The story
A.G. Vulcan Stettin was founded 1851 as Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik Früchtenicht & Brock by the two young engineers Franz F. D. Früchtenicht and Franz W. Brock in the little village Bredow, which later became suburb of the eastern German city of Stettin. Its first ship was the small iron paddle steamer, named Die Dievenow for the service between the cities of Stettin and Swinemünde. Several small vessels followed, while the yard continuously was enlarged.
When the yard went into financial problems, in 1857 the company was taken over by some entrepreneurs and politicians from Stettin and Berlin which founded the new company Stettiner Maschinenbau Actien-Gesellschaft Vulcan. Ship construction was continued, but the solution of the financial trouble was expected by additionally constructing locomotives. A subsidiary company was founded, called Abteilung Locomotivbau in Bredow bei Stettin. In 1859 the first locomotive was delivered; all together the company built about 4,000 units in Stettin until it was sold to the Berlin company Borsig.
In the future larger and larger ships were built, the facilities in Stettin could no longer sustain the scale of the operations. The yard built the Kaiser-class ocean liners.
Thus a new shipyard was built in Hamburg between 1907 and 1909. From 1911, it was named Vulcan-Werke Hamburg und Stettin Actiengesellschaft. The Hamburg yard was the scene of a week-long strike in 1918 which was only brought to a close through the reading of the War Clauses.
Automatic transmissions for motor vehicles
Gustav Bauer, director of the marine engine section, supervised the work of Hermann Föttinger on the Fottinger hydraulic transmitter known as Vulcan Coupling and Vulcan Drive or fluid coupling. In 1924, Vulcan's Hermann Rieseler invented one of the first automatic transmissions, which had a two-speed planetary gearbox, torque converter, and lockup clutch; it never entered production. (The less-sophisticated Hydra-Matic, which used a simple fluid coupling, was an available option on Oldsmobiles in 1940.) The original coupling further developed in collaboration with Harold Sinclair of Fluidrive Engineering of Isleworth for Daimler of Coventry and matched with a manually controlled epicyclic gearbox went into production in England in 1929.
Shutdown
In 1928 Vulcan Stettin went bankrupt and sold its Hamburg shipyard in 1930. The AG Vulcan Stettin had been closed.
New enterprise
1939 a new company - also named Vulcan - was founded on the site of the former Stettin-shipyard. All together 34 construction numbers were started in the following years, including 18 type-VII C submarines. But because of the war only a few ships could be launched and completed. Among these were two submarines, but only one of them (U-901) was ever in service while the second one (U-902) was destroyed by allied air attacks before.
During the war the yard exploited slave workers and had its own prisoner camp, part of the prisoner population engaged in anti-Nazi resistance, successfully sabotaging several constructed ships. The Polish resistance also conducted espionage of the company.
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After World War II the slave workers were freed and the shipyard was finally taken over by the Polish government and the new Szczecin Shipyard was started at this site. The Szczecin Shipyard named one of its wharfs "Wulkan" and two slipways "Wulkan 1" and "Wulkan Nowa".
Ships built by AG Vulcan Stettin (selection)
1851, Constr.No. 1, Paddle steamer Die Dievenow, first built ship
1873, CNo. 66, SMS Preussen, first ironclad warship build
1877, CNo. 74, SMS Sachsen, ironclad warship
1879, Russian steamboat Askold for Shipping Company on the Don, Azov and Black Seas with their tributaries (Russian: Общество пароходства по Дону, Азовскому и Черному морям с их притоками). After 1886 belonged to Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company
1880, Corvette Olga
1881–1882, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan for Chinese Navy
1887, Irene-class protected cruiser SMS Irene for Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy); 1922 broken up
1889, Scandia Hamburg America Line liner, sold to U.S. Army Quartermaster Department 1898 serving as U.S. Army Transport Warren until 1922, sold, burned sunk Shanghai 1924
1891, Brandenburg-class battleship SMS Brandenburg for Kaiserliche Marine, 1910 sold to the Osman Navy
1892, Aviso and imperial yacht SMY Hohenzollern for Kaiser Wilhelm II; 1923 broken up
1897, 4-funnel Kaiser-class ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, won 1898 Blue Riband
1897, Passenger ship Königin Luise for Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL), 1935 broken up
1897–1899, Victoria Louise-class great cruisers SMS Hertha and SMS Hansa
1899, Steamer König Albert for NDL, 1926 broken up
1901, Pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Mecklenburg for Kaiserliche Marine
1900, Passenger ship Deutschland
1902, 4-funnel Kaiser-class ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm II
1902, Pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Preussen for Kaiserliche Marine
1903, Torpedo boat SMS Eber
1903–1904, Bremen-class cruisers SMS Hamburg and SMS Lübeck for Kaiserliche Marine
1905, Pre-dreadnought Deutschland-class battleship SMS Pommern for Kaiserliche Marine; sunk in Battle of Jütland in June 1916
1906, Passenger ship Kaiserin Auguste Victoria
1906, 4-funnel Kaiser-class ocean liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie
1907, Königsberg-class light cruiser SMS Stettin for Kaiserliche Marine
1906–1907, Niki-class destroyers Niki, Doxa, Aspis and Velos for the Hellenic Royal Navy
1909, Magdeburg-class cruiser SMS Breslau for Kaiserliche Marine, became later Osman cruiser Midilli, sunk 1918 by mines
1907, Passenger ship König Wilhelm II
1907, Passenger ship George Washington
1907, Nassau-class battleship SMS Rheinland for Kaiserliche Marine
1909, CNo. 294, small experimental ship Föttinger Transformator with steam turbine and hydrodynamic transmission (Föttinger Transformator) propulsion
1909, Kolberg-class cruiser SMS Mainz for Kaiserliche Marine; sunk 1914 in the Battle of Helgoland Bight
1910, cruiser ROU Uruguay, for National Navy of Uruguay. Out of service in 1951, scrapped in the 1960s.
1912, Destroyers Nea Genea (ex-German V-class destroyer V6) and Keravnos (ex-V5) for the Hellenic Royal Navy
1914, Imperial yacht SMY Hohenzollern for Kaiser Wilhelm II, not in service, 1923 scrapped in Hamburg
1915, Wiesbaden-class SMS Wiesbaden for Kaiserliche Marine
1913, Passenger ship Tirpitz for HAPAG, not finished during war, 1919 British war-booty and renamed RMS Empress of Australia, 1952 scrapped
1913, Passenger ship Sierra Cordoba for Norddeutscher Lloyd, supply ship for German raiders in World War I, seized by Peru 1917, renamed Callao, chartered by United States Shipping Board (USSB) and transferred to U.S. Navy 26 April 1919 and commissioned USS Callao (ID-4036), decommissioned 20 September 1919. Sold at auction by USSB, renamed Ruth Alexander by Dollar Steamship Lines.
1914–1918, All together 32 torpedo boats (SMS V25 - V30, SMS V43 - V48, SMS V67 - V84, SMS V108 and SMS V116)
1915, Brummer-class cruiser SMS Brummer and SMS Bremse for Kaiserliche Marine, 1918 both internment in Scapa Flow
1916–1917, Cöln-class cruiser Rostock and Wiesbaden, both not finished before the end of the war
1922, Passenger steamer München for NDL, 1931 renamed General von Steuben and 1938 only Steuben, sunk 1945 in the Baltic Sea by Soviet submarine S-13, about 3,000 people, mainly refugees, killed
1923, Passenger steamer Stuttgart for NDL, sunk 1943 by US Air Force
1926, Passenger ship Cobra for beach resort service, used as minelayer in WWII, 1942 sunk by Royal Air Force in Rotterdam
1941, Type VII-C U-boats U-901 and U-902, but only U 901 was ever in service
Ships built by AG Vulcan Hamburg (selection)
1911/12, Kaiser-class battleship SMS Friedrich der Grosse for Kaiserliche Marine
1913/14, Passenger ship Imperator
1913/14, König-class battleship SMS Grosser Kurfürst for Kaiserliche Marine
1913/14, Merchant ship Cap Trafalgar
1914, Battleship Salamis for Hellenic Navy, construction stopped with beginning of war, 1932 scrapped in Bremen
1915–1917, All together 69 U-boats of types UE 1, UE 2, UB III, UC I and UC II for Kaiserliche Marine
1916, Modified Mackensen-class battlecruiser SMS Ersatz Yorck (Replacement Yorck), construction stopped and after war broken up
1917, Bayern-class battleship SMS Württemberg for Kaiserliche Marine, not finished before end of war
1922, Merchant ship Cap Norte
From Wikipedia’s article on AG Vulcan Stettin, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3