German-Australian Steamship Company

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The German-Australian Steamship Company (DADG) was a German shipping company founded in 1888 by Hamburg shipowners and merchants as a stock corporation . The company operated independently until 1926 and ran a line between Hamburg and Australia from 1889 to 1914 . On January 1, 1914, it was the fifth largest German shipping company with a fleet of 51 seagoing vessels of 261,100 GRT .

History and sailing areas

The DADG was founded on the initiative of the shipping company Knöhr & Burchard on September 18, 1888 in Hamburg with share capital of 12 million marks , bonds of 1.8 million marks and reserves of 1.5 million marks. Deutsche Bank was the main shareholder . Otto Harms became a member of the board and Carl Ferdinand Laeisz took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board . The background to the establishment of the shipping company was that the shipping company Rob. M. Sloman ceased her service to Australia in 1886, which meant that Hamburg no longer had a direct service to Australia. On the route to Australia, the DADG not only competed with foreign shipping lines, but also with the Deutsche Postdampferlinie, which has been in service since 1886, operated by North German Lloyd and subsidized by the state .

Europe to Australia

In 1889, the DADG began regular service to Australia with six new steamers from German and British shipyards with a load capacity of 3500 to 4000 tons (tdw). The ships were running 10 to 11 knots and also offered space for 200 steerage passengers , which was primarily intended for emigrants. Monthly departures were planned, the first departure took place on July 24, 1889 from Hamburg via Antwerp to Sydney and Melbourne . The first delivered Elberfeld (2709 BRT, Armstrong ) suffered two screw damages on this voyage and only reached its destination 40 days late. Monthly departures could not be guaranteed until the end of the year. Bremen , Dunkirk and Marseille were added as further ports for receiving freight . By re-ordering two more ships, it was hoped to be able to increase the number of departures, but the passenger offer was not accepted. With a possible 200 passengers, the ships had an average occupancy of 91 people in 1890, which was only 54 in 1892. The ships also had a bad reputation, which in 1892 led to a hearing before the Maritime Administration about a voyage by the Sommerfeld (2660 GRT, Connell), which reproached the captain. In 1894 passenger shipping was given up.

From 1891 the Suez Canal was no longer used, also for cost reasons, one drove around South Africa and thus saved 15,000 marks. As a result, Africa was included in the freight business, but the cargoes were mostly transferred to roadsteads , as there were hardly any ports. On August 20, 1894, the shipping company suffered its first total loss when the Erlangen (2750 GRT, Blohm & Voss ) stranded at the Gahaafaru (Gaafaru) atoll in the Maldives on the way home .

The former Kiel in the USA

From 1894 the DADG only procured pure cargo ships. A special feature were the Meissen- class cargo ships ( Meissen , Elbing , Bielefeld , Varzin , Harburg , Itzehoe , Magdeburg , Kiel , Duisburg , Laeisz , Apolda , Rostock ), which were procured by the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft from 1897 and two thin chimneys had. Each boiler room of the ships between 4500 and 5100 GRT had its own chimney, which should enable a higher speed.

The general agency of the line in Sydney was taken over in 1889 by Gustav von der Heyde , an emigrant of German origin and formerly a businessman and politician in New Zealand . In 1903, the shipping company owned 26 steamers with a total tonnage of 103 440 GRT, including four of the ships acquired between 1889 and 1891.

By 1914, the DADG suffered five more ship losses: On November 4, 1904, the Solingen (2875 BRT, 1889) was lost as a transporter off Deutsch-Südwestafrika during the uprising there; on March 16, 1908, the Laeisz (5157 BRT, 1901) sank the return voyage in the Red Sea on a rock and sank, on April 4, 1911 the Bergedorf (5125 BRT, 1900) stranded at Cape Komorin and on May 24th the Itzehoe (5134 BRT, 1899) at Cape Recife on Algoa Bay in South Africa . In 1912 the Augsburg (4287 BRT, 1896) was lost in the Atlantic.

It was not until 1912 that the company's ships became significantly larger when, with the Bochum and Colmar, the first freighters with over 6000 GRT and then with the four ships of the Australia class, the 7000 GRT were exceeded. Most of the company's freighters came from German shipyards. Of the 70 ships completed by the outbreak of war in 1914, the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft alone delivered 36. All of the overseas ships were newbuildings.

The former Sumatra in Australian service, sunk
by U 108 in 1918

When the First World War broke out in 1914, the company immediately lost many of its 56 ships just because of their sailing area. Nine ships were confiscated in Australia, three in the Suez Canal; a total of 17 ships were put into British service. Others went to neutral ports and were later also used as transporters against Germany due to the development of the war. Seven ships were lost on the Allied side during the war.

Only a few ships were used to support the German naval forces. The Magdeburg (1900, 4497 ​​GRT) supplied the auxiliary cruiser Kaiser Wilhelm the Great with coal off the Río de Oro . The Bochum (1912, 6161 BRT) and the Elmshorn (1910, 4594 BRT) support the old cruiser SMS Geier . These ships sought refuge in American ports after completing their duties and were used again in 1917 with other ships from the American side.

On the German side, three of the company's ships were lost due to operations during the war. The almost new freighter Guben was converted to the auxiliary cruiser SMS Greif and was lost on February 29, 1916 in a battle with British naval forces.

On March 16, 1916, the Ottensen (1904, 4258 BRT) used as a barrier breaker was lost near Borkum Riff due to a mine hit and a collision with the Niederwald barrier breaker . Bielefeld (1898, 4460 GRT), also used as a barrier breaker, was torpedoed twice by submarines and occasionally ran aground off Juist , but could be sealed and used again.

The Worms (1907, 4428 GRT) was sunk as an ore transporter by Russian destroyers off the Swedish coast. It was later lifted again and came back into the service of the company in 1922 as Harburg (II).

Fusion with the Kosmos lines to form the Deutsch-Austral and Kosmos lines

The first post-war new building in Hamburg as the Dutch Kentar , 1940

On March 10, 1920, the DADG resumed its liner service to the Dutch East Indies with a chartered Dutch steamer and put its first new ship into service on September 25 with the Hamburg (5878 GRT) supplied by the FSG .

After the First World War with its economically difficult consequences for shipping, the merger with the German steamship company Kosmos took place in May 1921 , which at that time did not yet have its own ship. The new name was Deutsch-Austral and Kosmos-Linien . This expanded the shipping areas. The west coast of America was served under the Kosmos flag, the Dutch East Indies and Australia under the DADG flag. The companies with completely different shipping areas merged their administrations and offset their profits and losses. They hoped that the merger would provide greater flexibility in order to be able to react to developments in the shipping areas. Nineteen new buildings had been completed for the Australlinie by 1926, while only eleven newbuildings were ordered for the Kosmoslinie. In addition, they bought back eight former, delivered ships between 1921 and 1924, while only three former DADG ships were bought back by the new company. The Blohm & Voss shipyard , which had only delivered two ships to DADG by 1914, delivered eleven of the newbuildings for the Australian line . The previous main supplier, the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, delivered three of the new Kosmos buildings, but only Hamburg, which was completed in 1920, to the Australlinie. Their newbuildings were between 3700 and 6300 GRT. Fifteen of the new buildings were turbine-powered ; In 1925/1926 the company received three motor ships for the first time: Duisburg (2) , Rendsburg (2) and Magdeburg (2). Upon completion, all newbuildings were pure cargo ships with the possibility of taking up to twelve passengers. In addition to the aforementioned shipyards, four of the newbuildings came from the Hamburg Vulcan shipyard and three from the Germania shipyard in Kiel.

The motor ship Rendsburg ,
penultimate new build of the DADG

Hugo Stinnes , who bought into the new shipping company, had acquired the majority of the shares until his death in 1924 in order to merge it with the Stinnes-Linien. Since the Stinnes heirs were not interested in continuing the shipping activities outside the core area of ​​the group, Deutsch-Austral and Kosmos-Linien acquired the Stinnes-Linien in 1926.

Merger with the Hamburg-America line

However, this was short-lived, as the main owner, Danat-Bank , merged the newly created shipping company with the Hamburg-America Line in 1926 . Deutsche-Austral-Kosmos brought 37 seagoing ships with a total of 210,000 GRT into the merger, the Hugo Stinnes Line brought another 23 seagoing ships with 140,000 GRT. General Director Marius Böger of Austral-Kosmos switched to the board of directors of the Hamburg-America Line, which with this merger again became the largest shipping company in the world, which, however, did not apply when the groups behind the individual shipping companies were considered - then Hapag was in place by far only in sixth place. In the spring of 1927, their fleet comprised 151 ocean-going vessels with a total of almost 900,000 GRT. This roughly corresponded to the pre-war stock before the entry into the giant liner class. All ships received the new Hapag chimney brand, which was taken over from the old DADG. As the last ship for the old DADG, the Dortmund came into service in 1926 .

The appearance of Hapag in the Australian service led Norddeutscher Lloyd to convert the pure freight line to fast freighter steamer with space for up to 16 cabin passengers. In the course of the state-decreed reorganization of the work areas of the German shipping companies from 1934, the liner operations were coordinated with North German Lloyd. The resulting improved economic prospects, however, were nullified by the political action of the German Reich and the subsequent outbreak of World War II . The entire fleet was lost again and had to be rebuilt after the end of the war.

The name of the German-Australian Steamship Company fell into oblivion over time. In 1970 Hapag and Norddeutschem Lloyd merged and Hapag-Lloyd AG emerged from the merger of the individual companies .

See also

literature

  • Gert Uwe Detlefsen (Ed.): German shipping companies . Volume 26, ISBN 3-928473-84-0 .
  • Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
  • Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies. A mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present day . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford o. J.
  • Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping . Volume I: The pioneering years from 1850 to 1890 (= writings of the German Maritime Museum , volume 18.)
  • Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping . Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 (= writings of the German Maritime Museum , Volume 21.)
  • German-Australian steamship company . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 4, Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig / Vienna 1906, p.  689 .
  • Walter Kresse (arr.), Bodo Hans Moltmann: History of the German merchant shipping. (= Publications of the Economic Research Center , Volume 43.) 1981, ISBN 3-922857-02-7 .
  • Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919–1939 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg o. J., ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
  • Otto J. Seiler: Trip to Australia. Liner shipping of Hapag-Lloyd AG through the ages . Herford 1988.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ melt head, p. 69
  2. ↑ Kludas, Volume I, pp. 180 ff., A failed attempt
  3. ↑ Kludas, Vol. I, pp. 180f.
  4. ↑ Kludas, Vol. I, p. 181
  5. ↑ Kludas, Vol. I, p. 182 ff.
  6. ↑ Wreck of Erlangen
  7. ^ German-Australia Trade . In: The Poverty Bay Herald . Volume XVI, Issue 5439. Gisborne April 2, 1889, p.  3 (English, natlib.govt.nz [accessed February 18, 2011]).
  8. ↑ The Solingen wrecked
  9. ↑ Wreck in the Red Sea
  10. ↑ Bergedorfs back broken
  11. ^ Wreck of the Itzehoe
  12. ↑ Seiler, p. 62
  13. ↑ Herbert, p. 23 ff.
  14. ↑ Herbert, p. 101 ff.
  15. ↑ Herbert, p. 120 f.
  16. ↑ Herbert, p. 118 ff.
  17. ^ Herbert, p. 127
  18. ↑ melt head, p. 29
  19. ↑ melt head, p. 32
  20. ↑ melt head, p. 38
  21. ↑ Prager, p. 229 ff .; Erlangen (2750 BRT, 1889) and Esslingen (4897 BRT, 1911)
  22. ↑ melt head, p. 90 ff.
  23. ↑ melt head, p. 94