The German Pride Of The Atlantic

The German shipping company NordDeutscher Lloyd (NDL) (English: North German Lloyd) was established by Hermann Heinrich Meier and Eduard Crüsemann in Bremen on 20th February 1857. It developed into one of the most important German shipping companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was instrumental in the sustained economic development of the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. On 1st September 1970, the company merged with Hamburg America Line (Hamburg-Amerika Linien AG – HAPAG) to form Hapag-Lloyd AG.

The company was often called the “Bremen Line”, and in the first year of operations, a route to England was started with three small steamships, the Adler, Möwe and Falke, with four large screw steamships being ordered in England and Scotland for the New York service. In 1857, the first ship, the Adler started a regular passenger service between the Weser region, and England, and on 28th October 1857, she made her maiden voyage from the Weser port of Nordenham, close to Bremen, to London. One year later, regular scheduled services were started between the new port in Bremerhaven and New York using two 2,674 gt steamships Bremen (I) and New York. On 19th June 1858, the Bremen left the wharf at Bremerhaven on her maiden voyage to New York, the first transatlantic sailing of a Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship, and arrived there on the morning of 4th July, American Independence Day. During the same year, three more transatlantic steamships, the Hudson, the Weser and the New York, were added to the service, and with those four steamships a regular fortnightly service to New York was initiated. In the following years, passenger connections to Baltimore and New Orleans were added to the schedule. In 1859, Bremerhaven became an important railway terminus with the opening of the railway line between Bremen and Bremerhaven, thus enabling passengers to connect from the trains with the ships departing from the port. In the same year, a series of international economic crises took their toll on the fortunes of NDL, and the company lost a significant amount of money. However, in 1860 a substantial success was achieved when the postal authorities in England and the United States awarded the company contracts for the carriage of their mails, thus placing the new line on an equal footing with the older English shipping lines Cunard and Inman. A new steamship, the America, made her maiden voyage to New York on 23rd May 1863. She was built by Caird & Co. of Greenock, with a cast steel propeller shaft manufactured by the German company Krupp of Essen, and with a speed of 13 knots on a daily coal consumption of 45 tons, she was one of the fastest steamships of her day.

In 1866, two new steamships, the Deutschland and Union, were added to the fleet. In 1867, the weekly service between Bremen and New York was inaugurated with eight large steamships. The aim of NDL, however, was to establish a regular express service between Bremen and New York. The first express steamship was the Elbe, which entered service in 1881, and she was quickly followed by the vessels Werra and Fulda, so that in 1883, by including in this service the fastest of the older steamships, NDL was able to inaugurate a regular weekly express service between Bremerhaven and New York, whereby the duration of the passage was reduced to between 8 and 9 days. In 1883, two new steamships, Eider and Ems, with a speed of 17 knots, were added to the North American fleet. These were followed two years later by the sister ships Aller, Trave and Saale, and between 1887 and 1890, four additional express mail steamships were completed, namely the Lahn, Kaiser Wilhelm II (later Hohenzollern), Spree and Havel. NDL did not, however, stop here, but had a new type of steamship built in order to meet the demands of the rapidly-increasing traffic. The steamships of the Dresden and Gera class represented a new type of vessel carrying both freight and passengers, with the capacity for a large amount of cargo as well as accommodation for a considerable number of cabin and steerage passengers. Many of the steamships could also be adapted to act as military transports.

In the year 1885, the contract with the Imperial German Government for the establishment and maintenance of mail steamship routes to Eastern Asia and to Australia was signed. In return for an annual subsidy of 4.4 million marks, NDL agreed to run a monthly service from Bremerhaven to China with feeder services to Hong Kong and Japan as well as a monthly service to Australia with feeder service to several South Sea islands. The Vulkan Shipbuilding & Engineering Company of Stettin received orders for three sister ships Preußen (Preussen), Sachsen and Bayern, of 3,600 tons and a speed of 14 knots, and also for the steamships intended for the branch lines to the islands throughout the Pacific, of about half the size of the others, namely the Stettin, Lübeck and Danzig, of about 1,500 tons and a speed of 12.5 knots. Several of NDL’s mail steamships were reconstructed to adapt them for the new routes, with particular care being taken to render these steamships suitable for service in the tropics. Preparations were completed so expeditiously that the line to Eastern Asia was inaugurated with the steamer Oder as early as 30th June 1886. The new Imperial mail line to Australia was opened on 14 July 1886 by the steamship Salier. The early years of the trade proved difficult, as NDL’s ships proved unsuitable for the tropics and had too much passenger accommodation relative to cargo space. The need to purchase new ships placed a strain on NDL’s finances, but in 1892, following an agreement with the government, the service was rationalised and made a profit in 1893, and NDL’s mail contract was subsequently renewed until 1914.

By the end of the 19th century, NDL had 135 deep sea vessels and coastal ships bringing the NDL fleet total to 494 ships. Hapag and NDL together employed 51,000 staff members, including 30,000 seafarers. In 1896, an entirely new type of vessel was created, namely the Barbarossa class. With the construction of these vessels, the aim was to provide for an unusually large quantity of freight, as well as for a large number of passengers in the three classes, while keeping the cabin accommodation entirely separate from the freight space. An order was then placed in 1895 with the Vulcan Co. of Stettin for a twin-screw express mail steamship. This was the four-funnelled liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, which in spite of her greater displacement and with only 30,000 hp far surpassed the Cunard liners Campania and Lucania in terms of speed. On 4th May 1897, the vessel was launched, in the presence of the German Emperor, many members of the Reichstag, other officials and some 30,000 citizens.

The SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie (19,503 grt) was built in Germany by AG Vulcan Stettin in 1906 for NDL. She was the last of a set of four liners built for NDL, and was also the last German liner to be fitted with four funnels. She had four reciprocating, quadruple-expansion steam engines which powered four screw propellers, and she sailed at a comfortable 23 knots. She was engaged on the transatlantic service between her homeport of Bremen and New York, with occasional calls at other ports, including Boston and New Orleans, until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. While sailing toward Germany from America carrying some $10,000,000 in gold and $3,400,000 in silver, her captain received word of the outbreak of war, headed back to the United States to avoid capture by the Royal Navy, and put into Bar Harbor, Maine, on 4th August 1914, where she was later interned by the still-neutral United States. While at sea, her captain had ordered her funnels repainted as a form of disguise, so as to resemble the White Star liner Olympic.

Commandeered by the United States 3rd February 1917, the ship was transferred from the United States Shipping Board (USSB) to the US Navy when America entered the war in April 1917. She was renamed USS Mount Vernon, after George Washington’s Virginia home. She was fitted out at Boston to carry troops and war material to Europe, and was commissioned on 28th July 1917. The Mount Vernon departed New York for Brest on 31st October 1917 for her first US Navy crossing, and during the war made nine successful voyages carrying American troops to fight in Europe. However, early on the morning of 5th September 1918, as the transport steamed homeward in convoy some 200 nautical miles from the French coast, her No. 1 gun crew spotted a periscope some 500 yards off her starboard bow. Mount Vernon immediately fired one round at German U-boat U- 82. The U-boat immediately submerged, but managed to fire a torpedo at the vessel. The Mount Vernon’s officer of the deck promptly ordered right full rudder, but the ship could not turn in time to avoid the missile, which struck her amidships, knocking out half of her boilers, flooding the midsection, killing 36 sailors, and wounding 13. Mount Vernon’s guns kept firing ahead of the Uboat’s wake and her crew launched a pattern of depth charges. Damage control teams worked to save the ship, and their efforts paid off when the transport was able to return to Brest under her own power. Repaired temporarily at Brest, she proceeded to Boston for complete repairs.

The Mount Vernon rejoined the Cruiser and Transport Service in February 1919, and sailed on George Washington’s birthday for France to return war veterans to the United States. Following the war, the Mount Vernon was laid up in the James River Reserve Fleet, before being scrapped in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1940.

The SS Kaiser Wilhelm II was built at Stettin, Germany, and was completed in the spring of 1903. Designed for high speed transatlantic service, she won the Blue Riband for the fastest eastbound crossing in 1904. In the years before the outbreak of World War I, she made regular trips between Germany and New York, carrying passengers both prestigious (in first class) and profitable (in the much more austere steerage). The Kaiser Wilhelm II was sailing westbound when World War I began on 3rd August 1914 and, after evading patrolling British cruisers, she arrived at New York three days later. She was seized by the US government when it declared war on Germany on 6th April 1917, and work soon began to repair her machinery, sabotaged earlier by a German caretaker crew, and also to prepare the ship for use as a transport. While this work progressed, she was employed as a barracks ship at the New York Navy Yard.

She was, at the time, the largest and fastest ship in the world, and gained the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing, with an average speed of 22.3 knots. She was followed from 1897 to 1907 by three other four-screw, four-funnelled steamships, namely the SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II and the SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie. The German vessels maintained their hold on the Blue Riband between 1902 and 1904, gained by the four-funnelled liner SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, on the westbound passage between Bremerhaven and New York, with an average speed of 23.09 knots, and the Kaiser Wilhelm II with an average speed of 23.58 knots for the eastbound voyage.

The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (14,349 grt), named after the first emperor of the new (post-1871) German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm I, was notable for a number of things, including being the first German ship to win the Blue Riband and the first passenger ship (although acting as an armed merchant cruiser at the time) sunk in World War I. The most striking feature of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was her four funnels, the first ship ever to sport such a quartet that for the next decade would be the symbol of size and safety. She had only two uptake shafts from the boiler rooms, which then each branched into two to connect to the four funnels, and this design is the reason for the funnels being unequally spaced. To give her record-breaking speed, the ship was fitted with reciprocating engines capable of developing some 31,000 horsepower. However, the factor that was really innovative was her interior design. For the first time in history, one single designer was responsible for the decorating of an entire ship. On the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, as well as on her three subsequent sisters, the designer’s name was Johannes Poppe. His style of interiors was of a new kind, and it would be reflected in many German liners to come. Public rooms were given high ceilings and rich ornate carvings. The travelling public enjoyed the new vessel, and she quickly became a very popular ship.

The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first liner to have a commercial wireless telegraphy system when the Marconi Company installed one on her in February 1900. Communications were demonstrated with systems installed at the Borkum Island lighthouse and the Borkum Riff lightship, some 30 km northwest of the island, as well as with British stations.

However, she did not escape her share of bad fortune. The ship escaped a massive fire at NDL’s Hoboken, New Jersey, piers in June 1900, which badly damaged her running mates, Main, Bremen and Saale, and killed 161 crewmen on these latter three ships. Six years later, on 21st November 1906, she was struck broadside while trying to cross in front of the Royal Mail’s vessel Orinoco. Five passengers on Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse were killed by the impact and a hole 21 metres (70ft) wide by 8 metres (26ft) high was ripped into her hull. An Admiralty Court found the accident to be entirely attributable to Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. To make matters worse, Cunard’s Lusitania and Mauretania outmatched their German rivals on all fields, and when White Star Line’s vessel Olympic entered service in 1911, luxury on the high seas was taken one step further. As a result, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was rebuilt in 1913 to carry Third Class and Fourth Class passengers only, in order to make the most of the large demand for emigrant passages from Europe to North America.

In August 1914 the ship was requisitioned by the Kaiserliche Marine and converted into an auxiliary cruiser, assigned to commerce raiding in the Atlantic. She was fitted with six 10.5 cm (4 inch) guns and two 37 mm guns. After sparing two passenger ships because they were carrying many women and children, she sank two freighters before she herself was sunk on 26th August, 1914. She was intercepted while refuelling off the shore of the then Spanish colony of Rio de Oro in western Africa by the old British 6-inch gunned cruiser HMS Highflyer. Badly outgunned, the ship eventually ran out of ammunition. The crew abandoned her and scuttled her in shallow water. British sources at the time insisted that Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse sank because of the damage inflicted by Highflyer. Whatever the cause, she was the first passenger ship sunk during World War I. With her starboard side protruding out of the surface of the water, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was scrapped in situ.

Meanwhile, to meet the special requirements of the freight and steerage passenger traffic on the New York route, the NDL acquired two types of steamships known as the ‘Rhine’ class and the ‘General’ class. The ‘Rhine’ class included the steamships Neckar, Rhein and Main, completed between 1899 and 1900. The ‘General’ class comprised the steamships Zieten, Seydlitz, Gneisenau, Roon and Scharnhorst, completed between 1902 and 1904. The awning deck steamships of the Köln class, which were built for the Baltimore and Galveston routes, represented an entirely different type of vessel. They were built with very limited upper-class cabin accommodation, but had ample space for the conveyance of a large number of steerage passengers, and for the transport of large quantities of grain and cotton. The steamships of the Köln class were the Köln, Frankfurt, Hannover, Kassel, Breslau, Chemnitz and Brandenburg. The Köln class steamships were all completed between 1899 and 1901.

A new addition to the express fleet was the steamship Kaiserin Maria Theresia, built by the Vulcan Co., at Stettin and placed in service in 1900. This graceful vessel, 546 feet long and 52 feet wide, with her three large funnels, became a favourite soon after she started operating between Bremen and New York. In January, 1901, she made her first appearance at Genoa, to join the express service between Italy and New York. In the autumn of 1901 a new leviathan express steamship, the Kronprinz Wilhelm, was placed in service, and she belonged to the same type as the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. Shortly after the second vessel to bear the name Kaiser Wilhelm II was launched. The new Kaiser Wilhelm II represented a great advance over all former steamships, with a gross registered tonnage of 19,361. By this time, Germany had the four fastest merchant steamers of the world, namely the Kaiser Wilhelm II, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse and Kronprinz Wilhelm of NDL, and the Deutschland of Hamburg- America line. All these vessels had been built by the Vulcan Company at Stettin.

The US Navy placed the ship in commission as USS Kaiser Wilhelm II in late August 1917. Her name was changed to Agamemnon at the beginning of September and active war work commenced at the end of October, when she left for her first troopship voyage to France. While at sea on 9th November 1917, she was damaged in a collision with another big ex-German transport, USS Von Steuben, but delivered her vital passengers to the war zone a few days later. Following return to the United States in December and subsequent repair work, Agamemnon again steamed to France in mid-January 1918 and thereafter regularly crossed the Atlantic as part of the massive effort to establish a major American military presence on the Western Front. The routine was occasionally punctuated by encounters with real or suspected U-boats and, during the autumn of 1918, with outbreaks of influenza on board.

In mid-December 1918, just over a month after the Armistice ended the fighting, Agamemnon began to bring Americans home from France. She made nine voyages between then and August 1919, carrying nearly 42,000 service personnel, some four thousand more than she had transported overseas during wartime. USS Agamemnon was decommissioned in late August and turned over to the War Department for further use as a US Army Transport. Laid up after the mid-1920s, she was renamed Monticello in 1927 but had no further active service. The Monticello was considered too old for use in World War II, and thus the ship was sold for scrapping in 1940.

In 1907, at the time NDL celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, it had 93 vessels, 51 smaller vessels, two sail training vessels and other river steamships, and around 15,000 employees. New and prestigious NDL office buildings were opened in Bremen on the Papenburg Straße. By this time, the lucrative North Atlantic route was being operated by new, attractive ships of other large companies including the RMS

Lusitania and RMS Mauretania of the Cunard Line, and the RMS Olympic of the White Star Line. HAPAG built the ‘Imperator/Emperor’ class 50,000 grt vessels SS Imperator, SS Vaterland and SS Bismarck. The NDL duly built further vessels, namely the 25,000 grt vessels SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, SS George Washington, and Berlin, with a speed of 17 to 20 knots. In 1914, two large Columbusclass steamships of 33,000 grt were ordered, but the outbreak of World War I prevented their completion.

In August 1920, the NDL renewed its contract to carry the US mail, although this was transferred to the newly-formed United States Lines in 1921. The former vessel Rhein, now renamed the Susquehanna, was replaced in 1920 on the scheduled service from New York to Bremerhaven under the US flag, and she was followed by the Columbus-class vessels in 1921.

The Columbus (32,354 grt), laid down before the start of World War I, was originally to be named Hindenburg. However, her then-sister, originally named Columbus, was handed over to the White Star Line after the war as part of reparations in 1920. The Allies allowed NDL, her owners, to keep the remaining ship, and NDL decided to give her the name of her departed sister, now the British Homeric. Construction of the new vessel, which had been postponed by the war, resumed at the Schichau Shipyards in Danzig.

Material shortages caused by the war delayed her completion until 1924, and she made her maiden voyage in April that year. At the time, she was the German merchant marine’s largest, fastest ocean liner. She had a length of 774.3 feet and carried 1,250 passengers (400 in First Class, 600 in Second and 650 Third Class passengers). She was one of the first liners to have an outside swimming pool installed on her top deck, as well as a platform for night-time dancing. She had triple-expansion steam engines which drove her at a rather modest 18 knots, but she was quite a popular vessel and convinced NDL that larger passenger liners were feasible.

With the building of the larger liners Bremen and Europa in 1929-30, the Columbus was supplanted as the flagship of the NDL fleet, and in 1929, she was given a refit to make her resemble her younger, larger and faster running mates. This included the addition of two larger funnels and replacement of the reciprocating engines with geared turbines, increasing her speed from 18 knots to 22 knots. She spent the winter months cruising the Caribbean.

With the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the Columbus was on one of these cruises when she was given word to return to Germany immediately, as the Royal Navy was on the lookout for enemy ships. Disembarking her passengers at Havana, Cuba, her captain and crew spent two months dodging the British by taking refuge in several South American ports. On 19th December 1939, she was spotted by the British destroyer HMS Hyperion approximately 400 miles off the coast of Virginia. The still neutral American heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa was also in the area, and silently observed the two ships. Rather than surrender the ship, her crew scuttled her, and she burned and sank. Her crew of 567 men and 9 women were taken aboard Tuscaloosa, as rescued seamen, not prisoners of war, which they would have been had they been picked up by the British. The Tuscaloosa took the sailors to New York City, and after the end of the war many returned to Germany.

Between 1929 and 1930, two new large passenger liners, the SS Bremen and SS Europa, were built. They were both turbinepowered ships, of 51,656 grt and 49,746 grts respectively. Both ships could attain an average speed of about some 27.9 knots, and both also took the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossings. In 1929, with the entry into service of the Bremen, the Columbus was relegated to minor duties.

The Bremen and her sister Europa were notable for their low streamlined profile, and modern approach to her design. The German pair sparked the building of the large and very expensive express liners of the 1930s. She was the fourth ship of NDL to carry the name Bremen. Also known as TS Bremen – for Turbine Ship – the Bremen and the Europa were designed to have a cruising speed of 27.5 knots, allowing a crossing time of 5 days, and this speed enabled NDL to run regular weekly crossings with two ships, a feat that would normally have required three vessels on the route. It was claimed that the Bremen briefly reached speeds of 32 knots (59 km/h) during her sea trials.

Bremen was built by the new German shipbuilding company Deutsche Schiff und Maschinenbau AG. She was built from 7,000 tons of high-strength steel with 52 kg/sq mm (500 N/sq mm), allowing a weight saving of some 800 tons on the structure, and she was also the first commercial ship to be designed with the Taylor bulbous bow. It was appropriately decided that the Bremen would be built in the city of Bremen, whilst the Europa would be built in Hamburg. The reason why they were built at two different locations was that the Germans wanted to enter the Atlantic with two ships at once. However, this would not be the case. The Europa suffered a devastating fire on board before completion, and so the privilege of being the first of the duo was given to the Bremen. She was launched on 2nd August 1928 by German President Paul von Hindenburg. Bremen and her sister ship Europa were considered for their time as the most modern liners in the world, and the high speeds and the comfort and luxury level on board made high demands of their technical personnel, to the extent that each ship required an engineering crew of some 170 men.

The Bremen incorporated many items of safety equipment. On the Upper Promenade Deck, the Bremen was equipped with white lifeboats stretching from the superstructure’s beginning to its end, and every one of these lifeboats had small engines capable of driving the boat’s single propeller. The lifeboats had a total capacity for 3,848 people, 800 more than the ship’s entire capacity. Added to these lifeboats, several rafts and rubber boats were also fitted. The new technology available at the time also enabled the Bremen to carry several new devices on board. The ship had an automatic pilot that was able to steer the ship through stormy weather, and furthermore, a device was installed which could easily measure the Bremen’s speed. A new Swedish instrument called ‘Den Svenska Log’ was a device which comprised of a tube which was attached to the ship’s keel where water would penetrate. Inside the tube was a small wheel, and by measuring the wheel’s revolutions, it was possible to determine the ship’s speed. The device could only function in relatively-calm waters, but it was nevertheless an interesting feature for the mariners of the 1920s.

The Bremen had four geared steam turbines that could generate approximately 135,000 shp. Each of them had a high pressure, a medium pressure, low pressure and a reverse turbine. In reverse, 65% of the forward power was available, and at cruise speed the turbines achieved 1800 rpm while the propellers achieved 180 rpm for a power output of 84,000 shp. The four propellers were made of bronze and had a diameter of 5,000 mm, pitch of 5,200 mm and weighed 17 tons each. The 230V electric power on the ship came from four diesel generators with a total output of 520 kW, and there were a total of 420 electric motors, approximately 21,000 lamps, electric cookers and 20 elevators.

Bremen crossed the Atlantic for the first time, departing Bremerhaven for New York under the command of Commodore Leopold Ziegenbein on 16th July 1929. She arrived four days, 17 hours, and 42 minutes later, capturing the westbound Blue Riband from the Cunard liner RMS Mauretania with an average speed of 27.83 knots. This voyage also marked the first time that mail was carried by a ship-launched plane for delivery before the ship’s arrival. A Heinkel He-12 was launched a few hours before the ship’s arrival in New York with a number of mailbags. On her next voyage, the Bremen took the eastbound Blue Riband with a time of 4 day 14 hours and 30 minutes and an average speed of 27.91 knots. This was the first time a liner had broken two records on her first two voyages. The Bremen lost the westbound Blue Riband to her sister Europa in 1930, and the eastbound Blue Riband to the French Line’s Normandie in 1935. The Bremen started her South America cruise on 11th February 1939, and was the first ship of this size to traverse the Panama Canal. On 22nd August 1939, she began her last voyage to New York, having completed almost 190 transatlantic voyages after ten years of service.

On 26th August 1939, in anticipation of the invasion of Poland, the Kriegsmarine high command ordered all German merchant ships to immediately head to German ports immediately. Bremen was on a westbound crossing and 2 days from New York when she received the order. However, the captain of the Bremen decided to continue to New York to disembark her 1,770 passengers. She left New York without passengers on 30th August and on 1st September, coincident with the effective start of World War II, she was ordered to make for the Russian port of Murmansk. Underway, her crew painted the ship grey for camouflage, and she made use of bad weather and high speed to avoid Royal Navy cruisers, arriving in Murmansk on 6th September. With the outbreak of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, on 10th December 1939 Bremen made a dash to Bremerhaven, arriving there on 13th December. On the way she was sighted and challenged by the Royal Navy’s S-class submarine HMS Salmon. While the submarine was challenging the Bremen, an escorting Dornier Do-18 seaplane forced the Salmon to dive for safety. After diving, the Salmon’s commander decided not to torpedo the liner because he believed she was not a legal target.

When the Bremen arrived in Germany, the authorities decided to have the ship laid up. At first, both the Bremen and the Europa were intended to become armed troop transports, but when the ships appeared to be too heavy with guns mounted on their upper decks, it was decided to use the ships simply as unarmed troopships. However, this conversion never occurred, and the Bremen simply became an accommodation ship for troops. The Bremen was used as a barracks ship, although there were plans to use her as a transport in Operation Sealion, the intended invasion of Great Britain. In 1941, the Bremen was set alight by a crew member while at her dock in Bremerhaven and was completely gutted. A lengthy investigation discovered that the arson was the result of personal grudge against the ship’s owners and not an act of sabotage. She was broken up in 1946.

In 1935, the turbine ships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Potsdam, each of some 18,000 grt, entered the fleet for operation on the East Asian services, and in the same year, the company also entered the cruise market. However, the modernisation of the fleet took precedence over other matters, and NDL slowly recovered, recording modest profits in 1937. By 1939, NDL operated 70 vessels with a combined total of 562,371 gross tons, including the sail training ship Commodore Johnson, 19 tugs and 125 small vessels. Also by this time, 12,255 employees were working for the company, with 8,811 of these employed on the company’s vessels. During World War II, the company acquired nine freighters, however following the end of hostilities in 1945, all the company’s ships were seized by the Allies as reparations or as war prizes. The Columbus had sunk in 1939, the Bremen had been destroyed by fire in 1941, the Steuben was sunk in 1945 in the Baltic Sea by a Soviet submarine while carrying a mixture of refugees, retreating German soldiers, and medical personnel, a total of 4,267. At least 3,000 of those on board perished.

Like the Bremen, Europa had a small seaplane launched from a catapult on her upper deck between her two funnels, and the aeroplane flew from the ship to a landing at the seaplane port in Blexen. The pilots and technicians gained experience which later was applied to equipping German warships with on-board aircraft. However, the catapult was removed from both Bremen and Europa after a few years of service, because it proved too expensive and complex.

On 10th August 1939, the Europa made her last peacetime crossing for several years. By the time that Hitler invaded Poland on 1st September, the Europa had returned to Germany at the end of her last transatlantic voyage for NDL. During World War II, the Europa was in the hands of the German military forces and remained largely inactive. There were plans to use her and her sister Bremen as a transport in Operation Sealion, the intended invasion of the UK, and later, further planes were made to convert her into an aircraft carrier. However, none of these plans came to fruition, and in 1945 she was captured by the allied forces and was initially used as a troopship, sailing as the USS Europa (AP-177). However, after it was discovered that the ship had infrastructural problems from years of neglect, in particular defective wiring and hull cracks, and she was removed from this service.

After the end of hostilities in 1945, she was given to the French as war reparations and as a replacement for the ill-fated Normandie, which had been completely destroyed by fire at New York as the USS Lafayette while refitting as a troopship for the US forces. The French Line CGT duly began to refit her for passenger service. In 1946 while being refitted, she broke free of her moorings during a storm and collided with the half-submerged wreck of the liner Paris and sank. The CGT did not want the capsizing of the Normandie to recur, so the Liberté was deliberately sunk in the harbour on an even keel to prevent her from heeling over. All efforts were then used to raise the ship, and in April the following year the task was completed. The vessel was towed to St Nazaire and rebuilt at Penhoët shipyards at the cost of £7,000,000. However, in 1949, yet another fire broke out on board and destroyed much of the new passenger accommodation areas, and it was not until 17th August 1950 that the Liberté was ready to enter service with the French Line. She made her maiden voyage under her new name to New York, and her partners became the famous French liners Île de France and De Grasse, enabling the French Line to operate a very distinguished trio of ships.

The Liberté continued in CGT service throughout the 1950s with no major changes except for the improvement of the ship’s funnels. A discreet dome had been added to top each of the now slightly higher funnels in order to further lead the smoke away from the passengers’ areas. By 1960, however, the Liberté was an ageing ship dating back to a bygone era. In 1961, announcements by CGT stated that the Liberté would be replaced by a new 65,000 ton liner, the France. With the Liberté now laid up and her fate uncertain, much speculation arose as to her proposed fate. There was talk of her use as a hotel at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, but it was eventually decided that the Liberté would be scrapped. On 30th January 1962, she made passage to La Spezia, Italy, where she was broken up.

The SS Scharnhorst (18,184 grt) was a German ocean liner built in 1934 by DeSchiMAG in Bremen, for Norddeutscher Lloyd. The ship was trapped in Japan at the outbreak of World War II in Europe, and was later bought by the Japanese Navy and converted into the escort carrier Shinyo. The ship was sunk by the American submarine Spadefish on 17th November 1944 in the Yellow Sea.

The turbine vessel Gneisenau (18,160 grt) was built by Deschimag AG Weser, and was launched on 17 May 1935 for the Hanseatische Schiffahrts & Betriebsgesellschaft. She was financed 50% by the German government and 25% each by Norddeutscher Lloyd and HAPAG (Hamburg America Line). She was a goodlooking ship, with a single funnel, 2 masts and a Maier bow. She had a service speed of 21 knots, and had accommodation for 149 passengers plus 15 children or 30 servants in first class, 155 in tourist class, and a crew of 276. She started out on her maiden voyage on 3rd January 1936, from Bremerhaven to Yokohama (Japan), and operated on the Hamburg-Bremerhaven- Yokohama route, via Singapore and Shanghai. In August 1937, she made two voyages from Shanghai to Japan with Japanese refugees, and one voyage to Hong Kong with evacuated foreigners. The following month, she was one of only a few ships to survive the typhoon which hit Hong Kong with winds of up to 167 miles per hour. She was the last ship to be serviced at the Columbuskaje in Bremerhaven before the outbreak of war in 1939. On 22nd April 1940, she was transferred to the Kriegsmarine for troop transport, and on 22nd December 1941, she became a dormitory ship at Hamburg. In 1942, it was intended for her to be converted into an aircraft carrier, but this work was never undertaken. In 1943, she became a transport and barracks ship at Swinemünde, but on 2nd May 1943 she hit a mine near Gedser and was beached at Lolland on her side, until she was broken up by a Danish company after the war.

In 1937, the Potsdam, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sailed for the NDL to the Far East on the most important route apart from the Atlantic. The fastest and most modern passenger ships on this route, two of them are fitted with turbo-electric propulsion plants. These smart ships with their luxurious interior fittings, also built as floating advertising media for the Third Reich, cause a stir in all their ports of call but soon proved unviable. With her sister ship the Scharnhorst and the Potsdam, the Gneisenau (II) provided luxury passenger service (primarily to British passengers) to the Far East from 1935 to 1939. Indeed the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were considered so lavish with passenger space that it is doubtful that they ever made a profit for Norddeutscher Lloyd.

With 350 employees, the company restarted operations in 1945, almost entirely from scratch. In 1948, NDL opened the first travel agency of Hapag-Lloyd. Emigration and modest levels of tourism were the first sources of passenger business for the company, supported by the vessels Wangerooge and the Glückauf, which now operated for the company. From 1949, freighters of up to 7,200 grt were allowed to be built by German shipyards and operated by German shipowners. In 1950, NDL ordered its first post-war ship, the Rheinstein (2,791 grt) from the Bremer Vulkan yard. After 1951, the Allies fully lifted their restrictions on German shipping, and NDL began the construction of a new fleet. First, the company purchased bought older cargo ships, and then ordered the construction of new freighters of 13,000 dwt. The “Stein” suffix (English “Stone”) to the vessels’ names was given to several vessels, namely the Lichtenstein (2,353 grt) of 1951, the Weserstein (6,795 grt) of 1953, the Werrastein (6,737 grt), then the Schwabenstein (8,955 grt) and Hessenstein (8,929 grt) of 1954, and the Bayernstein (8,999 grt) of 1955. The NDL managed lines to Canada, New Orleans, to the Canary Islands and after 1953, East Asia.

The company started to acquire passenger ships from 1955, with the converted diesel-powered Swedish liner Gripsholm, originally built in 1924 but extensively modernised in 1949. She was renamed Berlin (17,993 grt), which was the sixth NDL ship to bear the name Berlin after the fourth NDL Berlin. She continued the service of her predecessors on the North Atlantic route from Bremerhaven to New York. The Gripsholm was sold to Norddeutscher Lloyd in late 1954. She was renamed Berlin and made her maiden sailing for NDL in late 1954 between Bremerhaven and New York painted in the German company’s familiar livery with a black hull and mustard-coloured funnels. The Berlin was the first German liner to enter North Atlantic service after World War II, and sailed with distinction until November 1966 when she was considered too old to keep up the liner service. She arrived at the breakers’ yard at La Spezia, Italy on 26th November 1966, having been sold for £223,000.

The Berlin was followed in 1959 by the 32,336 grt liner Bremen (ex Pasteur) with her distinctive funnel, and in 1965 by the 21,514 grt Europa (ex Kungsholm), purchased from Swedish American Line, which could hold 843 passengers.

The Pasteur was sold to NDL for 30 million DM in September 1957, but her sale provoked violent protests with the French population. However, the transaction went ahead regardless, and her transfer to NDL took place in September 1957, with her sailing from Brest to Bremerhaven. NDL had her refitted at the Bremer Vulkan yard at Bremen for a total amount of approximately 65 million DM, and she was renamed Bremen for the company’s North Atlantic service. On 9th July 1959, she was placed on the Bremerhaven-Southampton- Cherbourg-New York route, and she was considered as one of the most beautiful passenger liners of her time.

Her tonnage now became 32,336 grt, and she received new boilers and four new turbines which gave a maximum power output of 60,000 hp and a maximum speed of 26 knots. Her three 1,375 KVA generators had an output of 6,600 kW. One particular change which significantly altered her appearance was her new drop-shaped funnel. She was also fitted with two stabilisers for more stable travel. In June 1959, she embarked upon her trials. The Bremen had a crew of 545 persons. Approximately 1,150 passengers could be transported, 216 in First Class.

In 1960, the Bremen could carry approximately 14,000 passengers from Europe to the USA and back. From 1960, she was used on cruise operations in the Caribbean and to South America, and to this extent she achieved a passenger load factor of some 85% in 1961. In 1971, she was transferred entirely to cruising operations as air travel had become more popular. She had a bulbous bow added during another refit in 1965-1966 at the NDL repair yard. In September 1971, she made her final voyage from Bremen to New York for Hapag-Lloyd, and in October 1971, she was sold to the Greek shipping company Chandris Cruises after 175 Atlantic crossings and 117 cruises, for some 40 million DM, the sale being completed in January 1972.

After another refit, which again changed her tonnage to 23,801 tons, she was placed on cruising activities in the Mediterranean and was based at Piraeus, Greece, as the Regina Magna. Until 1974, she cruised around the world, following which she was once again laid up in Piraeus because of rising fuel costs and the loss of emigration charters to Australia. In 1977, she was sold to Philippine Singapore Ports Corporation of Saudi Arabia and renamed Saudi Phil I. The ship was then used as an accommodation ship for Filipino workers and on 1 November 1977, she arrived at Jeddah and served as a floating hotel. In 1980, apparently, she was sold to the Philsimport International in Hong Kong and renamed Saudi Filipinas I. However, she rolled over onto her port side and sank stern first in the Indian Ocean in the same year while being towed to Taiwanese ship breakers at Kaohsiung, Taiwan by the Panamanian tug Sumatra.

Encouraged by the success of their liners Kungsholm and Gripsholm, the Swedish American Line placed an order for yet another new ship in August 1963. In preparation for the delivery of the new ship, also to be named Kungsholm, the existing Kungsholm (21,164 grt) was sold to NDL in May 1964, with the delivery date set in October 1965. She set on her last transatlantic crossing in SAL colours from New York on 21st August 1965, arriving in Gothenburg on 5th October. Ten days later she was delivered to Norddeutscher Lloyd. Following her delivery to NDL, the Kungsholm was renamed Europa, given an extensive refit and was transferred to the West German flag. On 9th January 1966, the Europa embarked on her first transatlantic crossing for her new owners from Bremen to New York. In NDL service, the ship followed a similar arrangement as she had with the Swedish American Line, with transatlantic crossings during the northern hemisphere summer and cruises during the rest of the year.

The freighter Friesenstein (7,485 grt) was introduced from 1967 and replaced the vessels Nabob and Schwabenstein. The passenger side of the business was by this time increasingly in deficit, and also the breakbulk side of the cargo business was becoming increasingly affected by the rapidly growing container traffic, which required costly changes being applied to the company. In 1968, NDL introduced the container vessel Weser Express (13,382 grt), the first container line service for the company. It was later followed by two more fast container ships, namely the Mosel Express (13,396 grt), built in 1969, and the larger ship Melbourne Express (25,558 grt), built in 1970. Both vessels were transferred to Hapag-Lloyd service when in September 1970, NDL merged with the Hamburg America Line to form Hapag-Lloyd. Hapag- Lloyd decided to abandon the transatlantic service the following year.