Walle, Heinrich Rahsegler in Deutschland. Von der Seewarte zur GORCH FOCK

An analysis of the transport system of sailing ships is presented here against the background of the history of impact from the beginnings of the German Seewarte. It is based, among other things, on the reconstruction of the sailing parameters of a square-rigged ship, which were obtained experimentally by the sail training ship of the German Navy "Gorch Fock" and corroborated by comparison with logbook data from the period under investigation.

From this, the thesis can be derived that a renewed use of the energy of the wind for merchant shipping will be less a question of the technology of designing the rigging as an energy converter, but rather a problem of meteorology, in which way it will be possible to obtain information about the wind according to direction and strength through precise long-term forecasts. With the opening of the North German Naval Observatory on January 1, 1868, the former navigation teacher Wilhelm von Freeden had founded an institute that was to offer assistance to German merchant shipping by communicating practically usable oceanographic and meteorological findings in accordance with the method of official economic management. The North German Naval Observatory, from the foundation of the German Empire in 1871 until 1945 the German Naval Observatory, after 1945 initially the German Hydrographic Institute and currently the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, still maintains this legacy to this day. Founded on the American model as a non-university research institute, and from 1875 to 1945 as an agency of the navy, it succeeded in instructing navigators, who at that time had no academic training, in the acquisition of scientific data in meteorology and oceanography, which were then analysed by experts at the central office in Hamburg. As the German merchant fleet at the time of the foundation still consisted mainly of sailing ships, the initial aim was to improve the performance of the sailing ship transport system. The sailing vessels used on long voyages were predominantly square-rigged ships, which, due to their rigging, could only follow a course over the ground at an angle of about 85 degrees to the true wind, so that they were only able to move in a sector of 190 degrees in a given wind direction. Therefore, the captain of such a square rigger was always dependent on encountering a favourable wind and the right current. With the help of the route consultations carried out by the nautical observatory and then above all through its nautical publications, as well as the practical application of the Baric Wind Law, whereby wind systems could be recognised as high-pressure and low-pressure areas, a considerable shortening of the voyage times for square-riggers was achieved by 1914. Nevertheless, despite considerable reductions in voyage time, the inability to place the time factor for transport services within the narrow limits necessary for an industrial economy resulted in the displacement of the cargo-carrying sailing vessel.