Ancestor - William Strunk

Imagine the exciting yet anxious moments while waiting at the docks - before boarding your ship at Bremen, Germany.  Knowing that this was a one way journey -- once on the ship there was no coming back.  Loved ones left behind may never be seen again.  So your possessions are all bundled up -- you and your family ready to embark to a new land -- a new country.

William Strunk and his wife, Wilhelmina (Minnie) along with their living children and Minnie's brother, Freidrick, boarded the ship -- SS Donau and landed in the port of Baltimore on 10 November 1887.  It is believed that they headed straight to Detroit upon landing since Minnie had two sisters who had 2 months earlier settled there.

Taken from the ship's passenger list:

Strunck, Wihelm  age 28  M  LBR

    Wilh. age 32 F

Krowsonska, Friedr. age 17 LBR

Malinoski, Friedr. age 20 M LBR

Strunck, Emil  age 9 M CHILD

    Helene, age 7 F CHILD

    Wilh. age 5 F CHILD

     Mathilde age 4 F CHILD

    August age 3 M CHILD

     Lina age .06 F INFANT

 

The steamship DONAU was built by Caird & Co,  Greenock (ship #147), for Norddeutscher Lloyd, and launched on 17 October 1868.

2,897 tons; 106,15 x 12,229 meters (length x breadth); clipper bow, 1  funnel, 2 masts; iron construction, screw propulsion, service speed 12-13  knots; accommodation for 60 1st-class and 700 steerage-class passengers; crew  of ca. 90-105.

The Lloyd's Register of Shipping for 1887-88 gives  the following details:
  • DONAU - Call sign: QBKH.
  • Master: Captain Pohle. 
  • Rigging: iron single screw steam Brig.
  • Tonnage: 2,896 tons gross and 1,771  net.
  • Dimensions: 347.8 feet long, 40 foot beam and 33.5 feet deep.
  • Built:  1868 by Caird & Co. in Greenock.
  • Propulsion: compound engine with 2  cylinders of 60 and 100 in. diameter respectively; Stroke 54 inches; 600  horsepower; engine built by the same company as the hull.
  • Owners:  Norddeutscher Lloyd. Port of registry: Bremen
  • 16 January 1869, maiden voyage, Bremen-Southampton-New York.
  • 1877, engines compounded by builders
  • 16 January 1887, last voyage,  Bremen-New York.
  • 25 September 1889, last voyage, Bremen- Baltimore.
  • 21  October 1889, sold to H. Bischoff, Bremen; rebuilt as a freighter.
  • 16 March  1895, bound from Hamburg to Philadelphia, destroyed by fire at ca. 31 N 20 W;  all aboard were saved by the British steamship DELAWARE
.[Edwin Drechsel,  Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen, 1857-1970; History, Fleet, Ship Mails, vol. 1  (Vancouver: Cordillera Pub. Co., c1994, p.. 50; ; Noel Reginald Pixell  Bonsor, North Atlantic Seaway; An Illustrated History of the Passenger  Services Linking the Old World with the New (2nd ed.; Jersey, Channel  Islands: Brookside Publications), vol. 2 (1978), p. 546]. Pictured in Michael  J. Anuta, Ships of Our Ancestors (Menominee, MI: Ships of Our Ancestors,  1983), p. 82, courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, Salem,  MA 01970 - [Posted to the Emigration-Ships Mailing List by Michael Palmer -  11 February 1998]

 

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