Date Added: 03 January 2020
The ship in a bottle was built on a scale of 1:335 and is in a 0.2 litre bottle. It consists completely of wood, masts of bamboo, the sails as cotton fabric. The chimney, which is set separately on the deck in the bottle, is made of brass. The icy sea is modelled from a mixture of window putty and plaster, the ice flows consist of painted tree bark. The "Germania" was a North German research vessel which served as the main ship in 1869/70 during Second German North Polar Expedition. Under Captain Carl Koldewey she sailed with the "Hansa" to Greenland and the Arctic Ocean with the intention to expand into the Arctic central region. While the "Hansa" had to be abandoned surrounded by ice, the "Germania" was able to return home to Germany unscathed and prove as the most important research result that the North Pole could not be reached by sea. On its return journey from Greenland, the "Germania" neither ran to land nor contacted any ships encountering it. Thus the ship's command learned nothing of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) and the blockade of the German North Sea coast by a French armoured ship squadron off the then still British island of Helgoland. The ship unconsciously broke through the blockade line and had to find out before Bremerhaven that there were no more sea marks left. The crew therefore headed for Wilhelmshaven, which was secured by the German Navy with naval mines. As if by a miracle, the "Germania" did not run to a mine and was received in the town with great cheers.
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