On November 8, 1950, the Hapag freighter Hamburg with construction number 865 of Howaldtswerke Hamburg took a test drive . It was the first ship to be built for Hapag after the Second World War. She opened the West India service as the shipping company's first own ship . Due to the conditions imposed by the victorious powers, Hapag had to start its first liner services with charter ships after World War II . In the following years from 1951 to 1953, another six ships of the Burg class were handed over to Hapag, although they had slightly different dimensions. The Hamburg was established in October 1953 in Coburg renamed to make any name for a major new building. On September 1, 1970, when the two shipping companies Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) and Hapag were merged, it became part of Hapag-Lloyd AG , where it continued to be used in the West India service.
“Our Hamburg will be the first business card, so to speak, that we will hand out overseas. We will send them out in the certainty that this ship will reestablish the old trade relations in the countries it will call at and that our flag will regain its prestige. "
- Werner Traber, member of the Hapag Management Board
Freighters in Panama and Saudi Arabia (1971–1977)
Hapag-Lloyd sold the freighter on July 7, 1971 to Nav. Panoceanica in Panama, which renamed the ship Greenbelt , but sold it again a year later. In 1972 it went to AM Baaboud & AM Baghlaf from Jeddah , who named the freighter Blue Belt . During a trip from Jeddah to Port Sudan in Sudan , the Blue Belt laden with motor vehicles ran onto a reef about 50 nautical miles north of Port Sudan on December 2, 1977, slipped three days later and then sank.
Ship description
The Coburg was measured with 2399 GRT or 1238 NRT and with a length of 103.8 meters over all, a width of 14.3 meters and a draft of 6.3 meters had a load capacity of 4460 dwt. The two single-acting 2- Stroke Sulzer engines with five cylinders each had a nominal output of 800 hp and gave the ship a speed of 11 knots .
literature
Karsten Kunibert Krüger-Kopiske: The ships from Hapag-Lloyd. Drawings and résumés , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7822-0861-7 .
Susann Wiborg, Klaus Wiborg: Our field is the world - 150 years of Hapag-Lloyd , 1997 publisher Hapag-Lloyd AG.
Ship list 1953 , 1953 Eckardt & Messtorf, Hamburg.
