950. The ship was newly named the
Tovarishch ("Comrade" in Russian) in 1951 and put into service
as a training vessel again. Her new home port was Odessa. Under
the name Tovarishch 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 was then
Cherson) until 1993, when she was deactivated due to a lack of
funds. In 1995, she sailed for the last time from Cherson to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where private sponsors wanted to have her
repaired. This enterprise failed due to the high costs, and in
1999, the ship was transported to Wilhelmshaven in Germany,
where she stayed in dock for four years until she finally was
transferred to Stralsund, Germany in 2003. On November 29, 2003
the ship was re-baptized Gorch Fock. Currently, she serves as a
museum ship.
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