Bremerhaven is the second largest port in Germany after Hamburg in terms of tonnage handled, the largest German container port, and the largest German fishing port. The port was constructed from 1827 some 31 miles downstream from the port of Bremen lying higher up the Weser estuary. Bremen is an ancient town that joined the Hanseatic League in 1358, and with Bremerhaven constitutes a separate town state. The Marktplatz in Bremen has the Rathaus (Town Hall) with a late Renaissance façade constructed between 1405 and 1410, as well as Bremen Cathedral. A 32 foot statue of the knight Roland dated 1405 stands in front of the Rathaus. As the port of Bremen gradually silted up, shipping moved down the estuary to the new deep water port of Bremerhaven. Bremen petitioned the King of Hanover to acquire the land between the Geeste and Weser rivers to found Bremerhaven in 1827.

The Enclosed Dock System

An extensive dock system was originally accessed through three lock gates from the Weser estuary to the north of the Geeste river, with the large fishing port, Fischereihafen, lying to the south of the Geeste river. In 1897, the huge Kaiserschleuse lock entrance was built as the largest lock entrance in the world to provide access to the enclosed docks of Nordhafen (North Dock), Osthafen (East Dock), Kaiserhafen I, II and III (Emperor Docks), Verbindungshafen (Union Dock), Dockvorhafen (Entrance Dock), Neuerhafen (New Dock) and other docks. The Kaiserschleuse lock entrance was replaced in 2011 by a new Panamax lock entrance. A rival port was founded just to the south of Bremerhaven in 1845 called Geestemunde, both towns grew to include trade, shipbuilding and fishing as their principal industries. A ferry link runs from the Geeste river across the estuary to Blexen, with Wilhelmshaven to the west as the large German naval port on the Jadebusen sea inlet.

The new enclosed dock system began to be built in 1847, with the American steamship Washington forced to moor outside the old harbour until it was completed. A rail bridge across the Weser in 1871, Kaiserbruck, was completed and gave a boost to Bremerhaven. The Weser estuary was only two metres deep at this time and completely froze over in winter, bringing sea traffic to a stop. In 1888, the Europahafen with a 120 metre wide lock entrance, and an enclosed dock system over 1.5 miles in length with a water depth of five metres, was opened to allow Bremerhaven to load and unload larger ocean going ships.
The huge Lloyd Werft shiprepair and ship conversion yard dominates the Verbindungshafen with several dry-docks, floating docks and wet docks carrying out major repairs and conversions to cruise ships e.g. the liner France was converted into the cruise ship Norway here. The river front Columbus Pier passenger terminal, known as ‘The Pier of Tears’, saw more than ten million European migrants sail from Bremerhaven to a new life in the New World, usually Ellis Island in New York. The German Emigration Centre and the German Maritime Museum, both in Bremerhaven, commemorate this huge migration in two splendid museums. A stone memorial to emigrants was recently erected in Bremerhaven featuring a family on top of a plinth waving goodbye forever to their relatives on Columbus Pier. In the inter-war years, a new grain unloading and a new banana unloading facility were opened.

Allied air raids in World War II obliterated 95% of Bremerhaven, with a new waterfront quay some 4.9 kilometres in length constructed in 1968 as the longest quay in Europe. After the end of the war, a few useable quays were operated by American military supply ships to support the American occupation forces within the British zone of Northern Germany. The traditional imports of Bremerhaven continued with grain, timber, coal, oilcake, cotton, iron ore and agricultural feedstocks, and exports were mainly coke and lignite briquettes, steel and iron goods, potash, salt, glass and miscellaneous manufactures.

The current population of Bremerhaven is 117,000 people, with its central harbours recently renovated, and billion euro projects begun to regenerate the area. The Atlantic Hotel Sail City modelled on the Burj Al-Arab Hotel in Dubai is one example of this regeneration, with tourists using the hotel before visiting the new German Emigration Centre to trace lost relatives. A new trade of two million cars per year is handled on spare ground in the central enclosed harbour area, and the Wilhelm Kaisen Container Terminal to the north of the central enclosed docks has a big throughput of 6 million TEU per year and is the fourth biggest container terminal in Europe and the sixteenth biggest container terminal in the world. Tall Ship Races and the Sail Bremerhaven Regatta attract sail training ships from all over the world every five years. A Type XXI U-boat called Wilhelm Bauer, the three masted sailing ship Seute Deern, and the ocean going salvage tug Seefalke dating from 1924 are static exhibits of the German Maritime Museum.

The Modern Port

Container Terminal

Four expansion projects, the first completed in February 1968, have culminated in a river frontage today with fourteen container berths and a total quay length of 4.9 kilometres. Bremen had become the first German container port in May 1966 but due to insufficient depth of water, the container port moved downstream to Bremerhaven two years later. This huge container terminal is one of the leading transhipment hubs in the world with the biggest current container ships of up to 18,000 TEU capacity calling at the port. Intermodal export and import traffic amounts to over 6 million TEU per year, and the terminal is run by Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Eurogate Gmbh, and NTB North Sea Bremerhaven Gmbh. The water depth alongside varies from 12.6 to 15.0 metres, and there is an outdoor operating area for container storage of over three million square metres and 38,000 square metres of covered storage.

Car Teminals

Bremerhaven is one of the largest automobile hubs in the world with a throughput of over two million vehicles per year. Open storage and operations space is provided for 120,000 cars and vehicles with a covered storage facility for another 45,000 cars and vehicles. A full dedicated repair, finishing and retrofitting service is provided for the final vehicle assembly of all makes of car and vehicle. The terminals are operated by the BLG Logistics Group (BLG), which was founded in 1877 in Bremen as the Bremen Warehouse Company. BLG took over the operation of the newly built Free Port I in 1888, the later Free Port II, and the Granary terminal. In 1953, the Free Port of Bremerhaven was taken over, and the company operates not only the car terminals but most of the cargo operations in Bremerhaven. Huge car carriers belonging to or chartered to K Line, Mitsui, NYK, Wallenius Wilhelmsen, Eukor arrive daily in the port. Volkswagen cars and to a lesser extent Mercedes cars and spare parts are their largest customers exported from the fifteen car carrier berths. Volkswagen produced 6.3 million cars in 2008, controlling 10.3% of the world market with most output for export. The docks used by these huge car carriers are as follows:-

Kaiserhafen I, II and III

Nordhafen

Osthafen

Temperature Controlled Cargo

Two dedicated fruit terminals at the Kaiserhafen quays and at Columbus Kaje load and discharge over 250,000 tonnes of temperature controlled cargo per year to and from Germany and other North European countries. BLG Cold Store, the largest commercial cold store in the region, operates both terminals with storage for 33,000 pallets of refrigerated and frozen goods at each terminal.

Cruise Terminal

Columbus Cruise Centre Bremerhaven plays a leading role in promoting the region as a tourist destination. A refurbishment in 2003 has provided spacious check-in and waiting areas for over four thousand passengers. Full baggage loading equipment are provided, with three passenger walkways on telescopic gangways to the cruise ships. Four cruise ships can be handled simultaneously on the Columbus quay of length 1,100 metres. There is a water depth alongside of 9.3 metres and permanent car parking for 1,000 cars. A total of almost one hundred cruise ships are handled during the summer season, with a potential total of up to half a million passengers per year.

Bulk and Break Bulk Cargo

Bremerhaven primarily is a container, vehicle, cruise passenger and fruit handling port. Dry bulk cargo e.g. ores, coal, minerals, phosphates, cement and grain are handled at the Port of Bremen. The amount of break bulk cargo handled at Bremen has steadily decreased since containerisation.

Fish Processing And Offshore Wind Turbines The Fischereihafen was originally used by steam trawler owners such as Bremen Vegesack Fischerei Gmbh. Today it provides fish and food processing facilities for very large fish factory operators such as the Russian National Fleet, with ten fish factories managed by Frigo Fischtechnik Gmbh of Bremerhaven, and medium sized companies such as Doggerbank Seefischerei Gmbh with six fish factories operating out of Bremerhaven. Fresh fish and seafood is processed, packed and forwarded to reefer lorries and reefer ships for distribution. This large dock to the south of the Geeste river is also used by the booming offshore windfarm industry at the Offshore Terminal Bremerhaven of 25 hectares in area. Timber, gravel, agricultural feedstocks and molasses are other imports to the Fish Dock.

Port Traffic Statistics

The Weser estuary was deepened at the Millennium by the Federal German Government to allow the largest types of container ship to berth at the huge Wilhelm Kaisen container terminal. The Port of Bremerhaven and the Port of Bremen are operated by Bremenports, and in 2003 the company invested over twenty million euros in converting the old Columbus Railway Station into the new modern Columbus Cruise Centre Bremerhaven. In consequence, the port traffic is large and amounted in 2013 to:-

Port Of Bremen

Twenty percent of the above cargo totals arrive in the Port of Bremen in three docks, the Neustadt Dock, Industrial Dock and Timber Dock. The type of cargo includes break bulk, project cargo, steel products and pipe handling, forestry products, heavy lifts up to 550 tonnes in weight, industrial and factory products of all kinds, and bulk cargoes such as grain, coal and ores. There is a good depth of water of ten to eleven metres in all three docks at Bremen.

Bremen Shipowners

Bremen and Bremerhaven have a long history of shipowning of over two centuries, and some of these main owners included Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL founded in 1857), Argo Reederei (steamship owners since 1872), Atlas Levante Linie (1935), Neptun D/S (1873), Hansa Linie (1881), Emil Offen (Hanseatic Reederei steamship owners since 1926), D. Oltmann (Schlussel Reederei of 1899), W. Schuchmann (steamship owners since 1913), Union Handels (1906), Unterweser Reederei (steamship owners since 1890), and F.A. Vinnen who purchased a dozen sailing ships in 1912 with his last sailing ship being the five masted schooner Carl Vinnen built in 1922.

Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) or North German Lloyd was the most famous of these and they constructed their own docks at Bremerhaven for their big passenger liners and cargo-liners so that their Transatlantic record breakers would make a fast start to their voyages. No fewer than forty NDL passenger liners of over 10,000 grt were built between 1897 and 1953. A quartet of four funnelled record breakers was built between 1897 and 1907 as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Kronprinzessin Cecilie. After an embarrassing week aground on the mud of the Weser, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse captured the Blue Riband of the Atlantic on her maiden voyage in the Autumn of 1897 and kept it for the next ten years.

After the loss of their entire fleet in the Great War, the NDL passenger trade on the Atlantic resumed with the entry into service of the twin funnelled Columbus of 32,354 grt in April 1924. She was a smaller version of two new record breakers of 52,000 grt completed in 1929/30 as Bremen and Europa. Bremen captured the Blue Riband of the Atlantic on her maiden voyage in July 1929 with a speed of 27.83 knots westbound and 27.92 knots eastbound. She held the accolade until August 1933 when the faster Italian liner Rex entered service. After the loss of their entire fleet again in World War II, NDL built the liner Europa in 1953 and then merged in 1970 with Hamburg Amerika Linie (Hapag) to form Hapag-Lloyd.

The post-war fleet of Ferdinand Laeisz Reederei of Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Rostock was much expanded to give a fleet of fifty owned or managed ships in 1995. Forty reefers, general cargo ships and bulkers were the main types, of which the biggest was the ore/oil Pharos of 75,500 dwt, one of eight completed during 1981/83 by the Bremer Vulkan yard at Vegesack. Ten ro-ros were managed including two for the Euroseabridge Gmbh route between Griefswald and St. Petersburg, both of which had been built during 1986/88 by the Mathias Thesen Werft yard in Wismar and converted to carry 110 rail wagons and 140 passengers during 1993/95 with a lane length of 1,500 metres. The Baltic ro-ro activities of Laeisz Marine Gmbh were wholly acquired at the Millennium by Scandlines to operate between Kiel and Klaipeda (Lithuania), Sassnitz and Klaipeda, and Rostock and Liepaja (Latvia). A big trade of 90,000 freight units and 80,000 passengers per annum was soon built up on these routes. Many large Laeisz container ships are currently on charter to Hanjin, CSAV, MSC and Pacific International Lines of Singapore.

Hanse Mare Reederei Gmbh of Bremen currently operate twenty large container ships on charter to APL, CMA CGM, NYK and Maersk Line, while D. Oltmann Schiffs Gmbh of Bremen operate the same number on charter to MSC, MOL, CMA CGM and Maersk Line. F.A. Vinnen & Company Gmbh of Bremen operate ten large container ships on charter to CMA CGM, Zim Line, MSC and MOL. The large Bremen fleet of Sloman Neptun is covered in the Hamburg shipowners article, while heavy lift operators in Bremen include BBC Chartering and Logistics Gmbh, Beluga Shipping Gmbh, and Harren and Partners Gnbh. The Hanseatic Lloyd Schiffs Gmbh fleet is a mixed one of twenty ships including six large container ships on charter to APL, and six coastal and Aframax tankers. Ernst Russ Gmbh have offices in both Bremen and Hamburg and operate a fleet of ten large ro-ros and feeder container ships e.g. the paper carrying ro-ro Louise Russ with 2,500 metres of lane length for 426 TEU of containers and 175 trailers and a dozen cabins for lorry drivers.

Peter Dohle Schiffahrts began a jointly owned partnership with Ernst Russ Gmbh of Bremen in May 2013 in a shipbroking business for container ship, multi purpose vessels and dry bulk chartering. Peter Dohle began in shipping in 1956 as an agency business that came into its own during the containerisation revolution of the following decade. Clients included Partenreederei Robert Bornhofen with two cargo ships of 7,400 dwt built in 1956 as Louise Bornhofen and Robert Bornhofen, and Katjana Shipping S.A. with the part container Katjana of 8,400 dwt and 270 TEU capacity built in 1971. Services were run in the Baltic, North Sea,

Mediterranean and for worldwide trading, with a fleet of twenty general cargo ships and part container ships managed in 1980. At the Millennium, the fleet included seventy owned and managed container ships, both deep sea and feeder vessels, on charter to CCNI and CSAV of Chile, CMA CGM, Zim Line, Norasia, APL, Alianca, Libra, Hamburg Sud, MSC, Maersk Line, OOCL and Safmarine. The current fleet of 450 owned, managed and chartered ships, the fifth largest German shipowner, is controlled by the second generation of the family in Jochen Dohle (born October 1955 as the son of Peter Dohle) and his cousin Christoph Dohle (born October 1965). The Dohle Group includes insurance broking, crew management, liner agencies, shipping software, bunkering services and ship management and chartering.

Lloyd Werft Shipyard

This major shiprepair yard is large and dominates the Bremerhaven skyline. It has two dry docks (Kaiserdock I and II), two floating docks, a steel shop, gritblasting and paint shop, fitter’s shop, pipe shop, tool shop, stainless steel and aluminium shop, a special products shop and two power stations on site. A skilled work-force of 530 men has the necessary expertise to handle all types of ship repair and ship conversion. Cruise ship conversions have included France/Norway, the QEII, and Norwegian Sky of NCL.

The history of the present yard is closely connected with that of North German Lloyd. In 1857 in Bremen, the shipping line began in business and in the same year a small repair workshop was opened to service the growing fleet. The repair workshop was a major success for NDL, and in 1902 the repair workshops became an independent subsidiary of the company. However, with this success it became clear that the Bremen workshop was not big enough to handle the record breaking four funnelled liners. New premises had been opened at Bremerhaven in 1869, and a new large dry dock and new workshops were added in 1899. A second dry dock was later added, and the yard was much expanded during the inter-war period.

After the complete destruction of the yard by Allied bombing in World War II, the company began in a small way by repairing ships of the U.S. Navy in the early 1950s. The yard was completely rebuilt and was back in business in 1960 handling ship repairs of all types. In the early 1970s, much larger cranage was added together with new central workshops, a new office building, and a new stainless steel and aluminium fabrication shop. In 1985, Bremer Vulkan A.G. took over the yard, and the name of Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven Gmbh became synonymous worldwide for the conversion and repair of large cruise ships, passenger liners and ferries.

Shipbuilding Bremerhaven and Bremen had several important shipbuilding yards, including the old Tecklenborg and Rickmers Werft yard, each with three berths in Bremerhaven, and the larger yard of Bremer Vulkan A.G. located at Vegesack, a suburb of Bremen. The latter was founded in 1893 and closed in 1997 after financial problems and mismanagement. Some 1,100 ships were built there including the ships of predecessor yard Johann Lange Shipyard. A group of Bremen shipowners, investors and merchants took over this yard, and two years later purchased the former H.F. Ulrichs yard that had built its first ship in 1839. The engineer Victor Nawatzki (1855-1940) became the first director of Bremer Vulkan A.G., which built its first ship as a sail fishing vessel and which still exists today in Vegesack Museum Harbour. Fifteen years later the yard had an area of 80 acres and a water frontage of 1,500 metres.

Six slipways equipped with modern electric travelling cranes were capable of building the largest vessels of that era. It soon became the largest German shipbuilding yard with an annual output of 40,000 grt of ships. The workforce by 1912 had increased to 3,300, and they built eleven minesweepers and six submarines for the Imperial German Navy during the Great War. During the inter-war years, the output was not just restricted to German shipowners, but the yard also won many orders from foreign owners. Important progress was made during the change in ship propulsion from steam to diesel engines, with the latter being built under licence from M.A.N. During World War II, the Vulkan yard was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing, the greatest destruction occurring in March, 1943 at the hands of the U.S. Airforce. Many U-boats under construction were destroyed as well as the surrounding yard shops and buildings with 116 workers killed and 118 injured in the yard. However, 74 U-boats had been completed for the Kriegsmarine by the end of the war.

The company was allowed to resume some shiprepair work in 1949 under Managing Director Dr. Robert Kabelac, and then began the production of fishing vessels and steam locomotives. Shipbuilding soon began again on five berths, and a shiprepair floating dock of lifting capacity of 7,200 tonnes was brought into service. By 1956, an annual output of 80,000 grt was achieved by delivering ten ships including five cargoliners for NDL, three for Blue Star Line, Newcastle Star, Hobart Star and Canberra Star, with Arabic for Shaw, Savill & Albion Co. Ltd. and the Swedish reefer Bonita. The production of cargo-liners was soon diversified into passenger liners, multi purpose cargo ships, ro-ros, container ships, LPG and LNG carriers, reefers and special purpose vessels. The French liner Pasteur of 1939 was rebuilt into the liner Bremen for NDL in 1959 by the yard. The yard became a leader in innovative container ship design and many container ships were delivered. During 1968/75, 52 German ‘Liberty’ ship replacements were built by the yard and Rickmers Werft in Bremerhaven and at Flensburg.

During the 1980s, Bremer Vulkan A.G. became a general contractor along with other German shipbuilding yards for the Deutsche Bundesmarine (German Navy) with a Bremen class frigate delivered in 1982. The largest ships from the yard were completed in 1988 as the container ships President Adams and President Polk of 4,350 TEU capacity for APL, on dimensions of length 275 metres, beam of 39.4 metres with a draft of 12.5 metres. The yard then merged with other German shipbuilding yards to form the Vulkan Group of yards, consisting of :-

• Bremer Vulkan A.G. (Bremen Vegesack)
• Geeste Metallbau Gmbh (Bremerhaven)
• Flender Werft (Lubeck)
• Lloyd Werft A.G. (Bremerhaven)
• Rickmers Lloyd Dockbetrieb Gmbh (Bremerhaven)
• Schichau Seebeckwerft (Bremerhaven)
• Neue Jadewerft (Wilhelmshaven)
• Mathias Thesen Werft (Wismar)
• Volkswerft Stralsund (Stralsund)

The last pair of yards above had joined after the unification of Germany in 1990. A total German shipbuilding workforce of 18,000 men was employed in 1990, but seven years later severe financial problems and mismanagement resulted in the closure of Bremer Vulkan A.G. in August 1997. The last two ships delivered were the container ships Hansa Century and Hansa Constitution of 31,730 grt and 2,760 TEU capacity for Hansa Treuhand. The cruise liner Europa was built by the yard in 1981 for Hapag-Lloyd, and the last one was Costa Victoria in 1996 delivered in collaboration with Lloyd Werft in Bremerhaven. Due to the bankruptcy of Bremer Vulkan, the steelwork of the hull of her sister, Costa Olympia, was completed and then fitted out in the dry dock of Lloyd Werft in 1997/98. The last ever cargo ship completed at Bremerhaven at this time was the bulk carrier Hans Oldendorff of 28,250 dwt in February 1998, although she had been launched as City of Newcastle by the Bremenhavener Dock Gmbh.

Postscript

A new visitor observation deck was opened in November 2003 in the port with an impressive panoramic view. A tourist bus gives guided tours of the port three times daily on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and on public holidays. An impressive view of the Lloyd Werft yard is seen from this, as well as the container terminal, the car handling facility in the Nordhafen, and the Columbus Cruise Centre Terminal. This is highly recommended and is by far the best way to view the large port of Bremerhaven. In excess of 7,000 ships call at Bremerhaven every year, and in addition several thousand cruise passengers fly into Bremen International Airport every year.

One might also see the green hulled sail training ship Alexander von Humboldt of 394 grt built back in 1906, which operates out of Bremerhaven for cruises to the Canaries and the Mediterranean for Deutsche Stiftung Sail Training. The German Maritime Search and Rescue service operates the fast rescue craft Hermann Marwede of 300 grt out of Bremerhaven, and she was built in 2003. The large Federal Government of Germany research vessel Meteor of 4,280 grt and built in 1986 might also be seen in Bremerhaven. The large Bugsier fleet of thirty tugs and five cranes and pontoons with a lifting capacity of 600 tonnes, the current largest tug fleet flying the German flag, operate in both of the harbours of Hamburg and Bremerhaven, together with eight modern harbour tugs owned by Kotug in Bremerhaven. They often have to operate in severely ice choked waterways in winter.