Lykes Lines
Lykes Lines was an American liner shipping company that existed from 1922 to 2005 .
history
The company started in 1900, when Dr. Howell Tyson Lykes and his sons began transporting cattle to Cuba with the three-masted schooner Dr Lykes , which were shipped to replace herds destroyed in the Spanish-American war . The tradition of naming ships after family members also dates back to this time. In 1903 Lykes opened its first office in Galveston , Texas, and began building a general cargo liner service between US ports on the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean ports.
In 1922, the Lykes Bros. Steamship Company was founded as a separate shipping company of the seven Lykes brothers, who previously acted independently as cotton, wood and grain traders. During the 1920s Lykes began to expand beyond its previous trading area . New offices were set up in Europe and lines opened to the Mediterranean and the Far East .
In the 1930s Lykes acquired 52 ships from the shipping company Dixie and Southern States Lines, increasing the company's own fleet to 67 ships. After the passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, the focus was on converting the shipping fleet to more modern cargo ships. By the time the United States entered World War II in December 1941, sixteen units had been delivered. During the war, Lykes operated a fleet of up to 125 cargo ships and transported 60 million tons of cargo on behalf of the US government. During this time 22 ships were lost and 272 seafarers were killed.
During the post-war years Lykes pursued its regular liner services again and in the 1950s had a fleet of 54 ships with a total deadweight of 568,978 tons. Between 1960 and 1973, 41 new ships were built to modernize the fleet.
In the 1970s, Lykes Bros. Steamship Company became a subsidiary of Lykes Corp., which in 1978 merged with LTV Corporation. In 1983 Lykes Bros Steamship Co, Inc. was merged with Interocean Steamship Corp. from Florida, whose shareholders included descendants of the original seven Lykes brothers.
In the course of containerization , Lykes became a container liner shipping company with services from the US east and Gulf coast to Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Mexico and Africa, in addition to the general cargo traffic that was still maintained. As a US shipping company, Lykes had the privilege of handling US Army freight orders .
In December 1994, the company's headquarters were relocated from New Orleans to the first high-rise building in Tampa , Florida. After an application to reorganize the company according to Chapter 11 was submitted in October 1995 , the American bankruptcy court chaired by Judge Alexander Paskay approved a purchase offer by CP Ships on February 24, 1997 . In the following years CP Ships integrated the services of Ivaran Lines, acquired in May 1998, and Christensen Canadian African Lines (CCAL), acquired in August 2000, under the name Lykes Lines.
Towards the end of 2005, Lykes Lines was integrated into CP Ships as part of the “One brand - One team” project. CP Ships itself was bought by TUI AG in the summer of 2006 and merged with the Hamburg shipping company Hapag-Lloyd .