Augusta Victoria (ship)
Augusta Victoria as first launched, about 1890
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| History | |
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 Germany
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| Name: | Augusta Victoria, Auguste Victoria |
| Namesake: | Empress Augusta Victoria |
| Operator: | Hamburg America Line |
| Builder: | Stettiner Maschinenbau AG Vulcan |
| Launched: | 1 December 1888 |
| Maiden voyage: | 10 May 1889 |
 Russia
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| Name: | Kuban |
| Namesake: | Kuban in southern Russia |
| Owner: | Imperial Russian Navy |
| Acquired: | 1904 |
| Fate: | Broken up in Stettin, 1907 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Ocean liner, later auxiliary cruiser |
| Tonnage: |
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| Length: | |
| Beam: | 16.90 m (55.4 ft) |
| Propulsion: | |
| Speed: | |
| Capacity: | 400 1st class, 120 2nd class, 580 steerage |
| Crew: | 245 |
Augusta Victoria, later Auguste Victoria, placed in service in 1889 and named for Empress Augusta Victoria, wife of German Emperor Wilhelm II, was the name ship of the Augusta Victoria series and the first of a new generation of luxury Hamburg America Line ocean liners. She was the first European liner with twin propellers and when first placed in service, the fastest liner in the Atlantic trade. In 1897, the ship was rebuilt and lengthened and in 1904 she was sold to the Imperial Russian Navy, which renamed her Kuban.
Albert Ballin commissioned Augusta Victoria and her sister ship Columbia in 1887, soon after joining the Hamburg America Line as head of passenger service.Augusta Victoria, the first to be put in service, was originally to have been called Normannia but was renamed for the Empress after Wilhelm II became Emperor. In the 1890s the line added the larger Normannia and SS Fürst Bismarck to the series.Augusta Victoria was the first continental European liner with twin screws, which made her both faster and more reliable. (The two previous twin-screw liners were the British-built City of New York and City of Paris of the Inman Line.) In May 1889, her maiden voyage to New York broke a record, taking only seven days. In November 1889, Nellie Bly sailed to Southampton on the Augusta Victoria on the first leg of her 72-day race around the world.
She was also the first luxury liner at Hamburg America, introducing the concept of the "floating hotel"; she had "a rococo stairhall, illuminated by a milky way of pear-shaped prisms and naked light bulbs clutched by gilded cherubs, a reception court choked by palm trees and a dark and gothic smoking room." Ballin had her interior design work done by Johann Poppe, the designer at Hamburg America's rival line, North German Lloyd, whose ships already had a reputation for elegance. She was immediately successful, but she and her sister ship were an economic drain on the line because they required more coal than slower ships and could not carry much freight or many steerage passengers and were therefore profitable only in the summer season, and it was risky to operate them at all from Hamburg in very bad weather, when the Elbe was packed with ice.
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Wikipedia