The Cutter hopper suction dredger Z/S No. 8 (1958). The shipyard model on a scale of 1:50 was built by the workshop M.A.F. Ihlenfeld in Hamburg-Blankenese and is part of our exhibition on river navigation. You will find it on deck 9 of the museum.
The „Z/S No. 8“, a cutter hopper suction dredger, was built in 1958 by Orenstein-Koppel/Lübecker Maschinenbau AG in Lübeck. She had been commissioned by the Russian company VO Sudoimport based in Moscow. Her original home port was the city of Batumi in Georgia. She was 75 metres long, 13 metres wide, had a capacity of 800 m³ of sediment and could work to a depth of 15 m below the waterline.
The name of this type of vessel is quite long. Allow us to explain its components. The ship is a „dredger“, i.e., it is used to clean the bottom of coastal waters, harbours, or inland waterways or to deepen them. This is done so that larger ships can navigate in these areas. It is a „hopper“ because it has a hold into which it pumps sediment from the bottom of the water as it works. Some dredgers do not have such a hold. They take the sediment out of the water and unload it automatically onto barges lying next to them. The „suction“ part of the name comes from the mechanism the barge uses to get the sediment from the bottom of the water. In simple terms, it works like a hoover, but under water. Now we are only missing the term „cutter“. This refers to the fact that the suction tube of the dredger has a cutting mechanism at its end. This is used to break up particularly hard sediment before it is sucked into the hopper.
The model represents a rather old example of this type of vessel, but the technology itself is still used today – albeit in an improved form. Unfortunately, we have no data on the history and fate of the „Z/S No. 8“. It probably got its own name when it was exported to the Soviet Union. If any of you have information, we would be grateful to receive it from you.
The shipyard model on a scale of 1:50 was built by the workshop M.A.F. Ihlenfeld in Hamburg-Blankenese and is part of our exhibition on river navigation. You will find it on deck 9 of the museum.