HM Gehrckens

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The wall frame built in 1966

HM Gehrckens is a former Hamburg shipping company , which was also known under the abbreviation HMG.

history

Founded around 1830 with a few used sailing ships , the shipping company of Heinrich Martin Gehrckens (HMG I) (1806–1872) soon became known, especially on the Baltic Sea and West Africa voyages. The first ship was the galeas Florentine II . In 1869 Heinrich Martin I already had eight sailing ships. HMG II (1837-1915) was not an easy inheritance. In his private life, he had to put up with his mother and his seven siblings, all of whom were entitled to inherit his father's property. The founding of the empire in 1871 gave German seafaring a powerful impetus, but HMG II did not participate in the new foundations, which brought about a strong amalgamation of entrepreneurship, big banks and overseas shipping. He went his own way. In order to keep the company viable, he got involved in the steamboat route. First he became a co-owner of the Kings-Lynn-Line sailing under the English flag, which he later took over completely. The shipping company soon switched entirely to steamships and was able to establish itself with its first liner service from Hamburg to Stockholm .

HM Gehrckens was active from the start as a liner shipping company mainly in the North and Baltic Seas and made a significant contribution to the establishment and development of liner shipping between Germany, Finland and Sweden. From around 1875 HMG ships were used in regular voyages between Sweden and Germany and from around 1885 in traffic between Finnish and German ports. While HM Gehrckens initially used its ships as a single shipping company, these services were carried out later and until the shipping company came to an end in cooperation with a number of partners: Hamburg's Ernst Russ Reederei , Hamburg's Mathies Reederei , Helsinkis Finska Ångfartygs Aktiebolaget and Stockholms Rederiaktiebolaget Svea .

Under HMG III (1864–1951), the shipping company specialized in the through freight business , for which Hamburg was favorable after the opening of the Kiel Canal in 1895. For example, they delivered South American coffee to Sweden and from there iron to England or bacon and flour from the USA to Finland and from there butter to England. Before the First World War , it had an average of 14 ships in service. After the First World War, many ships had to be surrendered and HMG III laboriously rebuilt the shipping company with the help of his son HMG IV (* 1890) from his first marriage, who joined the company in 1919. He worked again with the Mathies shipping company.

After the Second World War, the shipping company started again, first with a cargo handling company in the Hamburg area and then in 1947 with five old freight steamers. These were her old ships that she got back from the military government or bought back. Of these, the Söderhamn, with her 1499 GRT, was initially the flagship of the entire merchant fleet remaining in Germany. At that time, the Gehrckens' steamers were mostly employed in the journey with timber and pit timber cut from German forests to England. In 1949 the Brook von Gehrckens was the first cargo ship to be built in Germany.

Then liner services to North West Africa were set up, one in cooperation with Gebr. Van Udens Scheepvaart & Agentuur Mij., Rotterdam, and another together with the shipping company Franz L. Nimtz, which was previously based in Szczecin, as part of the Hanseatic Africa Service established for this purpose. In connection with the North Africa voyage during the Spanish orange season, a special fruit service was launched from ports on the Spanish east coast to northern European ports.

In mid-1955, the shipping company had 14 ships (including two of the Atlanta Schiffahrts GmbH) with a total load capacity of around 29,510 tons ( tdw ), which were used on regular trips to Sweden, Finland, Morocco and West Africa. In 1955 three new ships were added with a total of around 7,900 dwt. This increased the fleet capacity to approx. 38,000 tdw. Two of these newbuildings were specially equipped for the North Sea service with the highest ice class. These ships were already equipped with diesel and electric diesel propulsion.

From July 1967 to the beginning of 1972, the Hamburg shipping companies Mathies and HM Gehrckens, together with the shipping company Nordström & Thulin from Stockholm, operated two newly built ConRo and RoRo ships , the Hansa and Wasa des Sietas Type 52 under the common name Teamline. In the mid-1970s, Gehrckens was one of the founding members of Railship AG , which operated the rail ferries Railship I , Railship II and Railship III until 2002 . The shipping company went out in 1988 as an independent company and merged with the shipping companies Railship and Team Lines , with Gehrckens' liner service being incorporated into the latter.

The general cargo ship Bleichen , built in 1958 and operated by Gehrckens until 1970 , is being restored as a museum ship.

The shipping company's flag was blue with the initials HMG

literature

  • Verg, Erik: Under the blue flag . 150 years of HMGehrckens. Ed .: HMGehrckens. Self-published, Hamburg 1980.
  • Leisching, Dietrich: Ice trip through the Baltic Sea . 1st edition. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1969.
  • Möller, Kurt Detlev: 125 years of HM Gehrckens Hamburg, 1830–1955 . 1st edition. Kayser, Hamburg 1978.
  • E. Kirchhof, NDR: Portraits of German shipping companies . Ed .: based on a series of the NDR. 1957.

Web links

Commons : HM Gehrckens  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hildegard von Marchtaler:  Gehrckens, Heinrich Martin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 137 ( digitized version ).
  2. ^ 125 years of the shipping company HM Gehrckens , Die Zeit, May 5, 1955
  3. ^ Die Zeit, May 5, 1955
  4. ↑ Homepage of the MS Bleichen