The oil and chemical Tanker "Helga Essberger" on its way from the Balitc Sea to the North Sea via the Kiel Canal (in German: "Nord-Ostsee-Kanal"), passing through the Rendsburg High Bridge (in German: "Rendsburger Hochbrücke"), Rendsburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Some background information:
The "Helga Essberger" is an oil and chemical tanker that was built in 1999. It sails under Portuguese flag, has an overall length of 126.76 metres and a width of 19.74 metres. With a gross tonnage of 6.785 tons and a deadweight of 9.887 tons it is one of the smaller tankers. The ship was constructed in Livorno, Italy, by Cantiere Navale Fratelli Orlando. Its owner is Euroceanica, London, and its homeport Valetta, Malta.
The Rendsburg High Bridge (officially: "Eisenbahnhochbrücke Rendsburg") is a railway viaduct on the Neumünster–Flensburg line that also serves as a transporter bridge. The bridge, which is made out of steel, crosses the Kiel Canal at Rendsburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It is owned by the Federal Water and Navigation Administration that also owns and runs the canal.
The Kiel Canal (formerly known as the "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal") is a 98 km (61 miles) long freshwater canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The canal was finished in 1895, but later widened. It links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of 460 km (290 miles) is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids storm-prone seas and having to pass through the Danish straits. The Kiel Canal is one of the world's most frequented artificial waterways with an annual average of 32,000 ships (90 daily), transporting approximately 100 million tons of goods.
The first connection between the North and Baltic Seas was constructed while the area was ruled by Denmark–Norway. It was called the Eider Canal and used stretches of the Eider river for the link between the two seas. Completed during the reign of Christian VII of Denmark in 1784, the Eider Canal was a 43 km (27 miles) part of a 175 km (109 miles) waterway from Kiel to the Eider river's mouth at Tönning on the west coast. It was only 29 m (95 feet) wide with a depth of 3 m (9.8 feet), which limited the vessels that could use the canal to 300 tons.
After 1864, the Second Schleswig War put Schleswig-Holstein under the government of Prussia (from 1871 the German Empire). A new canal was sought by merchants and by the German navy, which wanted to link its bases in the Baltic and the North Sea without the need to sail around Denmark. In June 1887, construction started at Holtenau, near Kiel. The canal took over 9,000 workers eight years to build. In 1895, emperor Wilhelm II officially opened the canal for transiting from Brunsbüttel to Holtenau. The next day a ceremony took place in Holtenau, where Wilhelm II named the waterway the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal (after his grandfather, emperor Wilhelm I), and laid the final stone.
To cope with the increasing traffic and the demands of the Imperial German Navy, between 1907 and 1914 the canal was widened by Germany to allow dreadnought battleships to pass through. Two larger canal locks in Brunsbüttel and Holtenau were installed to complete the enlargement. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles required the canal to be open to vessels of commerce and of war of any nation at peace with Germany, while leaving it under German administration. Only the United States opposed this proposal to avoid setting a precedent for similar concessions on the Panama Canal. The government under Adolf Hitler repudiated its international status in 1936, but the canal was reopened to all traffic after World War II. In 1948, its current name was adopted.
The canal is governed by detailed traffic rules. Each vessel using the canal is categorized into one of six traffic groups according to its dimensions. Larger ships are obliged to accept pilots and specialized canal helmsmen, in some cases even the assistance of a tugboat. Furthermore, there are regulations regarding the passing of oncoming ships. Larger ships may also be required to moor at the bollards provided at intervals along the canal to allow the passage of oncoming vessels. All permanent, fixed bridges crossing the canal since its construction have a clearance of 42 m (138 feet).
Maximum length for ships passing the Kiel Canal is 235.50 m (772.6 feet), with the maximum width (beam) of 32.50 m (106.6 feet). These ships can have a draught of up to 7.00 m (22.97 feet). Ships up to a length of 160.00 m (524.93 feet) may have a draught up to 9.50 m (31.2 feet). The bulker Ever Leader (deadweight 74,001 t) is considered to be the cargo ship that to date has come closest to the overall limits.
When the Kiel Canal was built, it cutted through existing traffic lines including the railway line between Neumünster and Flensburg for which two parallel swing bridges were erected. Main railway lines had right of way over ships on the canal and ships had to stop, losing about half an hour when a train passed. This was considered the major obstacle as the ships were unable to overtake and could pass each other at dedicated enlarged areas so that the traffic on the entire canal was hampered. Especially the navy pressed for a separation of traffic flows as closed bridges could delay flotillas by several hours.
In order to allow the railway line to pass above the canal, the new railway bridge was to have a clearance of 42 metres over the canal's mean water level. It was erected between 1911 and 1913 to a design by the civil engineer Friedrich Voss and replaced the earlier swing bridges. The steel viaduct has a length of 2,486 metres (8,156 feet) and is supplemented by embankments that bring the overall length of the structure to about 7.5 kilometres (4.7 miles). The cantilever main bridge is 317 metres (1,040 feet) long, has a main span of 140 metres (460 feet).
To serve Rendsburg station, situated at ground level only a couple of hundred metres from the main bridge, the railway line is routed through a large 360-degree loop on the north bank of the canal. The total cost of the construction, including the relocation of railway lines but excluding work related to the elevation of Rendsburg station, was 13.4 million Mark Today, this figure would correspond to roughly 66 million Euro. It included 5.7 million Mark for bridges, 2.7 million Mark for the mounds and 1.3 million Mark for underpasses and the relocation of roads.
The suspension ferry is already in operation since the bridge’s opening in 1913. Since then even its timetable was never changed. It runs daily every 15 minutes from early morning until late at night. It covers a distance of 125 metres (410 feet) within 1½ minutes and provides the shortest connection between the municipality of Osterrönfeld and the town of Rendsburg. As this means of transportation is especially useful to students on their way to school, larger maintenance work that requires suspension of service is coordinated with school holidays.
The gondola is fourteen metres long and six metres wide, and travels six metres above the canal. In recent years the nominal transport capacity has been reduced from six to four automobiles in order to factor in increased car size and weight. While the gondola is equipped with nautical equipment such as radio, radar and life-rafts, there is no prerequisite for the operator to hold a master's licence for inland navigation.
The suspension ferry met with two major accidents: During a storm in 1993, the unmanned and unlit gondola broke loose at night, was blown over the canal and collided with a ship. But both ship and gondola suffered only minor damage. In 2016 the gondola of the transporter bridge collided with the general cargo ship Evert Prahm and was heavily damaged. Two people, the waterman and the only passenger, were injured. After that, the suspension ferry was demounted and moved to a shipyard, but was found to be irreparably damaged. Construction of its replacement (optically almost true to original) began in 2020 and service resumed in 2022.
At the time, the Rendsburg High Bridge was built, it was regarded as a prime example of the German art of engineering. In 2013, it was awarded a "Historic Icon of German art of Engineering" (in German: "Historisches Wahrzeichen der Ingenieursbaukunst in Deutschland") by the German Chamber of Engineers and hence, also by the Federal Government of Germany. By the way, whenever a ship passes through the Rendsburg High Bridge, it is welcomed by a loudspeaker announcement, the sound of a bugle and last but not least the national anthem of the country, under whose flag it sails. You can imagine that watching the different ships passing by is quite entertaining.
