SMS Lübeck
Lübeck was named after the city of Lübeck in northern Germany and was the fourth ship of the
Bremen-class. Ordered as Ersatz
Mercur (a replacement for an old sail-powered corvette of 1852), she was laid down in 1903 at the AG Vulcan Stettin, launched on March 26th, 1904 and commissioned on April 26th, 1905. She was the first ship in the German Navy to have steam turbines instead of steam piston engines. Instead oft wo drive shafts like her sisters, she had four drive shafts and no less than eight screws. The new engines were of course problematic, which caused her commissioning to be delayed due to extensive trial runs (for example,
Berlin only had around six months between launch and comissioning, while
Lübeck had thirteen).
After comissioning she underwent trials to compare the new and old engines and unfortunately
Lübeck could not achieve the higher top speed that was hoped for. The turbines were also less efficient, so she also had a shorter range (3,800nm/12kn compared to the usual 4,300sm/12kn of her sisters). The number of screws was reduced as well, replacing the eight small screws with four slightly larger ones.
The trials lasted until October 30th, 1905, when the cruiser together with seven torpedo boats was ordered to St. Petersburg in the eastern Baltic Sea. Together with social unrest, the railway workers had gone on strike and disrupted the mail transport, so the torpedo boats took over.
Lübeck remained on station, ready to evacuate the Tsar and his family should the situation become dire. After two weeks, however, the crisis had calmed down and the German ships returned home. The cruiser continued trials and training until August 22nd, 1906 and was then assigned to the scouting fleets.
Another military operation happened for the cruiser in 1909, when she and her sister
Hamburg were sent to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to protect the Christian minorities in the Osman Empire.
_________________
My worklist
Any help and source material is always welcome.