Empresa Líneas Marítimas Argentinas
The Empresa Líneas Marítimas Argentinas (ELMA) was an Argentine liner shipping company that existed from 1960 to 1996. In its prime, ELMA operated 192 ships and handled 50% of Argentina's exports by sea.
history
ELMA went back to the shipping company Compañia Argentina de Navegación Dodero. In 1949, the Presidente Peron set up a passenger line between Buenos Aires and London, which was expanded in 1950 with the ships Eva Peron and 17 de Octubre to the destination ports of Vigo, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Other services soon started in Rio de Janeiro, Las Palmas, Lisbon, Barcelona, Marseille, Naples and Genoa as well as Montevideo. After the overthrow of the government of Juan Perón , the Dodero line ceased operations and handed over the operation of the ships to the shipping company Flota Argentina de Navegaceon de Ultramar (FANU). In 1962, the shipping companies FANU and Flota Mercante del Estado (FME) merged to form Empresa Lineas Maritimas Argentinas (ELMA) with a fleet of over 60 ships. At the end of the 1960s, passenger services were discontinued and the fleet switched to pure cargo ships.
In the Falklands War in 1982, two ships of the ELMA were used. The Formosa , built in 1978 , arrived in Port Stanley on April 20th with 20,000 tons of food and heavy equipment for the Tenth Argentine Brigade, the Carcarañá River on April 25th with weapons and army supplies. The Formosa was attacked from the air on May 1st after the cargo was unloaded, but was able to return to Argentina, the Río Carcarañá was attacked by British Sea Harriors with machine guns in the Strait of San Carlos on May 16 and abandoned by the crew. On May 23, a Sea Lynx helicopter sank the damaged ship.
In the course of the far-reaching economic reforms of the 1990s, President Carlos Menem pushed through, among other things, the privatization and thus ultimately the dissolution of the deficit state shipping company.
Web links
- Shipping company history at Histarmar (Spanish)
- Shipping company history and list of ships at The Ships List (Spanish)
Individual evidence
- ^ Emiliano Galli: A la deriva: el ocaso de la flota mercante argentina , In La Nacion , July 8, 2015
- ^ Martin Middlebrook: Argentine Fight for the Falklands , Pen and Sword, 2003, p. 68.
- ^ David Brown: The Royal Navy and Falklands War , Pen and Sword, 1987, p. 122.
- ^ David Brown: The Royal Navy and Falklands War , Pen and Sword, 1987, p. 126ff
- ↑ Wolfgang Muno: Reform politics in young democracies: veto players, political blockades and reforms in Argentina, Uruguay and Thailand , Springer-Verlag, 2015, p. 89.