German multi-purpose freighter
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The German multi-purpose freighter , which became known primarily to seafarers and internationally as the German Liberty , is a type of Liberty replacement ship that was sold by the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft in Flensburg , Bremer Vulkan in Bremen and the Rickmers Werft in Bremerhaven at the end of the 1960s the replacement for the then aging fleet of tramp ships built during the war and shortly afterwards was launched. German Liberty is the short form of the name German Liberty Replacement Ship , under which this type of ship became internationally known. It is derived from the Liberty freighter built during the Second World War , which the German multi-purpose freighter was supposed to replace.
The ships had five hatches. Various combinations of loading booms and heavy-lift booms were available as separate loading gear, depending on the shipowner's wishes.
In 1969/70, due to the rapidly changing sea traffic, the semi-container liner 17/18 was developed from the German multi-purpose freighter , followed by the Bremen Progress type in the mid-1970s .
history
In the mid-1960s, around 700 of the Liberty and Victory standard freighters, as well as a few other cargo ships built during World War II, were still in service in the world merchant fleet at the time. Even the youngest of them were now 20 years or older, and so both the shipping companies and the shipyards were faced with the question of replacing these ships, which would soon reach the end of their service life. At the same time, the need for replacement of the smaller post-war buildings in tramp shipping was already foreseeable.
The great upheavals in maritime shipping, caused by the appearance of container ships and bulk carriers , which would later almost completely replace the general cargo ships , were not foreseeable as such at this point in time, so that the classic general cargo ship , which was in its form at the time since the turn of the century, was relatively few changes was built, still appeared up to date. It was therefore only logical to accept that the Flensburg shipbuilding company in cooperation with the Bremer Vulkan and the Rickmers shipyard in its concept, as well as world's other shipyards with the successful type ships SD-14 , Trampko-multipurpose vessels , Seebeck 36L , Freedom and Fortune also , oriented towards general cargo ships with their own loading gear . This conservative design was undoubtedly also due to the fact that most of the ships to be replaced at that time were operated on the one hand by rather small shipping companies with limited resources and on the other hand predominantly on trampoline.
The first launch of a German Liberty took on 29 February 1968 with the 13 million Deutschmark expensive Dirk Mittmann Flensburg shipping company Ernst Jacob in the FSG place to 1973 another 19 ships of this type, and three units of a scaled-down version of the German multipurpose freighter built. At the Bremer Vulkan, 21 ships of this type were built between 1969 and 1975. Eleven German Liberty's were launched at Rickmers Werft from 1969 to 1976 . The last Liberty was the Susanne built by Rickmers .
Despite their now considerable age, some of these series ships are still in service today.
Further developments
As early as 1969/70, the FSG presented the somewhat larger further development of the German Liberty, the Semi-Container-Liner 17/18 . From the mid-1970s, another successor type was built, the Bremen Progress . In principle, both were slightly larger, further developed variants of the German Liberty that were adapted to the needs of the time . The Bremen Progress was 150 m long, 21 m wide and had a load capacity of 16,329 tdw with a measurement of 10,801 GRT. The main customers here were the British Ellerman Lines and the German shipping companies Alfred C. Toepfer and Herm. Dauelsberg.
swell
- ^ Association of German Shipowners [Hrsg.]: Freight traffic over sea . Lüneburg: Stern Verlag, 1993, p. 27. - ISBN 3-923603-00-2
- ↑ The Dirk Mittmann on Miramar Ship Index (English) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.marktplatz-vegesack.de/vulkan/schiffe.html Report on the shipyard
- Report in the Hamburger Abendblatt from November 12, 1966 ( Memento from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Report in the Hamburger Abendblatt from July 1, 1967 ( Memento from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Report in the Hamburger Abendblatt from March 1, 1968 ( Memento from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Stewart R. King: New German Transport Docks Here in The News and Courier , June 11, 1970
- Schönknecht, Rolf; Laue, Uwe: ocean freighters of the world shipping volume 2. Berlin: transpress publishing house, 1988 (library of ship types), ISBN 3-344-00282-1
- Lingwood, John: SD14 : The Great British Shipbuilding Success Story. Kendal: World Ship Society, 1976, ISBN 0-9500044-8-0
- Alfred Dudszus, Alfred Köpcke: The big book of ship types . Augsburg, Weltbild Verlag (licensed edition, transpress, Berlin), 1995, ISBN 3-89350-831-7