The Hawaiian Princess was the first container ship of the Matson shipping company that was planned and built as such.
history
In the mid-1950s, Matson investigated the possibilities of containerizing the freight business between the United States and Hawaii. In 1958, container traffic began with the Hawaiian Merchant, which had been converted into a container ship , and was quickly expanded with other converted ships. The specially built Barge Islander took care of the distribution of the containers between the islands of the archipelago . This barge, which was initially pulled by a tug, had been prepared for conversion to a self-propelled ship with its own crew in order to operate between the islands. The conversion was never implemented, however, because the resistance on the part of the trade unions against the associated low crew of the ship to be built could not be overcome.
Instead, the Matson shipping company had the container ship Hawaiian Princess built in 1966 at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Beaumont , Texas , as hull number 6811. After being handed over in January 1967, she continued the container feeder service between the islands that had previously been carried out with the Islander . From 1979 the ship went under the name Mauna Kea and in 1987 it was converted to the fish factory ship Northern Eagle and is still in service today (for the American Seafoods Group ).
technology
The bridge superstructures were arranged in front and the machinery was arranged aft. The drive of the ship consisted of two Caterpillar twelve-cylinder diesel engines with a total of 1,600 hp, each working on a propeller. On deck there was a longitudinally movable Yuba gantry crane bridge with a load capacity of 25 tons, with which the Hawaiian Princess did the loading and unloading operations. 156 24-foot containers could be transported, 19 of which could be supplied as refrigerated containers. In addition to the containers, there were tanks for the transport of 1,070 tons of vegetable oil and 1,430 tons of molasses.
literature
Matson's new island-hopping containership will serve ports within Hawaiian archipelago . In: Marine Engineering / Log . Vol. 72, No.3 . Simons-Boardman Publishing Corporation, New York March 1967, p.66-68 .
Sigwart, EE: Merchant Ships: World Built . Vessels of 1,000 tons gross and over completed in 1967. Adlard Coles Limited, London 1968.
Cudahy, Brian J .: Box boats . How container ships changed the world. Fordham University press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-8232-2568-2 .
