GERMAN IMPERIAL YACHT

A royal yacht is a ship used by a monarch or a royal family. If the monarch is an emperor the proper term is imperial yacht. Most of them are financed by the government of the country of which the monarch is head. The royal yacht is most often manned by personnel from the navy and used by the monarch and family on private and official travels.

History

The first ships to unquestionably qualify as royal yachts were those owned by Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. The first was gift from the Dutch but later yachts were commissioned and built in England. This established a tradition of royal yachts in Britain that was later copied by other royal families of Europe.

Through the 19th century royal yachts got larger as they became a symbol of national wealth. World War I brought this trend to an end and the royal families that survived found it harder to justify the cost with the result that there are only two royal yachts left in use in Europe.

The SMY Hohenzollern (German: Seiner Majestät Yacht Hohenzollern) was the name of several Yachts used by the German Emperors between 1878 and 1918, named after their House of Hohenzollern, a noble family and royal dynasty of electors, kings and emperors of Prussia, Germany and Romania.

During the existence of the German Empire, the Emperor, the Kaiser, used these Imperial Yachts:

• SMY Hohenzollern I - The first Imperial Yacht was built 1876 to 1878 by Norddeutschen Schiffbau A.G. in Kiel. The interiors were designed by architect Heinrich Moldenschardt. The ship was 88 m long, 17.7 m wide and 4.8 m deep. In 1892 it was renamed Kaiseradler. It was scrapped in 1912.






• SMY Hohenzollern II - The second Imperial Yacht was built by AG Vulcan Stettin, it was 120 m long, 14 meters wide and 5.6 meters deep. It was in use as Imperial Yacht and aviso (tasked to carry military dispatches from ship to ship or from ship to shore or, in some cases, from shore to shore) from 1893 to July 1914. From 1894 to 1914, with the exception of 1906, Emperor Wilhelm II used it on his annual prolonged Nordlandfahrt trips to Norway. In June 1914 the ship attended the Kiel regatta and on 25 June the last state banquet was held on board to entertain officers of the British fleet whose ships had been invited to attend. At the end of July 1914 it was put out of service in Kiel. The ship became property of the Weimar Republic in 1918. It was struck on 27 February 1920 and scrapped in 1923 in Wilhelmshaven.




• SMY Hohenzollern III - The third Imperial Yacht was launched in September 1914 in Stettin, but never finished due to war. It was struck in 1919 and scrapped in 1923 at Deutsche Werke in Kiel.

In Philately

The Imperial Yacht was the subject of the Yacht issue produced for postal use in German colonies.

The Yacht issue was a series of postage stamps, bearing the image of the German Kaiser's yacht, SMY Hohenzollern II, that were used in all of Germany's overseas colonies. Millions of the stamps were produced and they were the principal means of postage for all German imperial overseas possessions in the years 1900-1919.

Two separate designs of the Yacht stamps were published. They were issued to each of the colonies in a standardized set of colors and denominations.

The larger Yacht issues were panoramic and were designed in two subtly distinct versions, one with a long unfurled scroll and another with a shorter, double-folded scroll. Together they provided the large Yachts with a visual uniformity across colonies because the font size would always be roughly the same, in contrast to the small design.

The smaller Yacht issues all have exactly the same design with differences only in the text. Because the size of the blank scrolls could not be altered, significant changes to font size and structure were necessary to accommodate colony names of varying length: German Southwest Africa stood out from other issues for its tightly cramped letters, while Togo and Samoa required decorative emblems to fill in the yawning blank spaces around their names.

Between 1914 and 1919 were printed lots of stamps for german colonies, but due to the occupation of the Colonies by the allied forces were only sold in sales of philatelic exhibition in Berlin. Postaly used is not possible.

Allied overprint versions

Following Allied occupation in the First World War, the German colonies had their stamps seized, but most were re-released within a few days. The stamps were overprinted with the occupiers' postal codes and redenominated to the appropriate new currency. This breach of postal etiquette was taken quite poorly in Germany, and at least one provincial governor, in Belgium, decreed heavy penalties for any stamp collectors or dealers possessing Allied stamps.

Issues of German New Guinea and Marshall Islands were, like Samoa, surcharged by the British with "G.R.I." for Georgius Rex Imperator.

In Cameroon, issues were overprinted "C.E.F." for the Cameroon Expeditionary Force.

The stamps of Togo were surcharged "TOGO Anglo French Occupation" and "TOGO Occupation France-Anglais" by British and French authorities respectively.

Many of these Allied overprints are now exceedingly rare and there are numerous known forgeries.

Bibliography: Article based on Wikipedia