Barque · Germany
Gorch Fock (1)
A German training barque of 1933, back at Stralsund after years as the Soviet Tovarishch.
Technical data
- Rig
- Barque
- Flag
- Germany
- Home port
- Stralsund
- Built
- 1933
- Shipyard
- Blohm & Voss, Hamburg, GER
- Hull material
- Steel
- Length
- 82.1 m
- Beam
- 12 m
- Sail area
- 1,750 m²
Built in 1933 for the German navy to replace the capsized Niobe, launched on 3 May 1933 and commissioned on 27 June 1933 as Gorch Fock.
Her sister ship is the Romanian Mircea; very similar but with longer hulls are Eagle, ex-Horst Wessel (1936), Sagres II, ex-Albert Leo Schlageter (1938), and Gorch Fock II (1958).
She served as a training ship up to and during the Second World War and was scuttled off Stralsund in 1945. The Russians salvaged her on 16 September 1947 and, after reconstruction at Wismar between 23 September 1948 and 15 June 1950, she sailed as a Soviet training ship under the name Tovarishch — comrade.
She took part in many races, among them Sail Gdynia 1974, Sail New York 1976, Sail Bremerhaven 1990 and the Hanse Sail Rostock 1994, and from 1992 sailed under the Ukrainian flag.
In 1995 she was arrested at Newcastle awaiting a general overhaul that English supporters and the Tall-Ship Friends Germany association were to fund; in 1997 she was towed to Middlesbrough. In September 1999 she was towed to Wilhelmshaven, where donors were sought and an overhaul began, only to be stopped for lack of funds.
In the autumn of 2003 she was brought to Stralsund and bought by the newly founded Tall Ship Friends association; on 29 November 2003 she was renamed Gorch Fock again. Open to the public and still seeking donors, she is being repaired step by step and turned into a museum ship and event venue in Stralsund harbour.
In the autumn of 2022 the German federal government committed €13.5 million from the KulturInvest programme for a fundamental renovation and conversion into a barrier-free museum ship, on condition that the city of Stralsund took the ship over. After the city assembly rejected the takeover in January 2023 her future was uncertain, with her buoyancy at risk and the safety of her rigging not assured. In February 2023 the city of Stralsund took her on after all.
Hull and rigging repairs were carried out at the Stralsund yard until May 2024, after which she moved to her berth in the city harbour, with interior work beginning in the winter of 2024/25.