Holland America Line
| Holland America Line | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1873 |
| Seat |
Seattle United States
|
| management | Stein Kruse (CEO Holland America Group) Orlando Ashford (President of Holland America Line Brand) |
| Branch | Cruises |
| Website | www.hollandamerica.com |
The Holland-America Line (abbreviation: HAL ), former Holland-America Line , one of the four operating subsidiaries of Carnival Corporation & plc . For the cruise world market leader, it operates the ships of its own brand as well as those of the Princess Cruises and Seabourn Cruise Line brands from its headquarters in Seattle .
The originally Dutch shipping company operated a successful transatlantic passenger liner service from Rotterdam for over 100 years and had a quasi monopoly for emigration from the Netherlands to the USA for several decades. In total, over a million people emigrated with the Holland-Amerika Lijn. Until 1973 the company operated cargo ships worldwide.
Due to increasing competition from airlines, the company switched to cruises from 1971. In 1988 HAL ran into financial difficulties when it took over Windstar Sail Cruises and was eventually bought up by its direct competitors. Today 14 ships sail under the HAL logo and transport around 700,000 passengers per year.
Rotterdam, which is still the company's European headquarters today, is heavily influenced by the HAL in the cityscape. The former headquarters is a fixture in the port area as Hotel New York , as is the cruise terminal and the Rotterdam , a former HAL passenger ship that now serves as a hotel, restaurant and museum. The iconography of the ambitious urban renewal project Kop van Zuid is largely based on the emigration to America, which was almost exclusively operated by the HAL.
history
Early years
In 1871 the businessmen Lodewijk Pincoffs and Marten Mees with Antoine Plate and Otto Reuchlin as managers founded the shipping company Plate, Reuchlin & Co. , based in Rotterdam . With initially two ships ordered from Henderson, Coulbourn & Co. in Renfrew , they wanted to start the liner service between Rotterdam and New York City . The Rotterdam was the first ship to sail to New York on October 15, 1872.
In 1873 the fleet was enlarged by two more ships and the company was converted into the Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij NV (NASM) . Soon, however, the name Holland-Amerika Lijn or in Anglo-American parlance Holland-America Line became established for the shipping company . The dock facilities were in Hoboken, New Jersey, on the banks of the Hudson River north of 5th Street.
The main service was the Rotterdam-New York line with stops in Southampton or Plymouth . The first ships used by the shipping company were the sister ships Rotterdam (I) and Maasdam (I), each measured at 1705 GRT . With this size, they were quite small even for the time. In 1874, the steamers P. Caland and WA Scholten were followed by larger new builds (2540 GRT each). Speed only played a role for the shipping company from an economic point of view and the shipping company soon enjoyed a very good reputation for its standards of safety, service and punctuality.
In 1880 the shipping company rented its first terminal in the Koningshaven from the Rotterdamsche Handelsvereeniging. In the 1880s the shipping company had to cope with an unusual number of ship accidents. The sinking of WA Scholten after a collision in 1887 was the most serious. During this time, the shipping company filled the gaps that had arisen in the ship population with second-hand tonnage.
During the time of emigration to America
With the move to the Wilhelminakade, the shipping company moved into quarters that it used until 1980. After a few experiments with lines to South America, NASM finally specialized in the route to New York and officially adopted Holland America Lijn as part of its name in 1896. With the commissioning of the Rotterdam (III, 8,189 GRT) in 1897, the ships of the shipping company experienced a tonnage increase with each new building - 1898 Statendam (I, 10,491 GRT), 1900 Potsdam (12,606 GRT), 1906 Nieuw Amsterdam (I, 16,967) and 1908 Rotterdam ( IV, 24,149 GRT) - a long-term partnership with the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast developed .
The HAL benefited from the streams of emigrants who set out for the United States, particularly from Eastern Europe. Although Rotterdam appeared late in the emigration business compared to ports such as Bremen , Liverpool , Hamburg , Le Havre or Antwerp , the city was able to catch up quickly after the construction of the Nieuwe Waterweg . Between 1880 and 1925, almost a million people emigrated to North America via Rotterdam, at that time HAL had a quasi-monopoly on this route. In addition to the ambitious shipbuilding program, HAL also built a hotel and hospital ward for the emigrants at the Wilhelminakade as well as numerous agencies in various countries in Europe and America.
From 1901 the shipping company got into the freight business on the Rotterdam-New York line, which was supplemented by the ports of Philadelphia and Baltimore from 1909 . In 1912 a route was established to the ports in the Gulf of Mexico: Veracruz , Tampico and New Orleans . The HAL introduced its own naming scheme for the cargo ships, all ending with "... dijk", from 1950 onwards with "... dyk".
In 1914 the high point of the new construction program for the North Atlantic passenger services, the Statendam (II), measured at 32,234 GRT , was to go into operation. But the first World War , which soon broke out, made an operation impossible, while the final equipment of the Harland & Wolff shipyard was requisitioned by the Royal Navy as a troop transport and taken over as HMS Justicia . In 1918 the Justicia sank on the Scottish coast by torpedoes from the German UB 124 submarine . Nevertheless, due to the neutrality of the Netherlands, the Holland-Amerika Lijn came through the war without further ship losses.
At the end of the war, the shipping company set up some new liner services, for example from Rotterdam, via the newly opened Panama Canal to Los Angeles - San Francisco and Vancouver, and via the Suez Canal to the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia ). She mainly used cargo ships on these routes.
As a replacement for the torpedoed Statendam , the HAL took the sister ships Volendam and Veendam built by Harland & Wolff into service in 1922 and 1923 (15,450 GRT each). It was not until 1938 that a real replacement came into service, the 36,287 GRT Nieuw Amsterdam , the shipping company's new flagship and the largest ship under the Dutch flag to date. The Nieuw Amsterdam is still considered one of the most beautiful transatlantic liners to this day. The Second World War interrupted this positive development and the Netherlands was occupied by Germany. Most of the HAL fleet managed to escape to the Allies, but the Statendam , which was sunk in Rotterdam in 1940 , was a heavy loss .
After the war, the shipping company returned to the old liner services and built new buildings in the 1950s, including the last new build for this service in 1959, the Rotterdam (V, 38645 BRT). The situation began to change, and planes were increasingly taking passengers away from shipping companies. Holland-Amerika Lijn tried to gain a foothold in the new cruise market.
Again, the HAL began to become an important line for emigrants to the USA, Canada or Australia. This time, however, it was mainly the Dutch who - supported by the government - were looking for a better life beyond the post-war Netherlands. Half a million people emigrated between 1945 and 1976, this time HAL had to put up with competition from Rotterdamse Lloyd , as did that of the Dutch government, which chartered ships directly.
End of liner services, switch to cruises
In 1966 the Statendam was taken out of service and only sent on cruises, followed in 1969 by the Rotterdam and the Nieuw Amsterdam . Since the conversion to the container was too expensive for the shipping company , the freighter services were not maintained. Until the mid-1970s, it stopped all liner services and the Holland-Amerika Lijn became a pure cruise line.
The shipping company considered the location in the Netherlands to be too expensive. In addition, it was quite far from the location of the ships in the Caribbean and Pacific , so that the company moved its headquarters to Willemstad in the Netherlands Antilles and later to Seattle in the United States . The main clientele were now US-Americans, which was ultimately the reason for renaming the shipping company to the Anglicized variant Holland-America Line . The shipping company struggled through the difficult 1970s, and with the beginning of the 1980s the situation improved significantly.
In 1983 and 1984, HAL returned to service for the first time, Nieuw Amsterdam (III) and Noordam (III, 33,930 GT each). Both ships were intended exclusively for cruises. In 1988 Windstar Sail Cruises was acquired, but it was taken over. The company was burdened with a mountain of debt worth several hundred million US dollars (USD), and in November of that year Holland-America Line was taken over by its direct competitor, Carnival Cruise Lines , for approximately USD 900 million (625 million purchase price plus Liabilities).
Today's activities
Today the Holland America Line occupies the position of a premium brand within the Carnival group . With extensive new buildings, Carnival quickly demonstrated a clear interest in keeping the historic HAL name alive. The majority of the fleet and the newbuildings with home ports have been registered in Rotterdam since 1998, which is primarily due to various changes in Dutch shipping law. The main locations for the ships are currently the Caribbean, the US Pacific coast and Alaska . Since the company has been calling at Antarctica since the 1980s, it has been transporting its passengers to all seven continents.
In addition to the cruise ships, HAL operates the Westmark Hotels in Alaska and Yukon , as well as two bus routes, the Gray Line in Seattle and the Gray Line in Alaska. Half Moon Cay (officially Little San Salvador Island ) is an island in the Bahamas owned by the company and a regular stopover for all HAL Caribbean cruises.
The shipping company emphasizes the traditional ties with Rotterdam. The former terminal of the liner service is now used as a cruise terminal. Although Rotterdam is not a classic cruise destination, around 20 to 25 ships stop there a year, Rotterdam has now overtaken Antwerp. Thanks to various tax incentives from the European Union, the city is once again the official home port of the HAL ships.
On July 15, 2020, it was announced that Holland-America Line had sold a total of four ships due to the COVID-19 pandemic . The Rotterdam and the Amsterdam were sent to the Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines sold with handover planned for September 2020. In addition, the Veendam and the Maasdam were sold to previously unknown buyers with the planned handover in August 2020.
Ships
As of July 2020, the shipping company operates twelve ocean-going cruise ships that can be assigned to five classes:
Rotterdam class
Pinnacle class
- Koningsdam
- Nieuw Statendam
- Ryndam (2021)
The S-Class Prinsendam was the smallest ship with 798 seats and drove longer cruises that often lasted 60 days or more.
With the Eurodam , the first ship of the modified Vista class with one deck was put into service in 2008. This class is known as the signature class. In 2010, the Nieuw Amsterdam , another 86,000-tonne signature class, was completed by the Italian shipyard group Fincantieri .
The passenger ships of the Holland-America Line have always been recognized by the fact that all ship names end with "... dam", this has not changed until today. The chimneys were initially black, from 1898 yellow with a green-white-green band - the shipping company flag - arranged in the upper third.
In April 2016 the Koningsdam , the lead ship of the Pinnacle class, was put into service. The sister ship Nieuw Statendam was delivered in November 2018 . Another sister ship, the Ryndam , is scheduled to enter service in 2021.
See also
literature
- Eric van Hooydonk, Patrick Verhoeven: The Ports Portable - Antwerp, Hamburg & Rotterdam . Pandora Publishers, Antwerp 2007, ISBN 90-5325-250-9 , p. 391ff.
Web links
- Official website (German, Dutch, English, Spanish)
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Holland-America Line in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ About us> Management team. Retrieved April 1, 2020 .
- ↑ Hans Krabbendam, Cornelis A. van Minnen, Giles Scott-Smith: Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations: 1609–2009 , State University of New Your Press 2009, ISBN 978-1-4384-3015-7 , p. 229 ( Full text in Google Book Search)
- ↑ a b van Hooydonk / Verhoeven p. 391
- ↑ Fred. Olsen Buys the Amsterdam and Rotterdam from Holland America. In: cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news. July 15, 2020, accessed on July 16, 2020 .
- ^ Four Holland America Line Ships Sold. July 15, 2020, accessed on July 16, 2020 .
- ^ M / S Oosterdam. In: faktaomfartyg.se. Retrieved December 11, 2016 .
- ↑ The next Holland America Line ship will be called “Ryndam”. Cruisetricks, April 8, 2019, accessed June 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Julia Korte: MS Eurodam. In: Kreuzfahrt-Zeitung , May 10, 2017, accessed on April 16, 2018.
- ^ Nieuw Amsterdam. In: fincatieri.it. Retrieved April 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Fincantieri delivers »Nieuw Statendam« ( Memento from June 1, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), Hansa International Maritime Journal, November 30, 2018.
- ↑ Nieuw Statendam is the name of the next new build from Holland America Line. Cruisetricks, May 20, 2016, accessed May 20, 2016 .
- ^ Fincantieri doppio ordine d Carnival. Fincantieri, December 9, 2014, accessed April 6, 2016 (Italian).
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North America, Australia (NAA) |
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Europe, Asia (EA) |
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| Former brands |
Fathom Cruise Lines • Fiesta Marina Cruises • Ibero Cruceros • Ocean Village • Windstar Cruises • Swan Hellenic • Carnival Air Lines |
