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KLS Kathrenien

Story: The KLS Kathrenien is a Mecklenburg passenger ship from the 1860's, completed in November of 1862. Her maiden voyage was on June 23, in 1863, where she sailed from her home city of Rostock to Copenhagen and for the rest of its life. After almost twenty successful years of service, she met her end on October 20, 1882, after a fatal boiler explosion. This explosion would be due to the ship’s well upkept but aging boilers, which caused her regular speed of seventeen knots to drop down to only fourteen, causing the ship’s captain of all twenty service years, Freidrick E. Lietenbaum, to push the ship to its full limits. This mistake would domino causing the first boiler followed by the second to explode due to this action, killing thirteen people instantaneously, followed by the unexplained exploding of the funnel. These events rendering the ship powerless, in effect, she would only take 17 minutes to slip beneath the waves, taking the lives of eighty-four of the 101 people abord, this being due to panic causing only one of the two lifeboats aboard able to be safely launched from the top deck. The ship's approximate sink time was early morning, around 4 AM, and with her being in the Baltic Sea during early morning, many people died of hypothermia. Only one ship was able to receive Kathrenien's call for help (SOS) due to her old and worn wireless communication. This being another K.L.S, the Rostocker Große. The Kathrenien was able to send out a single S.O.S, in which stating its coordinates and number of passengers onboard before going dark. You see, after losing the first boiler, the second and third boilers were flooded almost immediately due to the WTB not being closed in time. The explosion did not puncture too much of the ship’s actual hull as the boilers were quite small, however it lodged all the WTB before it and the ones directly behind, causing the ship to sink so rapidly. The sad part of the story was that the Kusterd Line had known of the KLS Kathrenien’s age and planned her retirement for September of the same year of the sinking. The fateful voyage which was her last was planned, not in the way it happened though. It was planned that her last voyage would be in late August to prepare for the end of her career in September. This being her last voyage was really the only reason which Lietenbaum wanted her to go faster. He wished for her last voyage to be her fastest. One to be remembered in her history, and it would certainly be remembered. For some reason, Lietenbaum was one of the few men to survive the sinking, one he eventually returned to Germany, he was charged with indirect homicide. Where he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, which would only last another 17 years of his life before he would tragically take his own life.


Actual Desc: The KLS Kathrinien is a steam-powered passenger ferry from the 1860s. She still has a few time period inaccuracies that I'm trying to work out, comment any that you notice. She is purely fiction just like all of my ships, however she is a masterpiece in the making. Gloria zum Kusterd!