Roland line
The Roland-line AG was in 1905 Bremen founded German shipping company where the North German Lloyd was involved with 40%. The company operated independently until 1926, and from 1906 to 1914 it operated a line between Bremen and the west coast of South America . On January 1, 1914, she was the eleventh largest German shipping company with a fleet of 15 ocean-going vessels of 79,632 GRT.
After the World War, the Roland-Linie rebuilt its liner service in the old shipping area, but now also operated on the routes to the Mediterranean and the Levant and in the North and Baltic Seas. In 1922 she bought the competing Argo shipping company and became the sixth largest German shipping company on January 1, 1924, with a fleet of 43 seagoing vessels of 99,872 GRT.
On January 1, 1926, the NDL took over the Roland Line, which it dominated, and increased its fleet by 53 ships.
History and sailing areas
The first Roland line
The name Roland-Linie was first introduced by the NDL from 1893 to 1897 for a pure freight and emigration line from Bremen (city) to the USA. The line was opened on April 13 by the British charter steamer Gulf of Mexico , which was followed by another. The NDL's first own ship on this line was the Roland on September 13, which was followed in 1894 by the sister ships Willehad and Wittekind built by Blohm & Voss .
The independent Roland line
In 1905 Roland-Linie AG was founded in Bremen, in which Norddeutsche Lloyd held a 40% stake. The new shipping company should create a direct line connection across the Atlantic and either via the Panama Canal or alternatively via the Strait of Magellan to the west coast of South America. But it was also directed against the Hamburg shipping companies and the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag), in which it also offered departures from Hamburg. The establishment was a reaction of Lloyd to the constant expansion of Hapag and its joint services with the Hamburg shipping companies Hamburg Südamerikanischer Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft (HSDG) and DDG Kosmos .
Operations began in 1906. The first ships were the almost 6000 GRT freighters Marburg and Freiburg , leased by the NDL , which came underway as Lambert and Turpin , and the new Holger ship bought from Great Britain . There were also four newbuildings of less than 4,000 GRT ordered from the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft . In 1907 the Rolandlinie received three more new buildings, but also sold two of the small new buildings from the previous year. On October 7, 1908, the company suffered its first loss of a ship when the Lambert caught fire on the return voyage from Callao off the mouth of the Rio Negro and had to be abandoned.
Between 1911 and 1913, the Rolandlinie received another seven new buildings. Of the 15 new buildings for the shipping company, all but two were built in the German Reich. The largest ship was in 1912 by the AG Weser delivered Roland with 6872 BRT. The director of the line was Ernst Glässel , who later became deputy chairman of the NDL. In addition to the liner service to the west coast of South America, ships were also busy tramping .
War fates
Of the 16 ships on the Roland Line, eleven were abroad when the war began. The first loss in the war was the Durendart (1906, 3844 GRT), which was sunk on October 14, 1914 in Tsingtau as a block ship. Ships that had visited neutral ports were also lost as a result of the war, such as the Roland and Alrich (1913, 6692 BRT) in Rio de Janeiro , the Wiegand (1911, 4849 BRT) in Montevideo and the Olifant (1906, 3841 BRT) in Havana .
Two ships were used to support the Imperial Navy . The Holger (1906, 5556 GRT) was in Pernambuco at the beginning of the war and warned the German cruisers over the radio that the Rocasriff was known as a supply point for the navy. The Karlsruhe avoided this point. In January 1915, the Holger went to sea under her captain Dreyer to take over the prisoners from the auxiliary cruiser Crown Prince Wilhelm . She met the auxiliary cruiser off the Brazilian coast in mid-February and brought the prisoners and crew members of the express steamer who had passed the age for military service to Montevideo by February 18, 1915. The freighter, built by Swan Hunter , later moved to Buenos Aires , where it remained for the rest of the war years.
The old freighter Turpin (1901, 5965 GRT), which was in Punta Arenas on Magellan Strait, was also able to intervene in the war . He supplied the small cruiser Dresden, which had escaped from the Falklands Battle , with 750 t of briquettes on December 12, 1914, since no better fuel was made available. The Chileans forbade the taking over of hard coal from an American freighter. The freighter stayed on Magellan Strait until the end of the war .
Even the ships that remained in neutral states until the end of the war did not escape extradition to the victorious powers. Only the oldest freighters, Holger and Turpin , were practically sold directly to the Roland-Linie again after they were returned to Germany from South America.
During the war, three new buildings were completed and delivered, including the first Ansgir . In addition, there was another ship, the Witram , which was only completed for the victorious powers after the end of the war. Two more new buildings at Bremer Vulkan were sold in the Netherlands.
Expansion and end
In October 1920, the Roland-Linie succeeded in selling the freighters Rapot (2) and Wido , which were in their final equipment, to the Dutch shipping company van Nievelt , which, at 7698 GRT, would have become the largest ships ever used by the shipping company. The Roland-Linie received ten smaller steamers in exchange for the two newbuildings threatened with delivery to the victorious powers. The ships built by six shipyards were completed between 1917 and 1920 and were between 761 and 2029 GRT in size. With these ships built the line with Rob. M. Sloman has its own Mediterranean and Levant service. However, seven of the small steamers were resold as early as 1922.
In autumn 1921, the line put its first new building into service with the second Roland (4174 BRT). The ship built by AG Vulcan in Stettin corresponded to the ships of the Minden class of the NDL and was the first of a total of three sister ships for the line. The second Ansgir of the Roland line from Germania shipyard, which came into service in the following year, was the first of four similar ships. At least the first two ships in this series had not been ordered by the Roland-Linie, but acquired under construction from the Schiffbau-Treuhand-Bank , which administered the state subsidies. The Ansgir (5840 GRT) was still launched as Octavia for the Hamburg “Rhederei AG von 1896”.
In September 1922, the Roland-Linie bought the competing Argo shipping company . From January 1, 1923, European traffic was handled as "DG Argo mbh". But this form of business was also short-lived. The last newbuildings on the Roland line were the steamers Geier and Alk of 1175 GRT that came into service at the end of 1924 and were built by AG Neptun in Rostock . On January 1, 1926, the NDL took over the Roland Group and thus significantly enlarged its fleet.
However, the Roland line continued to exist on paper. The timetable of the “German West Coast Service” for September 1930 to January 1931 showed 26 departures from Germany to the west coast of South and Central America, which would be handled by the ships of three companies. In addition to seven Hapag departures, ten departures from the DDG Kosmos, which was absorbed by Hapag, and nine from the Roland line were also shown. Of their nine ships, only five had actually done service in the Roland-Linie (the four sister ships from the Germania shipyard : Ansgir, Wiegand, Wido, Rapot , as well as the purchased Murla ), the others were NDL ships (the motor ships Königsberg and Erfurt , as well as Ludwigshafen and Aachen ).
The third Roland line
After the Second World War, the NDL still had considerable foreign debts, the repayment of which was regulated by a debt agreement in 1952. To be safe from American creditors, the new ships of the NDL were acquired by two unencumbered companies until 1959 and then chartered out to the NDL on a long-term basis. In addition to Orlando-Reederei GmbH, this was a new Roland-Linie shipping company that owned several ships by 1959.
literature
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Arnold Kludas : The history of the German passenger shipping volume II: Expansion on all seas 1890-1900 . Ernst Kabel Verlag, 1987.
- Arnold Kludas: The ships of the North German Lloyd 1857 to 1919 . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 1991, ISBN 3-7822-0524-3 .
- Arnold Kludas: The ships of the North German Lloyd 1920 to 1970 . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 1992, ISBN 3-7822-0534-0 .
- Maria Teresa Parker de Bassi: Cruiser Dresden: Odyssey of No Return. Koehler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1993, ISBN 3-78220-591-X .
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919–1939 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
- Susanne and Klaus Wiborg: 1847–1997 Our field is the world . Hapag-Lloyd AG, 1997.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ melt head, p. 69.
- ↑ melt head, p. 70.
- ^ Kludas, Passenger Shipping, Vol. II, pp. 25f.
- ↑ Kludas, 1857-1919, p. 110.
- ↑ Herbert, p. 67.
- ↑ Herbert, p. 19.
- ↑ Herbert, p. 28.
- ↑ Herbert, p. 73.
- ↑ Parker de Bassi, p. 364.
- ↑ melt head, p. 33.
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↑ similar to the alleged Hapag and Kosmos
ships: only three of the Hapag ships were always with Hapag, three originally came from Stinnes and one from Kosmos
from the Kosmos ships, four were previously with the Kosmos, four originally belonged to Stinnes and two came from Hapag - ↑ Wiborg, p. 331.