A chinese opium lamp, chinese silk shoes and a small sword resting in an ivory sheath, these are the things my mind connects to my great-grandfather (though I never met him but own several photos of him).
These three items were hanging in a lovely ensemble on the wall of my grandmothers appartment. They came - as reported by my grandmother - from the time when my great-grandfather supposedly was participating on a punitive expedition as a crew member of the german gunboat S.M.S. Iltis on the Yangtse river. Well all that was not quite true as it turned out.
After my father started his genealogical research and therefore also collected information about my great-grandfather, he came across an excerpt from the berlin Krankenbuchlager (an archive collecting all patient records of the german military). Now it became clear that my great-grandfather never was a crew member of the gunboat S.M.S. Iltis but was sailing the seas on two other ships of the german imperial navy: S.M.S. Irene (1894-1898 as a Maschinenmaat - petty officer second class) and S.M.S. Beowulf (1898 - 1900 as a Ober Maschinen Maat).
After the boxer-uprise in china one chinese prince had to travel the world and excuse for the boxer uprise. This prince was quickly known as the "Suehneprinz" in germany by that time. My great-grandfather after leaving the german imperial started working for Rheinmetal as an engineer. His colleagues, knowing he was stationed in east asia during his career at the navy, as well quickly gave him the nickname "Suehneprinz". This is the reason why I chose this as a nickname here.
Having always had a soft spot for model ship building (Having build several ships as a kit - Mohaganny runabouts) and playing from time to time with the idea of building a model of the Iltis on which supposedly my great-grandfather was sailing the seas, my interest now turned to these two vessels. Beowulf is quite well known to model ship builders focussing on the german imperial navy. There are as well excellent modeling plans and fantastic models of S.M.S. Beowulf. The S.M.S. Irene, however, as it appears to me, is much less in the focus of model ship builders. So I began my search for material regarding this ship.
An inquiry to the working group of historic shipbuilding in germany brought me finally to the Federal Archives of Germany in Freiburg. There are 94 parts of the original plans of S.M.S. Irene archived in this german institution. Partly with and sometimes without a date. With the help of members of an internet forum dealing with the german imperial navy I selected the 16 most important plans. After having received a first cost estimate dropping the project was my first reaction. Scans of the plans should have cost more than 1,000 euros. Too much for a hobby. After several phone calls and research I then tried a different approach. I ordered slides of plans and looked for a scan service in my area. This allowed me to reduce the cost to around 250 euros at an adequate quality.
Searching for information about how I can model the hull of the Irene (and maybe Beowulf) I finally came across a thread regarding Freecad in this forum. Currently I am still at the very beginning of putting all the pieces together. Currently I am trying to learn how to create a good plan for the model out of the scan and slides I own.
A (german) description with some images of S.M.S. Irene can be found here: S.M.S. Irene on deutsche-schutzgebiete.de
