Hamburg-Chicago Line
The Hamburg-Chicago-Linie was founded in the early 1950s by the Hamburg shipping company A. Kirsten and operated in partnership with the shipping company Sartori & Berger . They served the North of call and ran into Canada first Quebec and Montreal , then We went on after Schleusenfahrt Saint Lawrence River to the Great Lakes , where numerous Canadian and US ports to Chicago and Duluth (Minnesota) started were. For the new buildings commissioned for this purpose, the maximum length of 79 m had to be strictly adhered to, which was specified by the 29 locks on the St. Lawrence Seaway up to the Great Lakes . The three 5000-tonne trucks (total length 106 meters), Virgilia , Valeria and Volumnia , which were delivered by the Stülckenwerft in 1957/58 , were built especially for the wintry North Atlantic and the Great Lakes voyage , but they were still able to handle the future in several ways Needs planned over. With one exception (which, however , was immediately resold from Helgen ), they were the largest ships that A. Kirsten had ever commissioned. Nevertheless, due to their now insufficient cargo capacity , they were no longer competitive due to the St. Lawrence Seaway, which had been generously developed since 1959 and which has since allowed the Great Lakes to be sailed with large ocean-going vessels , and in later years they were only able to offer unsatisfactory rates for a few Traveling in changing areas or being employed in time charter . In addition to the structural change in the British voyage at the same time, they may also have contributed to the fact that the A. Kirsten shipping company had to cease operations in 1975 after 148 years of existence.
See also: St. Lawrence Seaway .