Gorch Fock was launched 50 years ago today

[AntEater]

I thought since this is all over the news, I write a bit about my own experiences on her.

When I joined the german navy in Summer 1999 I didn't want to be assigned to Gorch Fock.
Originally I had volunteered for the navy, had been stuck at naval aviation during basic training, but managed to change that to sea duty.
In sea duty, I had to take whatever specialisation was left (no sophisticated posts like Sonar or weapons were left) and had to choose between stoker and deckhand. I chose deckhand.
As a deckhand, the chance of being assigned to Gorch Fock are quite good, as most "grey" warships like Frigates only have a deck gang (Korporalschaft) of around 10-11 people of all ranks, while Gorch Fock takes about the same number from each intake.
First, we couldn't board her because she was in the black sea and the Luftwaffe could fly us neither to Poti nor to Constanta, where she called.
So we 11 from my intake were trucked to the naval academy, Marineschule Mürwik in a suburb of Flensburg. There, Stabsbootsmann Keller explained to us he had no use for us and send us on leave. At least the Marinschule had a much better tailor than boot camp and we finally got dress uniforms of our sizes and rank insignia.
Also we had to draw all-whites (a nightmare!) and tropical khaki, and suddenly had a heap of clothing and nowhere to put them. Dress blues, dress whites, Khaki, working uniform, overalls, oilskins. At least we could get rid of the camo uniform after boot camp.
In November, we returned, joined about 80 officer candidates. These officer candidates were equal to us in rank, all Gefreiter, except they wore a officer star on their dress sleeves instead of our fouled anchor of the seaman branch.
In 1999, the german navy was still all-male except for the medical branch, but no medial cadets were shipped this time.
We boarded a Luftwaffe C-160 at Hohn and flew to Venice, where Gorch Fock was back in civilization after her black sea ordeal of muggings in Constanta, a cancelled port call due to political unrest in Sevastopol and an outbreak of some weird disease in Poti, due to which they actually never made port and instead spend a week at anchor in front of it.
Venice was shrouded in Fog, where near the arsenal, suddenly the masts and yards of Gorch Fock slowly came out of the haze.
On the pier, each of us with two sea bags and a suitcase, we mustered and were herded aboard with the usual navy welcome ritual of shouting and not enough time.
Belowdecks, we soon discovered that accomodation was sparse.
I was assigned to starboard watch, main mast division, and my "accomodation" was the port-forward berthing deck.
This was simply a wooden floor with metal lockers on the sides, a sea chest for our life vests and a gaping hole in the forward floor right next to the bulkhead where the passageway went down to the sail storage and the forward hammock locker and administration office.
Each man had a small locker about 40 centimeters wide and a meter or so high and had to share a larger locker with another guy.
Shirts, trousers and everything else that could be folded went into the small locker, boots, jackets and overalls into the large one.
At least locker muster was a non event here as it was pretty impossible to store anything in these in a military fashion. Mostly it went in just as it fitted.
In daytime, the hammocks were tied up and stored belowdecks in the two hammock lockers, in the evening they were brocken out and strung on chains and hooks in the bulkheads. Mostly two in a row, but I always preferred to string my hammock (number 02) diagonally. I had nothing against the rolling, but the vertical motion under engine made me seasick and the diagonal hammock compensated that nicely.
In the morning, hammocks were tied up again and everybody scrambled topsides for muster. Hammocks were supposed to be tied tightly ("In old times, these were your life savers!") and any white bedding looking out of the red canvas was punished with a run up and down the pier in port. At sea, they used to send men over the tops with their hammocks (at least to the first cross tree and back) but apparently that was not allowed anymore.
Later, this got more and more casual for us conscripts but first we were treated the same as cadets.
I was assigned to the sailing crew, as were most conscripts. A few were "functionals" or third division, who had their own berthings in the forecastle, but these were mostly engineers, administrative personel, carpenters and radiomen and the likes.
Generally, about a third of the enlisted crew were conscripts or four-year professionals. The rest were either cadets or NCO graduates of the seaman branch.
We also had some exchange cadets from other countries like Argentina.
The sailing crew was to do maintenance of the rigging and generally to have a core of more experienced people aloft.
Generally, during class time for the cadets, we did maintenance on the rigging or generally pretended to be at work until the Bosun caught us and sent us scrubbing deck or something like that.
Working in the rigging began quite early. On the first day, we went aloft until the first cross tree, on the second we had all been over the topgallant crosstree serveral times. Training in the rig went with little shouting or bullying, just with a lot of speed and the old mantra "one hand for you, one hand for the ship".
I was never all too eager to go up to the royal yard. Topgallant was ok, but the ratlines ended shortly after the topgallant yard and in order to get to the royal, you had to use a ladder on the back of the mast. Also, the royal yard was quite small.
When braced to the extreme position, you had to do something like a gymnast's split in 40 meters height to reach it.
We played "german state circus" for about two weeks berthed near the arsenal right in downtown venice.
On good days, hordes of tourists assembled on the pier, most with video cameras. To me it seemed, they were all waiting for someone to fall down but we didn't do them the favor.
There were no accidents at all on the year and a half I was on Gorch Fock, but there had been one on the previous cruise and there was another one in 2002 or so.
Alltogether, five fatal accidents in 50 years are not so bad.
But for the first week, all we saw from the city was from the tops. We were not allowed liberty before we had learned the notorious "flounder".
That was a leaflet with all 216 belaying pins of our ship. We had to know the position of each downhaul, brace, uphaul, clewline, sheet and whatnot by heart.
Test was done running up and down the deck under instruction of the top captain of your division.
When we finally put to sea from Venice, everybody got seasick. The adriatic is choppy, and a good Bora from the slovenian coast caught us as soon as we left the Laguna.
The board routine was busy. Gorch Fock runs a four watch system, which means that you usually have two periods of four hour watches per day. Every fourth day, the night was watch free, some kind of sunday at sea. Most despised was the middle watch from 0 to 4 hours. My personal favorite was the morning watch from 4 to 8, but I suppose most preferred the 8-12 watch because of the midnight beer call that followed it when the weather was calm and the chances of being called out as picket watch were slim.
In contrary to popular opinion, laying aloft is the smallest part of work on a square rigger. I hated laying aloft with all hands to cast loose says or to pack them. There was always the chance of some moron getting lost or blocking the ratlines or stomping on your head. In Cadiz, someone hit me on the head from the upper Topsail yard.
I managed to grab something, otherwise I would've made a spectacular exit in front of 100.000 spectors, including the King of Spain.
Laying aloft to overhaul clewlines was fun and I loved it, at least in good weather.
Most of the work is on deck. Bracing, mostly. A sail training ship is basically a huge treadmill for cadets.
The big cargo sailing ships could sail with a watch of a dozen people out of a 40 man crew with twice the sail area of Gorch Fock, thanks to geared winches and other 19th century high technology.
On a sail training ship, everything is done by cheap human labor. A deck watch is around 30 hands.
The amount of work is mostly depending on the personality of the chief of the watch. The watch officer is mostly a career officer who has no real idea of what he is doing and stays 2 years aboard, while the chiefs are assigned to this post often spend half their life aboard the ship.
The chief of the foretop port watch ("Bear watch"), Oberbootsmann Ruf, loved to shout. You could hear him through the entire ship. The starboard foretop watch ("Lion Watch") had Obtsm. Schmieding, bald and build like a wrestler, who seemed to enjoy sending his men to the braces for the sheer fun of it, even if it made no sense.
My own starboard main mast ("full sails watch") watch had Obtsm Kreidl, a rather quiet untypical type, who had a rather scientific approach to sailing and liked to experiment. Some of his ideas were harebrained, like rigging up additional leesails made of bed sheets in the atlantic trade wind, but it was huge fun nonetheless. And if he manned the braces, he did so because it made sense. Kreidl apparently made some enemies and his last duty post was skipper of the government barge on the river Spree in Berlin! But apparently he's going to be Bosun of the Gorch Fock soon.
The port mainmast watch ("mad watch") had Obtsm. Grund, who had a rather disturbing temper.

to be continued.....

[Skybird]

Home harbour is Travemünde, if you go there to see the Gorch Fock, make sure you go to see Lübeck as well; if you go to see Lübeck, take the 25 minute-trip to Travemünde and see if the Gorch Fock is at home. Somehow it belongs together. But maybe that is just me.

[AntEater]

Nope
Homeport of the Gorch Fock is Kiel.
Administratively it is attached to Marineschule Mürwik in Flensburg, but its permanent berth is Tirpitzmole in Kiel-Wik naval base.
Used to be Blücherbrücke in downtown but some iditiot politicians banned her to the naval base.
Lübeck has no naval base at all.
The square rigger you see in Travemünde is Passat, a flying P-Liner build in 1911 for the Cape Horn saltpeter run. She is a four masted barque and permanently berthed there as a museum ship.
She's about twice the size of Gorch Fock, yet she could be sailed with a quarter of the crew.
And that in 1911!

[Skybird]

Ah yes, I mixed it up with the Passat indeed. I always do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passat_(ship)